Journalist and filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad was arrested in 2019 for signing an open letter along with 13 other dissidents inside Iran calling on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to resign. (File photo)

‘Save Nourizad’: Iranians launch hashtag to protest ‘torture’ of prominent dissident

Tehran

Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya English

Published: 22 April ,2021: 05:36 PM GST Updated: 22 April ,2021: 06:37 PM GST

2 min read

Iranians launched a hashtag on Twitter on Wednesday to raise awareness about the state of a prominent dissident in prison whose life they say is in danger due to alleged torture.

Journalist and filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad was arrested in 2019 for signing an open letter along with 13 other dissidents inside Iran calling on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to resign.

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Nourizad was sentenced to 15 years in prison and banned from leaving Iran for three years.

Earlier this week, his wife, Fatemeh Maleki, said that her husband had recently lost consciousness in prison, after which he was taken to a hospital in Tehran, where she said he was injected with unknown substances in multiple areas, including his genitals.

“When he woke up [in hospital], he noticed a man sitting on his chest who was injecting a needle into his genitals,” Maleki told Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, on Monday.

The 68-year-old, who has been on hunger strike for over a month, has since been moved back to prison, she added.

Iranians, including rights activists and dissdients in exile and former political prisoners currently inside Iran have since taken to Twitter to raise awareness about and protest Nourizad’s treatment by Iran’s authorities using the hashtag “#SaveNourizad.”

Mohammad Nourizad is a prominent critic of Iran’s regime.

New reports claim he has been injected with mysterious substances while in prison, including to his genitals.

Nourizad is a peaceful dissident whose detention violates international law. He must be freed.#SaveNourizad pic.twitter.com/ByBGjY7StA
— Gissou Nia/ گیسو نیا (@GissouNia) April 21, 2021

Iranian journalist and dissident Mohammad Nourizad is under extreme torture in an Iranian prison. We need the world’s help to save him before the Islamic Republic kills him. #SaveNourizad pic.twitter.com/jEEsBxwDPi
— Nazanin Boniadi (@NazaninBoniadi) April 22, 2021

Iranians are using the hashtag #SaveNourizad to raise awareness about the critical condition of Mohammad Nourizad, a civil rights activist arrested by the regime. Nourizad. He's been severely tortured and injected with an unknown substance.

His life is in danger pic.twitter.com/YY7KgzPlW3
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 21, 2021

Last year, Nourizad attempted suicide in prison to protest the treatment of political prisoners in Iran, his wife said at the time.

Prior to that, a court sentenced Nourizad’s son, Ali Nourizad, to three-and-a-half years in prison for taking part in the street protests that followed the Revolutionary Guards’ admission to shooting down a Ukranian passenger plane over Tehran in January 2020.

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