Despite being fired from his previous position as the director of the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary, following the killing of a political prisoner Alireza Shirmohamad-Ali, Hedayat Farzadi has been appointed as the new director of the Inspection Department of the Iranian regime’s State Prisons, Security and Corrective Measures Organization.
His initial firing was not because he had violated any human rights laws, but simply to quell the protests that ensued following the death of Shirmohamad-Ali. Obviously, some people will view Farzadi’s position change as a promotion by the regime. The truth, however, is that this regime has always supported the inhuman actions of its officials to encourage them to intensify such actions as insurance of the regime’s existence.
Between 2004 and 2008, Farzadi was employed as the head of the Occupational Therapy Camp, before becoming the head of the Dizel Abad Central Prison in Kermanshah, a position he held until February 2018. His role as the director of the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary lasted between 2018 and 2020 until he was fired.
During his 10-year tenure at Dizel Abad Prison, he turned the prison into hell on earth for the prisoners incarcerated there. Former Kurdish political prisoner Rabin Rahmani spent two years in that prison and wrote an account of his experience there in his memoirs.
Rahmani recalled, “Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking scenes that touched me for a while was the amputation of the hand of a petty thief inside the Dizel Abad Prison in the presence of all the people with a sentence of robbery. We were waiting with several prisoners to be transferred to the prison quarantine. Everyone was talking about their verdict. After realizing that I had a political charge, a prisoner who turned out to have a long criminal record smiled, and uttered words that reflected his many years of experience in this prison.”
He added, “Several years after my release, every time I hear the name of Dizel Abad, the same sentence comes to my mind: ‘This is the last station in the world, this is where humanity fades, this is Dizel Abad Prison in Kermanshah.’ Two years in this prison clarified the meaning of the last station in the world for me.”
Following Farzadi’s transfer to his next role within the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary, similar stories came to light. Below is a list of crimes that took place in the two years that Farzadi was based at this prison:
– The beating, torturing, killing of prisoners, as well as depriving them of their basic rights.
– Non-observance of the principle of segregation of crimes, very high population density in wards, poor prison health conditions, cutting off water to prisoners, and starving them.
– The death of a 27-year-old prisoner after 43 days in prison following a lung infection and lack of treatment in November 2018.
– The lack of medical attention to the situation of political prisoner Soheil Arabi, who was severely beaten during his interrogation in April 2019.
– The torture and harassment of Gonabadi dervishes were transferred to this prison in February 2018, despite being wounded during their arrest.
– The participation in the murder of political prisoner Alireza Shirmohammad-Ali. On the evening of Monday, June 10, 2019, in public ward number 11 of the 1st Brigade of this prison, Shirmohamad-Ali was attacked and stabbed by two dangerous prisoners, Mohammad Reza Khalilzadeh and Hamidreza Shojazadeh. Due to the severity and extent of the injuries sustained, he lost his life before reaching the hospital.
Source » irannewsupdate