ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Iranian government has ignored requests for additional resources to control the spread of coronavirus and treat prisoners by senior detention officials, according to a new report from Amnesty International. Leaked official letters shown to the human rights organization sent to the Ministry of Health show officials at Iran’s Prisons Organization “raising the alarm” over shortages of much-needed sanitary and medical products and devices. “These official letters provide damning evidence of the government’s appalling failure to protect prisoners. Requests for urgently needed disinfectant products, protective equipment and medical devices have been ignored for months.” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa in the report. “This is particularly alarming as the letters also note the presence of a highly vulnerable population in Iran’s prisons,” she added The Ministry of Health did not respond to the officials’ desperate pleas, according to the report, which claims Iran’s prisons remain “catastrophically unequipped” for outbreaks. “Overcrowding, poor ventilation, lack of basic sanitation and medical equipment, and deliberate neglect of prisoners’ health problems, are making Iranian prisons a perfect breeding ground for COVID-19,” added Eltahawy. Over 100,000 detainees in Iran have been granted temporary release or sentence remissions since March in an effort to mitigate the spread of the virus in prisons. But a UN group of experts said this month that released inmates were now being returned to prison, despite a second wave of the virus in the country, according to AFP. While Iran is gripped by the COVID-19 outbreak, the authorities' hold over its prisons is slipping. UN officials say they are “horrified” at reports of brutality emerging from the country’s overcrowded prisons as the situation spirals out of control. Half a dozen riots have been reported in the past three weeks. At least a hundred prisoners have escaped, and some outbreaks have turned deadly.
