Sufi Woman Imprisoned With Drug Offenders
Published by Ali on January 31, 2019
Shokoufeh Yadollahi, an imprisoned member of Iran’s Gonabadi Dervish minority is believed to be in a critical health condition and have lost her ability to talk.
She has been suffering from chronic headaches due to inhaling smoke of drugs and cigarettes as she has recently been locked up with some of the dangerous criminals – murderers and drug addicts.
Dervish women say that prison authorities have no control over the use of drugs in this section and the air in the ward and the bathrooms is filled with smoke.
The women are held in Qarchak Prison which is an unsanitary prison converted from an industrial chicken farm.
The Gonabadi Dervish women were among several hundred Dervishes arrested by Iranian security forces in February 2018, for involvement in anti-government protests in Tehran.
Shokoufeh Yadollahi was sentenced on Monday, 13 August, 2018, to five years imprisonment and two years’ deprivation of social and media activity.
According to Sufi woman Shokoufeh Yadollahi, a six-month denial of medical care has led to an increase in the level of infection in her blood and endangered her life. She was treated at Amir Alam Hospital last Wednesday, but the prison authorities prevented her from accessing her doctor prescribed medications.
Her medical doctor emphasized that Sufi woman Shokoufeh Yadollahi must be kept in a clean environment and away from cigarette smoke, but prison authorities refuse to transfer her from the sixth ward of Qarchak Prison which is extremely unsanitary, putting her life in danger.
