Source:

August 13, 2010

The wife of the jailed head of the Tehran bus service union says another year has been added to his prison sentence, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

Mansur Osanlu is currently serving a five-year prison term given to him three years ago by a revolutionary court in Karaj that found him guilty of “acting against national security.”

Osanlu’s wife, Parvane Osanlu, told Radio Farda on August 12 that his lawyers will file his case with an appeals court on August 14 to challenge the additional year being added to his sentence.

“Osanlu was outraged [by the decision] and said he has not done anything to deserve such an extension of his sentence,” his wife said. “He is waiting for the lawyers to transfer his case to the appeals court.”

Parvane told Radio Farda that the new charge against her husband is “propaganda against the government.” She said she believes the extension of his prison sentence is illegal.

“Osanlu has not done anything in the past three years in prison to be held on charges of propaganda against the government; he only defended his rights as a prisoner, in response to which the prison authorities brought this charge against him,” she said.

Parvane Osanlu told Radio Farda she had heard rumors that the Labor Ministry had informed the International Labor Organization that the judiciary had agreed to release her husband.

She said the extension of his sentence “has shocked us all when we were counting the days until his release.”

Osanlu was arrested in July 2007. He is serving his sentence in the Rajae Shahr prison camp in Karaj, 20 kilometers outside Tehran.

He had been detained several times in 2005-2007 before his arrest.