Free Iranian Student Majid Dorri And Provide Urgently Needed Medical Care!

Political prisoner Majid Dorri’s health is fast deteriorating while officials in Behbahan Prison continue to deny him the necessary medical care.

Majid Dorri is an imprisoned student activist expelled from Allameh Tabatabai University (ATU) in Tehran. He studied literature at ATU and was a member of the Advocacy Council for the Right to Education.

Dorri was suspended and eventually expelled from Alameh University when he objected to the flaws in the University’s leadership and the imposed security atmosphere on campus. He founded the Education Rights Committee along with several other students in 2008 (they became known as star students).

When Ahmadinejad denied the existence of star students (students deprived of continuing their education), Dorri participated in the protests to Ahmadinejad’s remarks.

In July of 2009, Majid Dorri was arrested by Iranian Intelligence Agency and locked up in Evin Prison. The lower court sentenced him to 11 years in prison for Moharebeh (waging war against God), acting against national security and disturbing public order on November 24, 2009. His sentence was reduced to 6 years of imprisonment by the appeals court but his exile sentence to Izeh remained the same.

In August 2010, without prior notice, prison officials placed Majid Dorri in shackles and transferred him to a prison in the city of Behbahan. Since then, he has been serving his prison term in exile.

According to a 19 October, 2011 report by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), although Majid Dorri suffers from migraines and anemia and needs to be treated by a specialist, prison officials refuse to transfer him to a hospital outside the prison.

In an interview with HRANA, one of Majid Dorri’s family members reported that the officials have turned down the family’s request to transfer Majid to one of the prisons in Tehran.

In one of his letters written from prison, Majid Dorri described his situation and wrote, “I have not only been behind bars since July 9, 2009, they have also given me the court’s verdict sentencing and exiling me to 6 years in prison so that I forgo my youth and make myself ready to face an unfair and unjust imprisonment as far from the smallest amount of fairness as possible. The judges condemned me to spend this prison term behind bars in the city of Izeh. It was as if Intelligence Agency’s interrogators had forgotten to tell the judges that Izeh had no prisons. Inevitably, I had to be exiled to another prison with the lowest and smallest amount of standards possible, a prison situated in the worst climate under primitive conditions similar to that of the Dark Ages.”