Iran Judiciary Wants Ganji to Die: Wife

Khaleej Times Online:

The wife of leading Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji accused the hardline judiciary on Tuesday of spurring her husband on to his death by stopping him hearing pleas to save his life 67 days into a hunger strike.

“They are trying to weaken his spirit or to drive him into a position in which he doesn’t break his hunger strike,” Massoumeh Shafii charged in an open letter. READ MORE

“It’s highly unlikely that he knows that there are general calls for him to break his hunger strike, since he is in a news quarantine, without access to newspapers, telephones, radios or visits,” she says.

“This is a double torment.”

Shafii complains that she has not been allowed to see her husband -- now held in a Tehran hospital after being transferred from prison -- for the past 15 days.

During that time, she herself has appealed for him to end his hunger strike, as has Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi who is acting as counsel for her husband.

But judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimi Rad dismissed Shafii’s remarks, accusing her of self-aggrandisement.

“Ms. Ganji has been trying very hard to make a name for herself,” he charged.

In recent days, the regime has stepped up its rhetoric against the 46-year-old dissident, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2001 after he wrote articles implicating several regime officials in the murders of opposition intellectuals and writers.

Teheran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi charged Monday that Ganji’s hunger strike was mere “play-acting”. “One day, he eats and then for several days he refuses to do so,” Mortazavi said.