Iranian of the Day

Green Voice of Freedom: Authorities in Iran have agreed to allow imprisoned opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi to be examined by a trusted doctor and to be hospitalised following a deterioration in his health, a site close to the Karroubi family reported on Friday.

According to Saham news, on Thursday security officials told the family that Karroubi would be allowed to receive medical treatment in a hospital. However, a day later the site reported that authorities were still refusing to transfer the cleric to the hospital.

Despite agreeing to provide the family and Karroubi’s trusted doctor as well as all his medical records, officials have only released some of the test results.

Opposition sites recently reported that Karroubi’s health had taken a worrying turn for the worse and that the former parliament speaker had experienced significant weight loss, nausea, dizziness and a loss of appetite. He was placed under detention again shortly after undergoing medical tests at a hospital.

On Friday, a doctor appointed by the security apparatus treated Karroubi for a second time, Saham news said. “Despite prescribing medicine, no positive change has been seen in his health,” it added.

A member of the Karroubi family has been allowed to accompany the 2009 presidential candidate who has been under house arrest, along with fellow opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and wife Zahra Rahnavard, since February 2011.

Meanwhile, Mousavi advisor Ardeshir Amir-Arjomand recently told the BBC’s Persian service that the former prime minister had also been taken to hospital for medical examinations following heart pain and blood pressure fluctuations. The news comes more than two months after Mousavi underwent surgery after suffering from cardiac complications. Less than 24 hours after that operation, Mousavi was returned to house arrest.

Mousavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard has also reportedly developed health complications while under house arrest. Kaleme, a site associated with Mousavi, says that as of late Rahnavard has been experiencing shivering in her face and arms, something unprecedented prior to her house arrest.

Mousavi’s daughters are also facing increasing harassment and threats from state agents for their role in disseminating news about their parents’ condition. One of the daughters has already been barred from seeing her parents.

Criticising the maltreatment of the Green Movement leaders, Amir-Arjomand said, “Today, even the most dictatorial regimes have ceased to treat [prisoners] this way.”

On Wednesday, renowned human rights activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi said that Mousavi, Karroubi and Rahnavard were being held in conditions worse than all of Iran’s political prisoners.

“Why is their condition worse? Because they face all the limitations and abuses that other political prisoners face. However, it is clear where the other [prisoners] are held and in which court they are tried,” Ebad said.

“No [official] body will take responsibility for their imprisonment. I call on all the world’s freedom-loving people to protest against the Iranian regime and demand it to either release these three individuals or to immediately try them in a public court.”