Iranian Lawmaker Claims Detained Protesters ‘Forced to Take Pills That Made Them Sick’

FRED TANNEAU/AFP/Getty Images
FRED TANNEAU/AFP/Getty Images
Adelle Nazarian

Iranian lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeghi alleged this week that at least one of the protesters who died in an Iranian prison after being detained was forced to take pills that made him sick.

“According to the relatives of one of the detainees who died in jail, he had told his family during a phone conversation [prior to his death] that the authorities had forced him and other prisoners to take pills that made them sick,” Sadeghi tweeted last week, according to the Guardian.

At least three protesters have died in prison and at least 25 have died overall. Iranian authorities have claimed those who died in prison committed suicide. Those who have had access to the bodies, however, claim that they show visible signs of being tortured.

The Guardian noted that, two days after Sadeghi claimed that prisoners were being force-fed pills, the Islamic Republic’s Prisons Agency denied this and called them “lies and big accusations.”

According to Radio Farda, the Prison’s Agency threatened Sadeghi with legal action, to which Sadeghi tweeted, “Instead of threatening [us] … let the legislators visit prisons.”

After several legislators’ repeated requests to visit Evin Prison, news arrived that ten members of Iran’s Parliament will be granted access to visit anti-regime prisoners on January 28.

“Our application today was approved,” Hassan Norouzi, a spokesman for the Parliament’s judiciary committee said on Sunday, according to Radio Free Europe.

Sina Ghanbari, 23, Saro Ghahramani, 24, and Mohesn Adeli perished in Iranian prisons.

Others who died during the protests, according to a list maintained by the advocacy group Our Iran, include:

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

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