Iranian officials yesterday called for “granting leave to a group of prisoners as a measure to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus in the country.”
“We asked the judiciary to grant leave for prisoners with health certificates to reduce inmates’ numbers in prisons and limit the spread of the Coronavirus,” the head of Iran’s counter-coronavirus task force, Iraj Harirchi, told reporters.
Ali-Asghar Jahangir, Head of Iran’s Prisons Organization, on Wednesday ordered prison wardens across the country to take special measures to prevent the coronavirus outbreak in the country from spreading to prisons. Wardens are to avoid sending prisoners to courts unnecessarily or transfer them between prisons, he said and advised them to limit prison visits to so-called “cabin visits” from behind glass windows.
On February 23 in a letter to Chief Justice Ebrahim Raeesi, the families of 14 political figures who have been imprisoned for demanding Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s resignation, said the Judiciary will be responsible if coronavirus infection spreads among inmates and leads to a “massive human tragedy” and demanded that they be allowed to go on furlough.
Families of political prisoners in Iran published a petition on Monday urging the release of their relatives and calling on officials “to put all prisons under quarantine in order to stop the spread of this dangerous disease among the prisoners”.
The petition stated that “given the very worrying news about the spread of the coronavirus in the country’s prisons, we the families of 14 political prisoners held in Mashad, Tehran and Kashan prisons… call on the state to release them or grant them furlough, especially the women prisoners, as soon as possible to prevent a great humanitarian catastrophe.”