Rajai Shahr Prison, Karaj, Iran. © 2004 Private

On April 14, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an independent human rights nongovernmental organization, reported that Mehdi Salehi, a 38-year-old prisoner on death row for his alleged role in protests in the city of Khomeini Shahr, Isfahan province, in December 2017 and January 2018, has died in prison. According to HRANA, authorities have not provided information about the cause of his death to his family yet and pressured the family to bury his body on April 15.

A person familiar with the case told Human Rights Watch that Salehi was transferred to the hospital for a heart condition in January 2022. HRANA reported that the reason for Salehi’s transfer was a stroke.

In 2020, Branch 2 of Isfahan’s revolutionary court sentenced Salehi and four others to death on charges of “armed rebellion and enmity against God through the use of firearms,” and to five years in prison on the charge of “corruption on earth through disrupting public and private security.” All defendants appear to have been acquaintances of Asghar Haroon al-Rashidi, a man shot to death during the protests in Khomeini Shahr. The verdict, reviewed by Human Right Watch, fails to attribute responsibility for the commission of a specific crime to each defendant individually.

Iranian prison authorities regularly fail to provide prisoners with adequate access to medical care. Salehi is the third prisoner to have died in custody in Iran since the beginning of 2022. In January, Abtin Bektash, the writer and poet, and Kian Adelpour, a prisoner in Ahvaz, died under unclear circumstances. Their families allege that prison authorities delayed or restricted their access to health care. On April 12, Amnesty International published a report documenting the apparent deliberate denial of access to medical care in the case of more than 90 prisoners over the past 10 years.

Given the repeated failure to investigate, Iranian authorities should immediately allow for an independent and transparent investigation into the death of Salehi and others who recently died in custody.