The Iranian judiciary announced yesterday that it has allowed 54,000 prisoners to serve part of their sentences at home in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the country’s overcrowded prisons.
Iranian judiciary spokesman, Gholamhossein Esmaili, told reporters in the capital Tehran that since last week 54,000 prisoners were granted furlough; allowing them to leave prison in the knowledge they will be returned.
He added that the percentage of prisoners entering the country’s prisons has recently decreased by 35 per cent compared to previous periods.
Iranian authorities also announced that as many as 77 people have died of the disease while 2,300 people have been infected.
The country has, however, been suspected and accused of concealing the true number of those infected and dead, with some reporting over 10,000 infections and at least 210 deaths.
READ: Saudi Arabia and Jordan confirm first cases of coronavirus
Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.
Spotted an error on this page? Let us know
Latest news
See all
