{"id":6120,"date":"2016-10-31T21:48:20","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T02:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=6120"},"modified":"2016-10-31T21:48:20","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T02:48:20","slug":"political-prisoner-remains-jailed-two-years-after-family-posts-362000-bail-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/6120\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Prisoner Remains Jailed Two Years After Family Posts $362,000 Bail money"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2016103093137113947611_maryam-akbari-monfared-denied-release-by-iran\"
Maryam Akbari-Monfared<\/span><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maryam Akbari-Monfared denied release by Iran Intelligence Ministry<\/p>\n

Two years ago the family of political prisoner Maryam Akbari-Monfared posted an unusually high bail amount for her temporary release on furlough, but her husband says Iran\u2019s Intelligence Ministry is blocking her release from Evin Prison \u2019s Women\u2019s Ward, where she has been held since 2009.
\n\u201cIn 2014 they demanded 1.15 billion tomans ($362,000 USD) in bail to grant her furlough,\u201d Akbari-Monfared\u2019s husband, Hassan Jafari, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. \u201cSo we went ahead and presented the deed to a property and paid for the appraisal, but they have still not allowed her to go on furlough, not even for surgery or to attend [one of our] daughters\u2019 first day of school.\u201d
\n\u201cThe court has been sitting on the property deed for two and a half years and they\u2019re telling us that the Intelligence Ministry has not agreed to grant her furlough,\u201d he added. \u201cNo one answers our questions. We don\u2019t know which office to go to. We have been going to the prosecutor\u2019s office for seven years, but we haven\u2019t been able to meet him even once.\u201d
\nAkbari-Monfared, 47, was arrested in December 2009 for her alleged involvement in Green Movement street protests and was later charged with being connected to Mojahedin-e Khalgh organization (MEK, also known as PMOI). Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced her to 15 years in prison for \u201cwaging war against God\u201d in June 2010.
\nJafari said four of his wife\u2019s siblings were executed in the 1980s for their membership in the MEK, and in 2009 she was also accused of making phone calls to her remaining bother and sister who were at the time based in the MEK\u2019s headquarters at Camp Ashraf in Iraq.
\n\u201cI was in the courtroom when my wife was being tried. Judge [Abolqasem] Salavati told my wife that she was paying for her brother and sister\u2019s activities [with the MEK in Iraq]. I was left with taking care of our three small girls, whose mother has now been imprisoned for six and a half years,\u201d said Jafari.
\nJafari told the Campaign that his wife is eligible for conditional release based on Iran\u2019s New Islamic Penal Code. According to Article 58: \u201c\u2026the deciding court can issue the order of conditional release for convicts sentenced to more than ten years imprisonment after half of the sentence is served, and in other cases after one-third of the sentence is served.\u201d
\n\u201cWe got a lawyer for her and requested conditional release,\u201d said Jafari. \u201cHer case was sent to Branch 31 of the Supreme Court in Qom, but five months later the chief judge of this branch said his court did not have jurisdiction over the case and it should be sent to Tehran where the alleged crime took place. Now we have to chase the case and see where it landed.\u201d
\nReza Akbari-Monfared, one of Maryam\u2019s brothers, has been serving a five-year prison sentence in Rajaee Shahr Prison since December 2012 for \u201cassembly and collusion against national security\u201d for his alleged involvement with the MEK.
\nOn October 16, 2016 Akbari-Monfared called for a judicial inquiry to investigate the execution of her siblings and the location where they were buried.
\n\u201cThree of my brothers and one of my sisters were executed in prison in the 1980s,\u201d she wrote in an open letter. \u201cMy youngest brother, Abdolreza Akbari-Monfared, was executed in 1980. He was only a 17-year-old high school student when he was arrested. He was charged with distributing MEK literature. Although he was sentenced to only three years in prison, he was kept incarcerated until his execution in the summer of 1988 along with scores of other prisoners.\u201d
\nThe letter added: \u201cAnother brother, Alireza Akbari-Monfared, was arrested on September 8, 1981 and he was tried and executed ten days later\u2026 On the seventh night of mourning for my brother Alireza, agents raided our house and arrested a number of guests as well as my mother and sister, Roghieh Akbari-Monfared. My mother was released after five months but my sister was sentenced to eight years in prison. She was executed in August 1988 near the end of her prison term\u2026 My other brother, Gholamreza Akbari-Monfared, was arrested in 1983 and died under torture in 1985.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maryam Akbari-Monfared denied release by Iran Intelligence Ministry Two years ago the family of political prisoner Maryam Akbari-Monfared posted an unusually high bail amount for […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":6121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iranresistance","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6126,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6120\/revisions\/6126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}