“The family is in complete darkness about my father’s physical conditions and not even allowed a telephone call with him…My father’s health conditions are alarming,” wrote Narges Mousavi, daughter of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition leader who was abruptly hospitalized for emergency heart surgery on April 29, 2014, in her Facebook page.
Concern for the health of Mousavi, who has been held under house arrest for over three years, grows, following news of his emergency angioplasty and his transfer back to his state of house arrest the next day. Throughout his three-year detention he has suffered increasingly serious health issues, including cardiac and blood pressure problems, but authorities have not permitted him to receive full medical treatment.
In a Facebook status update, Narges Mousavi, the youngest daughter of the Green Movement leader Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard, who has been detained with him, expressed great concern about her father’s heart conditions and the authorities’ negligence in providing him proper medical care.
Narges Mousavi stated that her parents’ physical conditions were good prior to their 2011 house arrest. “They had no particular problems. Their February 2011 arrest began abruptly and without judicial orders. First we observed their abnormal weight loss in a period less than three months, and then gradually signs of various illnesses started appearing. I emphasize that both of them enjoyed good physical conditions prior to the house arrest,” she wrote.
Ms. Mousavi added in her Facebook status update that her father has twice undergone an angioplasty over the past three years. Regarding his April 29, 2014 procedure, she wrote, “It was done without the knowledge of the family this time, in exile and loneliness and imprisonment, without any visitation after the shocking news of the sudden angioplasty. My father’s swift transfer from the hospital back to the Akhtar [Alley] house, [where] there is no medical equipment…is alarming.”
Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and opposition leader and 2009 presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest since 14 February 2011, when they called for demonstrations in support of the Arab Spring. All three have had serious health-related issues during their house arrest, and have not been allowed to receive full and proper medical treatment. The denial of medical treatment for prisoners is widespread in Iran.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran calls once again for the immediate release of the opposition leaders and notes that the ruling of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has called for their immediate release, as has the UN Secretary-General and the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran. The Campaign also urges the authorities to grant the opposition leaders—and all prisoners in Iran—full and immediate access to medical care.
International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran