UN ‘fears for life’ of jailed Iran dissident

UN rights experts said on Tuesday they feared for the life of a dissident Iranian filmmaker jailed for protesting against the regime in Tehran.

Mohammad Nourizad, 68, who suffers from a heart condition, had been denied treatment and was so ill he risked “serious complications and possible death,” the UN group said.

“We are seriously concerned at the mistreatment of Mohammad Nourizad and his continued imprisonment for expressing his opinion,” they said. “The denial of adequate medical care may amount to torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

“It is clear that Mohammad Nourizad is not in a medical state to remain in prison,” the experts said, and the Iranian judiciary’s own legal medical organization and other medical professionals had found he should be released on medical grounds.

“The Iranian authorities must release him immediately in line with these medical opinions and give him free access to the required medical care and treatment.” Nourizad, an award-winning filmmaker, activist and former journalist, served six months in prison in 2012 for “insulting” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after he wrote an open letter in 2010 urging the supreme leader to apologize for the violent crackdown on the 2009 presidential election protests. He was imprisoned again in August 2020 for protesting outside a court in Mashhad where another dissident was on trial, and for “spreading lies.”

The UN group said Nourizad had attempted suicide in prison, had gone on hunger strike and had begun to self-harm as a form of protest.

His treatment reflected that of many detained in Iran for “merely exercising their right to freedom of expression,” including some who had died because they were denied adequate medical treatment.