Posted on 09/21/2003 6:56:50 PM PDT by Persia
A prominent Iranian reformer jailed after publishing an opinion poll stating most people wished to restore dialogue with the United States has gone on hunger strike in protest over prison conditions, according to his supporters.
"In the last contact that we had with my father, he told us he intended to go on hunger strike, and he said he will keep it up until the end," the daughter of Abbas Abdi, Maryam, said during a reformist gathering in Tehran late Monday.
"Judge Mortazavi does not allow us to meet my father or even phone him," she added, referring to Tehran's hardline public prosecutor Saaid Mortazavi, best known for his closure of scores of reformist newspapers. She said her father intended to begin his hunger strike on Monday.
Abdi, a prominent member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF) -- the Islamic republic's main pro-reform party -- was arrested last year amid a judicial backlash against the controversial opinion poll that stated 74 percent of Iranians wanted to see dialogue with the US.
Ironically, Abdi was also one of the leading players in the seizing of the US embassy in Tehran in 1980 and the holding of its diplomats for 444 days, an event that prompted the severing of ties between Tehran and Washington.
In February a Tehran court jailed him for eight years on charges including "providing information to the enemies of the Islamic regime". In April his term was reduced on appeal to four-and-a-half years.
The head of the IIPF and brother of embattled reformist President Mohammad Khatami also voiced concern over Abdi's treatment.
"We are intensely worried about the disaster in the prisons, in which the murder of Zahra Kazemi is just a small example," Mohammad Reza Khatami said.
Kazemi was an Iranian-Canadian photographer who died on July 10 after being arrested for taking unauthorized photographs outside Tehran's Evin prison. She died of a brain haemorrhage after a blow to the head suffered while in custody, according to an official inquiry ordered by President Khatami.
The president's brother said he was not demanding Abdi's release, but merely for news of his well-being./-
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