A human rights activist told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that Mostafa Nosrati, age 30, an inmate at the Bandar Abbas Central Prison, died on July 2, 2014, three days after he sustained injuries and was denied transfer to a medical facility.
Mostafa Nosrati was serving the third year of a 15-year prison sentence on charges of armed robbery. The source told the Campaign that while on a fresh air break on June 29, Nosrati climbed a wall in order to retrieve a package someone had hauled over the prison wall into the courtyard. He fell down and suffered internal hemorrhaging and a broken pelvis. Prison authorities refused to transfer him to a hospital outside the prison and only gave him some pain medication at the infirmary and returned him to his cell.
“Faced with objections from this prisoner and his cellmates, the prison authorities said that falling from the wall was the consequence of a violation he had committed and that they couldn’t do anything for this prisoner. A short while after this statement, however, the prison authorities asked his family for 1.2 million toman (approximately $400) in cash for the hospital transfer, but Mostafa Nosrati’s family were unable to provide the money, due to poverty,” said the source.
As Nosrati’s health deteriorated, the prison authorities transferred him to the prison infirmary on July 2, where he died later that day, according to the source.
Denial of medical treatment, for pre-existing illnesses or illnesses and injuries sustained in prison–including life-threatening ones—is routine in Iranian prisons, in violation of both Iranian and international law.
The Bandar Abbas Central Prison is notorious for its ill-treatment of prisoners. “Overcrowding, lack of sanitary facilities, and the poor quality of nutrition provide for regrettable conditions,” said the source, who added that there have been multiple suicides at the facility. “On May 23, 2014, Ehsan Hedayatkar, a prisoner in the facility’s Ward One who had been arrested on charges of drug possession two weeks earlier, took pills and hanged himself in the prison shower. Also, on April 29, 2014, Mohammad Shirinsokhan, a prisoner in Ward Two of the facility who was charged with murder, hanged himself,” said the human rights activist.