Rights group: jailed Iranian dissident dies on hunger strike

Iranian political prisoner Adel Kianpour died on Saturday, a week after he started a hunger strike to protest his unfair detention in a prison in Ahvaz, Khuzestan province, the Ahvaz Human Rights Organisation (AHRO) announced Sunday.

AHRO said in a statement that Kianpour died in the Sheiban prison in the southwestern city of Ahvaz on Saturday night due to complications caused by the hunger strike and without receiving any medical care.

On 25 December, Kianpour started an open-ended hunger strike to protest the nebulous charges brought against him, saying he was deprived of his basic rights, including being held in a political ward, and not having a lawyer present during his interrogations after he was arrested in August 2020 upon his return to Iran.

He was serving a three-year sentence on charges of “spreading propaganda against the regime”, “propaganda in favour of opposition groups” and “agitating public opinion with the intention of disrupting national security.”

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