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Prominent Dissident Mehdi Khazali Arrested

February 7, 2017
IranWire
2 min read
Prominent Dissident Mehdi Khazali Arrested

Physician, blogger and publisher Mehdi Khazali was arrested at his workplace on the afternoon of Sunday, February 5 and was sent to the communal Ward 350 at Evin Prison. The ward is reserved for political prisoners. The Human Rights Activists News Agency [Persian link] reported his arrest.  

Authorities have given no reason for Khazali’s most recent arrest, but he has been detained several times in connection with his writing. The son of former hardliner member of the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts Ayatollah Abu Al-Qassam Khazali, who died in September 2015, Khazali has met with controversy on several occasions. He was critical of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and has routinely criticized conservative politicians. As recently as December 2016, Khazali criticized the Islamic Republic for its role in Syria.

The Guardian Council blocked Khazali’s bid to enter politics formally in 2016, disqualifying him from running for parliament.

Khazali was last arrested in 2014 after he gave an interview with the Voice of America’s Persian service in which he claimed that hardliner Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani and his sons were involved in corruption scandals. Kani died the same year. Special forces from the Intelligence Agency arrested Khazali as he traveled toward Mahmoudabad in the northern province of Mazandaran with his wife and his daughter. Authorities did not have an arrest warrant. He was transferred to Ward 2 of Rajaei Shahr Prison, which is reserved for prisoners accused of murder. He went on a dry hunger strike and when his health deteriorated he was transferred to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran where the doctors said he had suffered two heart attacks. He was later released on health grounds.

In total, he has been arrested seven times and has been on hunger strike for 285 days.

According to some reports, Khazali threatened to go on a dry hunger strike from the moment he was detained on February 5.

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