Iranian protester who died in custody 'was forced to take pills'



The Guardian, January 18 2018 - An Iranian protester who died in custody was forced to take pills that made him sick, his family have claimed, as secrecy shrouds the similar deaths of other prisoners.

Little is known about the circumstances leading to the death of at least five protesters rounded up in mass arrests during Iran’s largest protests in nearly a decade.

At least 25 people died in clashes during the unrest, which began on 28 December over economic grievances and spread across the country.

Mahmoud Sadeghi, an outspoken MP who has scrutinized the authorities’ conduct of the crackdown, has said about 3,700 people were arrested during the protests.

A series of tweets by Sadeghi since the unrest has been a rare source of information from within the country.

“According to the relatives of one of the detainees who died in jail, he had told his family during a phone conversation [prior to his death] that the authorities had forced him and other prisoners to take pills that made them sick,” Sadeghi tweeted on Tuesday.

On Thursday the organisation in charge of Iranian prisons denied prisoners had been forced to take medicine, calling the claims “lies and big accusations”, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

The MP did not reveal the identity of the prisoner, but at least three of those who have died in jail have been identified.

Sina Ghanbari, 23, died in Tehran’s Evin prison, the country’s most notorious jail. Authorities said he killed himself.

The semi-official Fars news agency published a letter it claimed had been written by Ghanbari’s family in which they said they had no plans to hold a funeral ceremony because “enemies??!!” were planning to hijack it!!!

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