Unofficial sources from the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary (Fashafoyeh Prison) reported that political prisoner Alireza Shir Mohammad Ali (Shir Mohammadi) was murdered in prison.

According to the reports, Alireza was “attacked by two prisoners from the general population and stabbed in the neck and stomach and died before arriving at the hospital.”

Shir Mohammad Ali (Shir Mohammadi) was arrested after 2018 protests among many others and was sentenced to eight years in prison for “blasphemy, insulting the former and current leader, and propaganda against the regime”.

Last Autumn, when Vahid Sayad Nasiri passed away in prison due to a hunger strike, Shir Mohammad Ali and a number of other political prisoners were on the list of lesser-known political and ideological prisoners who started their political activities in the mass protests across the country in January of 2017. Many of them remained incarcerated for a long time and some received heavy prison sentences.

Shir Mohammad Ali was arrested in the Summer of 2018 for “online activities” and was transferred to Fashafoyeh Prison. In March of 2018, he went on hunger strike for a month with another prisoner, Barzan Mohammadi, in protest to the terrible conditions and heavy restrictions in Fashashoyeh Prison.

In a letter which was published by HRANA in March, he says that after 36 days in solitary confinement, his bail was set at 80 million tomans, but for no obvious reason, the court does not accept the bail money.

He continues: “I am in terrible condition in the Greater Tehran Penitentiary. The Islamic Republic regime which claims to act in accordance with Islamic compassion, has inflicted such psychological pressure on me that has no basis in law nor religion.”

Death of political prisoners is not a rare occurrence in Iranian prisons. Sina Ghanbari, Saru Ghahremani, Akbar Mohammadi, Sattar Beheshti, Hoda Saber, and Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi are among the most high profile deaths in Iranian prisons under torture or hunger strike or suspicious reasons.