After more than four months Maysoon Majidi is still in prison. The Kurdish-Iranian women’s rights activist, who arrived on the Calabrian coast together with 77 other migrants on December 31st, is accused of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. According to the Crotone prosecutor’s office, she would have held the role of “second captain” of the boat. The 27-year-old theater director is still in prison in Castrovillari on the basis of statements which have been denied by the complainants themselves as the result of “an incorrect translation”. Today in Calabria, one of the witnesses, who is in a refugee camp in Germany, should have explained to the Court that he had never accused Majidi. Yet, the hearing to obtain evidence in advance was postponed because the witness “was not found by the Italian financial police”, he tells Open his lawyer, Giancarlo Liberati. At the end of the evidentiary incident, which ended in a stalemate, the lawyer, however, showed how the witness – declared unavailable a few minutes earlier – could be contacted by telephone. «I made a video call in front of the activists present outside the Court, Hosenzadi who immediately answered me – explains the defense -. I don’t understand how it is possible that the investigators couldn’t find him.” His testimony, according to Liberati, “is decisive” since the man explained to the lawyer that he had never accused the twenty-eight year old.
«The Crotone prosecutor’s office has no evidence»
Once the statements of the two witnesses were removed (which «cannot be admitted» at a later stage since «the request for the evidentiary hearing was made by the prosecutor after two months») there would no longer be, according to the lawyer, any evidence against the Iranian activist. The investigators only have one video, found inside Majidi’s cell phone, where the same young woman communicates to her family the imminent landing on the Italian coasts on the last day of the year 2023. «Since she filmed it near the rudder – she explains Free yourself -, according to the prosecutor’s office, he is an accomplice to smuggling. However, I found another video on social media where the real perpetrators are seen, while Maysoon never appears – he continues -. And the fact that she climbed to the top of the boat to get some fresh air because she was sick due to her menstruation is not enough to accuse her of being a “smuggler”. The lawyer announced that he will present the request for house arrest for the activist: “We have already found a domicile and the prosecutor has already said that he will give a contrary opinion.”
Amnesty International’s note in Court in Crotone
On the occasion of the hearing before the Court of Crotone, the activists of the “Maysoon libera” committee and the 26 February network, born after the Cutro tragedy, organized a sit-in to ask for Majidi’s release. Also Amnesty International intervened with a statement: «We had the opportunity to document how, during the uprising of the “Woman Life Freedom” movement in 2022, the Iranian security forces used rape and other forms of sexual violence to intimidate and punish the people who descended on path to demonstrate, even as young as 12 years old.” The dramatic testimonies represent «only part of the repressive system implemented by the Iranian authorities, who use sexual violence to repress protests and dissent and to cling to power at all costs. The surviving people – continues the note signed by the general director of the organization in Italy – were left without the possibility of appealing or requesting compensation. For them – he underlines – only institutionalized impunity, silence and multiple physical and psychological scars that have left profound marks.”
In light of these elements and the activity carried out by Majidi in favor of the rights of women and the Kurdish minority, «Amnesty fears for her safety and asks that her fundamental rights be guaranteed and – it concludes – any necessary medical care» . The twenty-eight year old fled Iran after the Iranian moral police deemed her involved in organizing protests against the regime of the Ayatollahs of Tehran. She was doubly discriminated against as a woman and as a member of the Kurdish minority. Having fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, she Majidi understood that she would not have obtained a residence permit and that she would have been extradited to Iran. Therefore, she decides to take the Ionian route and escape by sea towards Italy together with her brother. Last April 23, her lawyer personally went to the prosecutor’s office in Crotone to look for the prosecutor, Rosaria Multari, to ask her (again) to question the accused. Her request rejected. «Maysoon is very ill, she has lost 14 kg. She still doesn’t understand today – Liberati underlines – what accusations have been made against her, she prefers to face prison or greater penalties in Iran where she knows her guilt.” She that she is that of being a woman and wanting to live her life as a free person.
