Wife of Jailed Iranian Politician ‘On Second Hunger Strike’

The wife of jailed Iranian reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh is on hunger strike for the second time since her arrest last month, her son-in-law has told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.

Fakhrosadat Mohtashamipur was arrested during antigovernment demonstrations in Tehran on March 1.

Mohtashamipur’s son-in-law, Ali Tabatabai, told Radio Farda on April 6 she began a new hunger strike on April 4 in Tehran’s Evin prison, where she is being held in solitary confinement.

Tabatabai said Mohtashamipur wants her husband to be granted the basic rights of political prisoners, including the right to phone calls, visits, and medical treatment.

Tajzadeh is a senior member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mujahedin Organization. A deputy interior minister during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, he was arrested shortly after the disputed presidential election in June 2009.

Tajzadeh is currently being held in the Quarantine Ward of Evin prison. Together with six other reformist politicians, he filed a complaint against commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for their “interference in the June 2009 presidential election.”

Before her arrest, Mohtashamipur, also a member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, had written dozens of letters to the Iranian authorities criticizing her husband’s incarceration.

In late March, during the only visit she has received from her daughter, Mohtashamipur said that she had to be taken to the prison infirmary after embarking on her first hunger strike, Tabatabai said.

Mohtashamipur also said that her interrogators want information that incriminates her husband. “It seems that the authorities want to intensify the pressure on Tajzadeh,” Tabatabai noted.

He said no charges have been brought against Mohtashamipur yet. But some of the hard-line newspapers have criticized her for referring in her writings to the June 2009 presidential election as “an election coup.”

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