An unnamed prisoner attacked at knifepoint political prisoners Dr. Saeed Madani and journalist Saeed Razavi Faghih, at Rajaei Shahr Prison, in Karaj, near to Tehran, on Saturday, November 28. The attacker, who has a history of violence, claims the inmates owe him money. Both are currently recovering from their injuries.
“At noon on Saturday, a security prisoner who’d been carrying a knife in a threatening manner ever since the night before attacked Saeed Razavi Faghih and injured him,” an informed source tells IranWire. “Dr. Saeed Madani, a professor of sociology, who was standing nearby, tried to calm the attacker down and remove the knife from his hand but in the struggle that followed, Dr Madani was himself also injured on his forehead, eyebrows and face.”
The source, who wants to remain anonymous, adds, “The attacker confessed that the assault was planned the night before. The majority of prisoners in the political ward are of the belief that the attack was either planned by prison officials or that at the very least they gave it the green light.”
The person responsible for the attack sleeps in Room 12 of the security ward and has a history of violence in the prison.
“The previous night he had threatened to kill if he didn’t get the money he was asking for,” the source explains. “Nobody knows what the money in question is about but the Green Movement prisoners at Rajaei Shahr believe it’s extortion-based. The attacker has previously seized by force another prisoner’s refrigerator.”
A prisoner at Rajaei Shahr prison who knows Dr. Madani and Mr. Razavi Faghih well says that if the attacker had needed money or had asked for any personal belongings, both men would have handed them over immediately and so there was no need for violence.
“Extortion is a common everyday event in the wards of ordinary prisoners. Either the ward representative does it himself or gangs in the prison do it to gain power or to keep power,” the prisoner says. “Sometimes drug gangs that are active in prison engage in extortion but this seldom happens in security wards and among political prisoners.”
Saeed Madani told his cellmates that he intervened because he was afraid for Saeed Razavi Faghih’s life and wanted to save him.
“The attacker had an anti-reformist friend working behind the scenes, a person who also has a record of physical violence against reform-minded inmates,” the prisoner says. “On Saturday, this person brought a blade to help the aggressor. I wasn’t present at the scene but, according to eyewitnesses, many profanities were uttered. What’s more, the attacker said he’d continue to take their belongings, and might even kill them, until the day he gets his money and he did that in front of other prisoners.”
It is widely thought among inmates at Rajaei Shahr Prison that prison officials allow these attacks to happen so that life for political prisoners is even more difficult.
Prison officials turn a blind eye
“The warden and prison guards didn’t do anything to prevent or stop this happening,” the prisoner says. “The recent assault took place right before the guards’ very eyes. Even if prison officials aren’t guilty of instigating the attack, they’re definitely guilty of utter neglect and passivity in defending the safety of victims.”
In protest of this, five prisoners of conscience went on hunger strike for several hours following the assault. The inmates are demanding that the incident be investigated and that the man responsible be transferred out of the ward.
A second prisoner who spoke to the attacker about the incident says, “The attacker feels justified in getting his money this way and says that he’s confident that the guards won’t stand in his way.”
Not long before the attack on Saturday, the man responsible threatened another prisoner and told him to stay away from reform-minded political prisoners. Both the attacker and his accomplice have boasted repeatedly about violent acts they have committed against reformists and strongly voiced their disdain and disregard for former reformist President Khatami and the Green movement.
Iranian press has reported that the head of Rajaei Shahr Prison informed his deputy to tell the prisoners on hunger strike to wait until he returns to solve the problem. The Deputy Prosecutor for Security Prisoner Affairs is also scheduled to visit the prison.
Violence is a part of everyday life in the wards of ordinary prisoners, something that tends to end with prison guards beating prisoners. News of these clashes rarely make their way out of prison and it is rarer still for the media to report them. The Rajaei Shahr prison clinic treats prisoners with serious wounds on a near-daily basis.
“Drugs are easily available inside the prison and most prisoners use them every day, which increases the number of clashes,” says another Rajaei Shahr prisoner. “This is because using psychedelic drugs leads to mental disorders and aggravates tensions.”
The only thing that prisoners are truly afraid of in the prison is Mohammad Mardani, the director of Rajaei Shahr Prison. In the past, Mardani was an interrogator for the authorities, and he applies many of those skills to managing the prison. The Intelligence Ministry runs a separate ward inside Rajaei Shahr where it interrogates, threatens and tortures political defendants and prisoners. Prisoners call this ward the “Guards Ward” because the Revolutionary Guards controlled it in the past.
The majority of political prisoners are kept in Ward 12. And, ever since 2014, prisoners accused of spying are kept away from other prisoners in Room 12. Equally, Salafist inmates, who are accused of supporting Al-Qaeda, are kept in Room 10.
The fate and treatment of Dr. Saeed Madani and journalist Saeed Razavi Faghih is testimony to the critical situation prisoners of conscience find themselves in while in jail; a system that has no qualms about throwing together political prisoners of all types, be it Green Movement activists, high-security prisoners, “spies” and those accused of collaborating with Al Qaeda. It’s high time things changed.
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