Kurdish Teacher Eskandar Lotfi Denied Medical Care in Solitary Confinement

Human rights defender, Eskandar Lotfi was arrested on May 1 and held in the solitary confinement cells of “Shahrmfar Detention Centre” by the IRGC Intelligence Organisation in Sanandaj. While there, he was banned from visitations and only  allowed to have a few brief phone calls to his family. Informed sources also told Iran Human Rights that the detention cells are built 4 metres underground and the only ventilation for all the detainees is a small window.

On June 7, he was transferred to the IRGC’s Ward 2A of Evin Prison in Tehran and his case sent from Marivan to the Evin Prison court. His lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht told Iran Human Rights: “Eskandar went on hunger strike in Ward 2A due to the pressure to force him into a false confession. He was on a wet hunger strike for eight days and dry hunger strike for five days which he ended after his interrogations ended in Ward 2A.”

His lawyer has also been denied access to his client and his case file.

“Eskandar was transferred to Ward 209 after completing 67 days of interrogations in Sanandaj and Tehran. In a brief phone call, he told his family that he was being asked the same repetitive questions by the Ministry of Intelligence as the IRGC had asked,” an informed source told Iran Human Rights.

The questions related to his visit with the two French unionists arrested in Tehran. In the run up to Teachers Week, a number of teachers and workers rights activists were arrested around Iran for their “friendly meeting with two French unionists.” Days later, prior to trial, IRIB news agency aired a film claiming the activists had been in contact with “foreign espionage services.”  

The two French citizens are Cecil Koehler, a member and international representative of the French National Federation of Education and Culture of the Work Force (FNEC FP-FO) and her husband, Jacques Paris, the former secretary general of the same union in the education sector (SNFOLC), who had travelled to Iran as tourists. They were arrested by security forces in May.

On July 6, Masoud Satayshi, the spokeperson for the Judiciary stated the two French citizens had been arrested on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security.”