We all rushed to the barred gate.” With these words, a group of political prisoners in Iran’s Qezelhesar Prison begin their account of collective defiance. In this joint statement, they describe how they prevented the abduction of Saeed Masouri, Iran’s longest-serving political prisoner, whom authorities were attempting to exile to an unknown location.
Like always, our day began today with yet another piece of news about the government’s maximum pressure on the people and the flagrant violation of their basic rights. This time, as the prison’s administrative hours began, it was Saeed Masouri’s turn—the longest-serving political prisoner in Iran—to once again taste the vengeance of the Islamic Republic’s tyrannical system.
His exile to an unknown location after 25 agonizing years in prison.
They used the trick of telling him that the prison’s security and intelligence office needed to see him to lure him out of the political ward. After he passed through the barred gate leading to the head office of Unit 4, they locked the gate behind him.
Given the bitter experiences of the past, Saeed Masouri realized that this was not a prison matter and that they intended to move him to an unknown location.
One of the political prisoners who was with him quickly returned to the hall and informed us of the security agencies’ attempt to abduct Saeed Masouri. We all rushed to the barred gate and found Saeed there, having refused to go with them.
The gathering of political prisoners behind the barred gate forced the prison officials to inform us of their true intention for taking Saeed Masouri…
Exile to one of the western or southwestern provinces.
At that moment, as the barred gate opened for another prisoner to pass through, we seized the opportunity to pull Saeed back into the hall. Chanting slogans, we brought him back inside.
We locked the main door to the hall from the inside and, by barricading ourselves, declared our explicit opposition to this cowardly decision by the security agencies and their hostage-taking methods.
After this act of resistance, the prison informed us that Saeed Masouri’s exile has been postponed until Saturday, but that on Saturday, it must happen by any means necessary.
The abduction of political prisoners and their exile to unknown locations is one of the most blatant examples of human rights violations, which the Islamic Republic has used extensively as a tool to suppress prisoners from its inception to this day.
But in the current situation, the war has provided another pretext for the government to tighten its grip on the people, especially political prisoners. Under various excuses, they impose pressure and various forms of torture to enforce an atmosphere of suffocation in the country.
This is happening while some political activists, including some former political prisoners, have raised the necessity of “national unity” in these circumstances. It is as if they are unaware that the Islamic Republic considers the people themselves, not foreign governments, to be its main adversary in this war… and the pressure on the people has only increased since the war, under various pretexts.
Stripping the people of their security through arbitrary and relentless arrests, wholesale fabrications of charges, and pressuring political prisoners to the point of death—all of this shows the government rolling up its sleeves to take revenge for the recent war on the unarmed populace.
And today, Saeed Masouri, the longest-serving political prisoner in the country, is one of the individuals set to taste this blind vengeance.
We, the political prisoners of Qezelhesar, call on all free people to stand with us to stop this flagrant violation of human rights inside the prison.