A/HRC/25/61 Ms. “Raha” Human rights activist In order to pay the 210 million tuman bail for her after she left the country, her family had to sell their house to the Government (the debt is now paid). They bought a smaller house, and the Government has since razed the house to build an apartment complex. Mithra Tahimi Former leftist political prisoner Ms. Mithra Tahimi had been taken prisoner in May 1983, because she was a member of the Tudeh Party (a secret branch). She was arrested at home by the Revolutionary Guards. She was taken to a Joint Committee, which is now a museum. She was subject to interrogation for one month and held at the temporary detention center for a full year. In 1984, she was sent to Evin Prison. The charge was that she had worked with others to foment a coup against the Islamic Republic, which was “completely untrue. “She had been tortured and beaten during interrogation to admit this, but not as badly as higher-ranking members of the party (two of them were actually killed, although the official story is that they committed suicide. One of them was Rahman Hatifi). When she was being interrogated, they constantly threatened her with execution, which she knew was unlikely given the lack of evidence for charges. Then they told her that if she confessed on television she would receive a lighter sentence. She was taken to court in May 1985 and sentenced to 15 years in prison after a trial lasting no more than 10 minutes. There were only two men in the room. It was “more like an interrogation than a trial.” She protested, but to no avail. No evidence was presented against her. They wanted to know why there was a secret wing of the Tudeh Party. (The Tudeh Party still supported the Islamic Republic officially). She spent her sentence mostly in Evin Prison, with six months at Ghezel Hesar in the middle of the sentence. In 1988, a number of male members of the Tudeh Party were executed. Ms Tahimi was taken to court again at that time and re-tried, as were many members of Tudeh. Many of the men were sentenced to death, while the women received lashing sentences. A number of women whose sentences had been dually served were not released, because authorities still wanted to extract confessions. In her cell block, the first floor was reserved for those whose sentences were completed. The second was for those who had “repented,” and the third was for those still serving sentences. Women from the first floor were often taken to “repentance” rooms. She herself was required to pray; if she did not, they would accuse her of apostasy. A few months before she was taken for her re-trial, it seemed that some of the prison officials had been released, and they were no longer lashing women. Some women had by that point been released, but she had no way of knowing how many, since they secretly shuffled people around the prison. In September of 1988, they took seven women -- five from the bottom floor and two from the top floor. She thought she was going for another interrogation, but they took them to court. The women had already decided that if they threatened them with apostasy charges they would threaten a dry hunger strike. When they got to the court, she was blindfolded. A male voice told her to take her blindfold off. The same judge who had previously sentenced her was there, along with the prison discipline officer. The judge asked her whether she still belonged to the Tudeh party; she said yes. Was her father in the party? “No”. Do you pray? 87