Health of jailed Iranian dissident deteriorating: Ganji's wife

Yahoo News:

Iran's most prominent jailed dissident, journalist Akbar Ganji, is still on a hunger strike and his health is deteriorating rapidly, his wife was quoted as saying.

"He is still on hunger strike and he is losing weight," Massoumeh Shafiie told the student news agency ISNA.

"His respiratory problem is getting worse since he is not taking any medicine either. According to the prison sick bay log he is losing weight everyday," she added. READ MORE

Ganji was sentenced in 2001 to six years behind bars over articles he wrote linking senior regime officials, including ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, to the serial murders of several intellectuals and writers.

He was re-imprisoned on June 11 after being granted a short period of leave on medical grounds, and since then has been on a hunger strike.

Shafiie said she has written to humanitarian organisations and to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan about her husband's condition.

On Wednesday the United States joined calls for his release, praising his "courageous efforts to investigate extra-judicial killings by Iranian security forces and his commitment to free speech and democratic government".