INU - Iranian political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared has been denied access to medical care since the bold and courageous release of a letter, demanding an investigation into the 1988 massacre in Iran. Amnesty International and families and supporters of members of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) have demanded her immediate and unconditional release, following an official letter that this brave woman released from prison.

After enduring years in prison already, Maryam has been denied access to medical care because of the letter. It was written as an official complaint to launch investigations into the 1988 massacre in Iran. In the letter, Maryam demanded that “the indictment of the victims and those who were executed in the 1980s be made available and published.”

In 1988, during the space of just a few months, more than 30,000 victims were executed without a fair trial in Iran, Maryam’s family members among them. She lost three brothers and her sister during the massacre. Her youngest brother was only 17, arrested for the ‘crime’ of distributing a newspaper, belonging to PMOI/MEK. Her brother endured a devastating fate – he was sentenced to three years in solitary confinement in prison, before his execution in 1988, among many other Iranians who lost their loved ones that summer.

“Many of those who were executed in 1988, including my sister and brother, had already been sentenced to prison terms,” Maryam writes. “They had been tried in courts that lasted a few minutes without due process and their crimes were at most reading or distributing newspaper (published by the PMOI/MEK ) or participating in peaceful demonstrations.”