Three Imprisoned Brothers Beaten and Denied Medical Help

In recent days, three brothers, Navid, Vahid and Habib Afkari, have been severely beaten by Shiraz prison officials and tried to lodge a complaint. According to reports received by IranWire, prison officials are refusing to accept the complaint or even so much as refer them to the prison doctors.

Navid Afkari has been sentenced to death by the criminal courts as a mode of qisas (retributive justice), and separately at the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz, on charges of moharebeh (waging war against God and the state) for the murder of a Shiraz Water Supply Department intelligence officer during demonstrations in August 2018. His brothers were sentenced to long prison terms as the co-accused in the same case.

The Afkari brothers have denied all allegations against them, saying they were tortured into giving false evidence against themselves and one another.

After details of the case were reported in the media, on the evening of Thursday, September 3, the brothers were transferred from the public prison ward to another location. Then on Saturday, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting aired a report on the Afkari brothers which included part of their “confessions”.

The Judiciary News Agency’s website Mizan had earlier denied the allegations of torture, stating: “During the course of the investigation and following the request of the defendants’ lawyer, an order was given to transfer the defendants to the prison doctors, to verify and re-examine the defendants' claims of being tortured.

“But the accused [Navid Afkari] stated in the intelligence office and in the presence of his designated lawyer that he had not been tortured and would not go to the doctors."

The Afkari brothers insisted on having been tortured in court and three months after the interrogation were finally sent to prison doctors – that is, long after visible evidence of the beatings had disappeared. The doctors were able to confirm that Navid Afkari’s hand had been fractured but failed to determine the time of the fracture.

The Afkari brothers have since spoken explicitly about their beatings during fleeting contact with their families, who staged a two-day wait outside the prison to see them.

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