TEHRAN, 30 July 2005 — The wife of hunger-striking dissident Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji warned yesterday he risked dying in the next days as police raided the house of one of his lawyers in an apparent arrest bid. Ganji, who became Iran’s best known dissident after being jailed for publishing articles linking high-level regime members to political murders, will enter the 50th day of his hunger strike today.
“The Tehran prosecutor told me last night in Milad hospital that Ganji’s doctors believe he would not stay alive until the morning. We should do whatever possible right now,” Massoumeh Shafiie told the student news agency ISNA.
Shafiie lamented that these would probably be “the last days of Ganji’s life”. She said she was granted a five-minute visit to her husband Thursday night, and he “could not even keep his eyes open.” “When we were leaving his room, he went numb,” she said, adding that: “I told them to re-attach the tube of drips with my permission so that he stays alive.” Calls for his release have come from US President George W. Bush, the European Union as well as his Nobel Peace Prize winning defense lawyer Shirin Ebadi.
Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and outgoing President Mohammad Khatami have also both said he should be freed, although Khatami also sharply criticized the dissident for his “obstinacy”.
Iran’s hard-line judiciary has so far said they cannot consider the possibility of a release unless Ganji asks for it in person, even though last week it did raise the possibility he could be pardoned.
“The only thing to say about Ganji is whether he has himself asked for conditional release or not. So far, I have not heard that he or his lawyers have filed such a request,” judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimi Rad told ISNA.
A tragic end to the case is the last thing the Islamic republic wants at a time it is already the target of intense international pressure over its nuclear program.
But hard-liners will also not wish to give way to a man who has virulently criticized them from his cell and has consistently defied the regime. “I believe as long as the prosecutor’s team are present in the hospital, doctors cannot do anything for improving Ganji’s health,” said Massoumeh Shafiie.
Ganji, who was sentenced in 2001 to six years behind bars over articles he wrote linking senior regime officials to the serial murders of several intellectuals and writers, has been on hunger strike since June 11.
He was transferred last week from his Tehran prison to a hospital in the capital, fueling concerns about his health although the judiciary said he simply needed a knee operation and had ended his hunger strike.
Meanwhile, Abdol-Fattah Soltani, a lawyer involved in Ganiji’s defense and a colleague of the Nobel laureate Ebadi, is the subject of an arrest warrant from an Islamic revolutionary court that raided his home earlier in the week, a fellow lawyer said. “On Wednesday morning, some officials from the Islamic revolutionary court carrying an arrest warrant arrived at the house of Soltani and took away many documents and files without giving a receipt,” Mohammad Ali Dadkhah said.
Dadkhah said that Soltani was not at home at the time. “We do not know where Soltani is,” Ebadi told ISNA. Dadkhah said the arrest warrant offered no reason but speculated that “the move was probably because of Soltani’s defense in the latest Zahra Kazemi trial,” referring to another rights case that has aroused international concern. Kazemi, who was 54, died in custody in Tehran in July 2003 after being arrested for photographing a demonstration outside a Tehran prison.
