(Illustration)
(Illustration)Thinkstock

Liberal non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called upon Iranian authorities to stop denying medical attention for journalists imprisoned under appalling conditions.

RFS published on their website a claim that under regulations, imprisoned journalists Hossien Ronaghi Malki, Said Razavi Faghih, Narges Mohammadi, and Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht must be provided the proper medical attention for their conditions.

Reza Moini, the head of RSF’s Iran/Afghanistan desk, pointed out that, “under articles 102 and 103 of Iran’s prison regulations, adopted by the judicial body that oversees the prison system, prison officials must provide detainees with any medical care they need, and according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is party, depriving detainees of medical care constitutes a violation of the ban on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Hossien Ronaghi Malki, who has undergone several kidney operations, was initially imprisoned in December 2010 and granted a medical parole in June 2015 on bail. He was recalled and re-imprisoned Wednesday in order to complete his 17-year sentence, in defiance of medical advice thereby putting his life in danger.

Said Razavi Faghih was supposed to have been released in March 2015 after completing a one-year sentence but was given a new sentence of three-and-a-half years in prison on charges of anti-government publicity and insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Assembly of Experts.

After undergoing a heart operation in January 2015 he awoke in a pool of blood on his hospital bed, and although the judicial authorities were alered about his alarming state of health on several occasions, he was returned to his cell in Rajaishahr prison.

Narges Mohammadi, a spokesperson for the Center for Human Rights Defenders, was arrested in May 2015 and was sentenced to serve six years in Tehran’s Evin prison, where she is being denied medical care and access to medicine which is endangering her health. In October she was taken to a Tehran hospital, where she spent ten days handcuffed to a bed before being returned to prison against the advice of her doctors. She has not been allowed to contact her husband or children.

Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, who holds dual Iranian and British citizenship and is serving a five-year sentence, has experienced many fainting episodes while in her prison cell in the women’s wing of Evin prison. As a result of one of her fainting fits in December, she fell and was taken to the prison infirmary where a doctor said her condition was normal and injected with a tranquilizer. The following day she had convulsions and lost consciousness. A neurologist said her fainting was due to a “drug prescription error by the infirmary” and requested her transfer to a specialized hospital, yet prison officials refused.