Iran: Jailed blogger Hossein Ronaghi in Danger · Global Voices
Fred Petrossian

Iranian blogger Hossein Ronaghi Malki is serving a 15 year prison sentence in the security ward of Evin Prison, deprived of contact with his family or his lawyer. Mojtaba Samienejad, a human rights activist and secretary of the Human Rights House of Iran, told BBC Persian that Ronaghi is in need of urgent surgery and is in critical condition. He said that the medical personnel of the Evin Clinic have confirmed that he needs to be transferred to a hospital to undergo surgery, but that the authorities have failed to take any action.
Samienejad also said that Arash Arkan, another political prisoner who recently passed away for lack of treatment in prison, had been denied medical prison leave despite the recommendation by the doctors.
Free Hossein [fa], is a campaign on the internet has been launched to provide the information on this jailed blogger. FreeHossein presents itself as a ‘committee to follow Hossein's case”. According to this campaign:
Hossein suffers from kidney and mouth problems and is in a lot of pain. He wrote a letter about how he was tortured by Intelligence Ministry agents to be forced to confess to a prosecutor, but the letter was confiscated.
Hossein was arrested in November 2009 and was confined in a solitary cell for more than a year.
The campaign's Facebook page has around 1500 fans. More than 100 political activists also wrote an open letter and asked the Iranian judiciary why they were so hard on Hossein, a student of Azad University in Arak.
The Iranian authorities have arrested several bloggers in recent years. Omid Reza MirSayafi, became the first blooger to die in prison on March 18, 2009 under suspicious circumstances. The internationally famous blogger Hossein Derakhshan was sentenced to 19.5 years last year, and Shiva Nazar Ahari, a female blogger, was sentenced to 74 lashes and six years of prison.