Hengameh Shahidi Contacts Family from Evin Prison

RAHANA
According to Hengameh Shahidi’s family, the journalist sounded extremely distressed during a recent phone conversation. Shahidi informed her family that she is being held in a ward 209 cell shared with one other prisoner.

Since Shahidi was taken into custody to serve her six-year jail term, she should have been detained in a general ward instead of security ward 209.

Shahidi was arrested after being summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence one day after her prison sentence was upheld by the Appeals Court. Shahidi’s family and her lawyer found out one day after her arrest that the journalist’s verdict had been upheld by the Appeals Court.

Hengameh Shahidi worked for Mehdi Karroubi’s campaign during the June presidential election. She was arrested shortly after the election and spent four months in Evin prison. Three of the months were spent in solitary confinement, and then she was released on $90,000 (USD) bail while her appeal was pending.