Detained dissident in Iran suffering from diabetes
Sept. 13, Teheran (dpa) - Hassan Yussefi-Ashkevari, a detained dissident
in Iran , is suffering from diabetes and should be released from jail for
medical reasons, the students news agency ISNA reported Wednesday.
In a letter to the judiciary, the dissident's wife, Mohtaram Yussefi-Ashkevari,
said her husband has had several attacks in prison during the night which
temporarily even led to partial paralysis. She warned of dire consequences
if he remained in prison without medical care, ISNA said.
Yussefi-Ashkevari, a cleric and reporter of the banned liberal weekly
Iran -Farda (Tomorrow's Iran ), was detained last month in the notorious
Evin prison and will remain jailed until the Special Clergy Court (SCC)
looks into his case.
He is charged by the SCC with acting against national security, writing
``defamatory'' articles in domestic and foreign dailies against officials,
launching a publicity campaign against the system, insulting Islamic sanctities
and questioning some of Islam's rules.
Yussefi-Ashkevari was one of the participants at a controversial conference
held in Berlin last April by Germany's Heinrich Boell Foundation which
intended to introduce the new democratic image of Islamic Iran after the
parliamentary elections in February. The meeting was disrupted by exile
opposition forces.
The participants at the seminar, most of them renowned reformist figures,
have been summoned by the revolutionary court on charges that they ``disgraced''
Iran in front of ``counter-revolutionaries'' and jailed but later released
on bail, except Yussefi-Ashkevari and Akbar Ganji.
Following the Berlin conference, Yussefi-Ashkevari went into temporary
exile in France. He gave several interviews to foreign media from Paris
in which he firmly supported the reform course of President Mohammad Khatami.
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