Alireza Golipour was arrested on October 11th, 2011 and sentenced to 39 years and 9 months imprisonment as well as 74 lashes. He was charged with insulting the leadership, spying, and supporting the Mojahedin Organization. The sentence was reduced to 12 years in the plea court. Golipour, disclosed the thefts and embezzlement of some high rank government officials to the public, and as a result, he spent the best years of his life in the cells of the Islamic regime’s prisons. In the prisons, he was suffering from various diseases, rashes, lung infection, heart disease, lymph nodes and seizures. He suffers from seizures several times a day and should be treated with the best medical treatment as soon as possible. According to Golipour’s lawyer, he is an exceptionally intelligent man who studied at a doctorate level and was an official employee of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Instead of competing his PH.D, He has been in jail for seven years, since the age of 25.
We will be interviewing Alireza Golipour in our program directly from Evin Prison. (The following is the dialogue between Alireza Golipour and I)
⁃Hello, how are you?
⁃Thank you my friend. I hope you are good too. Alireza, could you give us a little introduction as to who Alireza Golipour is, and what his story is. Very short please.
⁃My name is Alireza Golipour. I am a member of the national gifted people Foundation as well as a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering. I am from Ahan, Germany. I have been arrested on the charges of treason since 2011, by the Ministry of Intelligence, and after that I was transferred to the Sepa-e-pasdaran prison, unit 2A on January 15th, 2014.
⁃What are the accusations you’ve been given.
⁃I have been accused of disclosing confidential documents and the names of the people who were responsible for the scandals. As a matter of fact it can be said that I was arrested because I knew too much. In the country that I’m living in, if you talk about science, or justice, or equality, you are in trouble. Unfortunately, I have been in prison for a long time, and the accusations that have been made against me were(Automatic announcement: This communication is from Evin prison) disclosing top secret documents. I did not confess to any of these crimes and they have no proof about who or where I did this to. It only said that I was in contact with foreigners and at first they never explained who these foreigners were. Then, they later said that I was in contact with American authorities, however, they could never prove or bring evidence in court that I was involved in such actions.
⁃With this being said, you are saying that you have been convicted without proof, and they gave you the sentence of 39 years and 9 months, and later changed it to 12 years!
⁃Also, let me tell you about a very important piece of information. There has been a lot of talk about not following the rules in Iran. Lawyers and authorities have talked about it and I too, as a political prisoner, have seen it. A lot of people have asked me why I did not protest my sentence of 39 years and 9 months to prison and 74 lashes. I answered “what are you talking about, this sentence was pre-planned”. (Automatic announcement: This communication is from Evin prison). My sentence was pre-planned. Mr. Salavati from branch 15 of the revolutionary court, just signed the order for my arrest and gave convicted me. It was not a sentence based on professional research, justice or even considering basic human rights. Unfortunately, it has never been considered how our government can have the power to ruin people’s lives.
According to article 28 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, when they arrest people, the duties of interlocutors are as follows: Under the direct supervision of the prosecutor, they have to work, the prosecutor must define the crime, and protect the effects of it. In other words, the only responsibility the prosecutor has is to find and define the crime. However, they have more power than this, which is illegal. Some example would be that, in a very informal way, they order the sentences of the prisoners as well as issuing them periods of leave and their release process, as well as how and where the prisoners are to be kept in the prisons. In all these cases, they are entitled to these rights from the defendants of justice. Since there is no organization to control their actions, they basically do as they please. Mr. Ahmadi, you are asking me about my story, let me tell you that it’s not that interesting, only in my country will the government arrest a 25 year old man, make all of his hair to turn grey, and not let him to see his (Automatic announcement: This communication is from Evin prison) mother for three years. I wasn’t sure if I should have been happy or sad when I learned that they told my family that I died from the beginning. Nobody will know how much it hurts when your sister comes to see you after three years and isn’t able to recognize you. This is what they do to people, and I can’t understand how humans can do this do other humans. Today my situation is even worse, I have never be able to be heard from inside the prison until now. I even can’t understand why we have this many problems here, all we want is justice, all we want is that the government says the truth about their actions. People like me are only imprisoned because of the crime of “seeing”, “saying”, and “knowing”. Trust me it’s hell over here.
⁃Mr. Golipour, you were only 25 when you were arrested. Right now you have so many sicknesses. Please tell us during these six years that you were in prison,
⁃Actually it’s been 7 years now.
⁃Ok, in these 7 years, please tell us what happened to you in the prison. You were only 25 and very healthy. Right now you have seizures, what happened to you. (Automatic announcement: This communication is from Evin prison).
⁃Ok, First I would like to say, when I was arrested in 2011, I was in the University of Payum-Noor, central branch. They took me to Evin prison at 2am. From that night they kept me in solitary confinement in the ministry of information department. They kept me there for so long that it’s even hard for me to believe how I was able to tolerate the harshness of it. They then transferred me to a room for two people. When I was in there, I noticed that I was in solitary confinement for over a year. From there the sent me to unit 2A on January 15, 2014, only to interrogate me heavier, with torture on my body and mind. They then sent me to Rahjuhee Shahr prison, and then to Evin prison, unit 8. After that they sent me to unit 12. It was in that unit that I acquired all of my sicknesses. My heart, my lungs, seizures, and infections all over my body. There are documents in the prison’s hospital that were documented by the prison’s doctors. One of the reason’s for that was that they didn’t let me sleep. (Automatic announcement: This communication is from Evin prison). When they were interrogating me, they told me that my mother died, they didn’t let me to see or call my family. They put a lot of pressure on my mind. Only three years after my arrest did my family know that I was alive. I have been hospitalized many times because of my many seizures. At the very end, the doctors told me that they can’t treat me in the prison’s hospital, and they told me that I have to go to a regular hospital. There were three sessions for investigating my problems, my file was returned to the medical committee of the province of Tehran, which was the highest authority for medical files like these.
