Full Name:
Hedayat Farzadi
Background:
No information is available about his birth and education.
Positions:
- Head of a rehabilitation camp
- Chief of the Central Kermanshah Prison (Dizelabad) until 7 February 2018
- Chief of the Greater Tehran Prison (Fashafouye) since 7 February 2018
Human Rights Violations:
Hedayat Farzadi, as the Chief of Fashafouye prison, has had a major role in the severe mistreatment, deprivation of basic rights, torturing, and killing of imprisoned individuals.
Despite numerous ongoing reports and complaints about the inhumane conditions at Fashafouye, Farzadi has refused to take any measure towards improvement. He also refuses to address the prison’s intense overpopulation, lack of access to drinking water, lack of access to medical treatment, and health-hazardous hygiene conditions. Farzadi also fails to separate prisoners based on their charges and has shown appalling neglect towards the severe ill-treatment of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners there.
Torture and Death in Prison
After the violent suppression of the Gonabadi Dervishes’ protests in Tehran, many were transferred to Chief Hedayat Farzadi at Fashafouye prison. Arash Moradi, one of the Dervishes, told IranWire about the conditions in Fashafouye:
‘Besides the humiliating and insulting at the time of arrest, the conditions at the prison were very bad. Many of us had broken arms or legs and were wounded in the face due to being beaten up at the time of arrest. Some of the Dervishes’ bodies were full of birdshot, some caught it in their eyes, but none of were sent to Forensic Medicine. All they did was wrap bandages to stop the bleeding.’
Another Gonabadi Dervish has talked to BBC Persian about his experiences in the prison:
‘This is the end of all prisons, the end of the world. I was transferred to the prison quarantine. I saw Dervishes there, all wounded and bloody, their eyes and their bodies were full of the officers’ birdshot. They were in pain. The toilet was overflowing with blood. They weren’t sending anyone to the prison’s health clinic or to the hospital. The Dervishes had to take out the metal pieces and make incisions themselves, using tin cans.’
After Rasoul Hoveida, paramedic and incarcerated Gonabadi Dervish at Fashafouye, informed the public about the situation there, Hedayat Farzadi threated him with legal action. Also during Farzadi’s tenure at Fashafouye, the prison’s special security forces raided the Gonabadi Dervishes’ cells, beat them severely, and subjected them to prolonged solitary confinement.
Hedayat Farzadi’s failure to separate prisoners by their charges and neglect to address prisoners’ requests for transfer allowed for the death of Alireza Shirmohammadali on 10 June 2019.
Shirmohammadali wrote a letter with follow prisoners warning the public about Fashafouye’s conditions. In the letter, they expressed fearing for their safety and asked to be transferred to Evin prison, so they could be housed with other political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. Alireza Shirmohammadali had even gone on hunger strike to demand a transfer. Farzadi neglected to separate these prisoners from the rest of the population, and Alireza Shirmohammadali was stabbed by two men incarcerated on drug charges.
According to the testimony of Kurdish human rights activist Rebin Rahmani, who was imprisoned in the Dizelabad prison for two years, conditions there during Farzadi’s tenure as a chief were appalling. Rahmani says:
‘One of the police officers in the prison, named Col. Kakaei, was one of the torturers there. During daily inspections in different prison wards, he personally took part in severely beating the prisoners. Perhaps one of the most bitter, heart-wrenching scenes that affected me for a while was the amputation of a thief’s hand in the prison yard at Dizelabad, in the presence of all other prisoners who were charged with theft.
In July 2007, they announced that a health inspector from an international body will come visit the prison. Therefore, the prison warden ordered an immediate clean-up. The officials cleaned everywhere, then they announced over the loudspeakers that nobody has a right to speak to the visitor and anyone who complains or mentions anything will be transferred to Ward 9. This place is the last station on Earth. This is where humanity’s colors run. This place is Kermanshah’s Dizelabad prison.’
