On September 24, 2025, Somayeh Rashidi Mehrabadi, a 42-year-old worker and political prisoner held in Qarchak Prison in Varamin, passed away at Mofatteh Hospital in Tehran while in a coma. She died as a result of being denied access to medicine and medical care, following severe beatings and torture in prison.
Free Them Now strongly condemns the deliberate killing of Somayeh Rashidi Mehrabadi by the Islamic regime and holds all officials of this regime responsible for this crime. We extend our deepest condolences to Somayeh’s family and to everyone grieving her loss.
Somayeh Rashidi was a garment factory worker and had previously worked in a chandelier workshop. On April 23, 2025, she was arrested in the Javadiyeh district of Tehran for writing protest slogans. Despite suffering from epilepsy, she was brutally beaten by regime torturers who inflicted blows to her head, face, legs, and abdomen, even smashing her head against a wall.
After her arrest, she was held for two days in the 15th Khordad Intelligence Detention Center and then transferred to the women’s ward of Evin Prison. Following the July 23, 2025 Israeli attack on Evin Prison, she and other detainees were moved to Qarchak Women’s Prison.
Once in Qarchak, Somayeh repeatedly sought medical treatment due to her deteriorating condition. Prison authorities dismissed her requests, accusing her of faking illness, and only gave her psychiatric pills unrelated to her condition, refusing to transfer her to a hospital. In September 2025, she suffered several seizures and episodes of unconsciousness. On September 16, 2025, she was finally transferred to a hospital, but by then her level of consciousness had dropped to 5, and she soon slipped into a coma. Tragically, on Thursday, September 24, 2025, Somayeh lost her life.
Somayeh had previously been arrested during the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising, but was released in February 2023 (Bahman 1401) after the so-called “amnesty” for prisoners of that movement. She was arrested again in 2023 (1402) on charges of “acting against national security” and was conditionally released in December 2024 (Azar 1403).
What happened to Somayeh is part of the silent killings of prisoners at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s executioners inside Iran’s prisons. Her death is yet another alarm bell about the dire conditions of political prisoners, where deprivation of medicine and medical care has become a systematic crime.
Free Them Now calls on all international trade unions and humanitarian organizations to condemn the killing of Somayeh Rashidi, a labor and political activist, and to pressure the International Labour Organization (ILO) and other international bodies to hold the Islamic Republic accountable. The leaders of the regime must be prosecuted in international courts for all their crimes. The Islamic Republic must be boycotted globally and expelled from organizations such as the ILO.
FREE THEM NOW
September 24, 2025