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Iran Accused of Deliberate Denial of Health Care to Prisoners
(AFP-Asharq Al-Awsat-UK) Rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Iran of deliberately denying life-saving medical care to prisoners, saying it had confirmed 96 cases in 30 prisons in 18 provinces since 2010 of detainees dying after a lack of treatment, and the true number of cases is likely to be higher. The report comes after several high-profile cases this year alone of prisoners who died in custody. "The Iranian authorities' chilling disregard for human life has effectively turned Iran's prisons into a waiting room of death for ill prisoners," said Diana Eltahawy, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International. A large proportion of the deaths took place in northwestern Iran where many inmates are from the Kurdish and Azerbaijani minorities and in southeastern Iran where prisoners mostly belong to the Baluch minority.