Iranian Prosecutor Now Threatening Family of Ganji

WASHINGTON – The Iranian prosecutor responsible for jailing Akbar Ganji hinted that he would pursue prosecution of family members of the dissident journalist.Speaking to reporters yesterday, Saeed Mortazavi accused the writer’s relatives of “conspiring” to distribute “anti-government” propaganda to Iranian citizens, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. “Those people have created an illusion for him that if he continues his hunger strike, Iran would face a crisis or pressure from abroad,” the prosecutor said of Mr. Ganji’s supporters and kin. Today Mr. Ganji, who is being held at Tehran’s Milad Hospital following a transfer from Evin Prison, enters his 68th day of a hunger strike, which has been interrupted intermittently when he has fallen unconscious and hospital workers have hooked him up to intravenous fluids to keep him alive.Mr. Mortazavi, who Mr. Ganji has described in open letters as lying on behalf of the supreme leader, has pursued the writer doggedly in recent weeks. He was sentenced in January 2001 for crimes similar to the charges Mr. Mortazavi yesterday mentioned in reference to the Ganji family. A court found Mr. Ganji’s writings, which alleged that regime leaders plotted a series of murders of intellectuals in the late 1990s, to be a threat to the Islamic Republic. The writer was rearrested on June 11, after having been temporarily released from prison to seek treatment for his asthma, when he urged his countrymen to boycott the country’s early summer presidential election.Since beginning his hunger strike on June 11, Mr. Ganji has emerged as a symbol for Iran’s increasingly restless democratic opposition. In recent weeks, Kurdish leaders – currently engaged in their own uprisings in Iran’s western provinces – have expressed solidarity with the jailed writer. Indeed, representatives of Iran’s student organizations have told the Sun that Mr. Ganji’s defiance and open letters calling for the supreme leader to step down have inspired the fight in many of Iran’s activists who were demoralized after the ascendancy of former revolutionary guard intelligence commander, Mahmoud Amadinejad, to the presidency in June.Mr. Ganji’s case has also attracted the attention of world leaders such as President Bush; a former Czech president, Vaclav Havel, and E.U. leaders, who have released increasingly tough statements on the writer’s behalf. As Mr. Ganji wastes away in his hospital room, the government he opposes has grown bolder in its standoff with the West over nuclear weapons. Earlier this month, the Iranians broke the seals at an uranium enrichment facility after promising their European interlocutors they would suspend such activity during nuclear talks. Over the weekend, Mr. Bush told Israeli television that he was not ruling out a military strike on the country’s nuclear facilities.Mr. Mortazavi earlier this month cleared the entire wing of the hospital where Mr. Ganji is staying and placed him under 24-hour surveillance. His wife, Massoumeh Shafiei, told The New York Sun earlier this month that he has tried to intimidate her husband, telling him that no one will care if he dies from starvation.Yesterday the prosecutor changed his line. “He eats for a couple of days and stops eating for another five, he accepts expensive serums being injected into his veins for a few days and refuses them for another few,” Mr. Mortazavi said.Over the past month, Mr. Ganji’s family has said that he has refused when conscious the intravenous injections that have likely kept him alive this long. Last Monday, Iranian plainclothes officers broke into the Ganji family home and handcuffed Ms. Shafiei, confiscating cassette tapes and documents, according to an account in the reformist paper Emrouz. Earlier this month, one of Mr. Ganji’s lawyers was arrested on charges of slipping classified information to a foreign embassy.Since last Monday, Ms. Shafiei, who has not seen Mr. Ganji for over two weeks, has pleaded publicly with her husband to end his hunger strike. The Iranian Student News Agency printed a fax from her yesterday that said in part, “All efforts, whether by his close friends or by ourselves, are now concentrated on trying to visit him and let him know everybody’s call on him to break his hunger strike.”In his open letters, Mr. Ganji has said he will continue his hunger strike and sacrifice his body for the greater cause of Iranian freedom. Since June 11, he has not changed his demand to be released from prison unconditionally even though his sentence will expire in the spring.

Iranian Prosecutor Now Threatening Family of Ganji

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