One of the faces of Iran’s 2009 protests, Mehdi Karrubi, has undergone a second heart surgery to fix “an error” in the pacemaker recently put in his heart, his son confirmed on August 19.
Karrubi’s son, Mohammad-Hossein, told Radio Farda his father had had his second operation that day and was then sedated to relieve the “extreme pain.”
According to Mohammad-Hossein, the problem surfaced when complications caused by his father’s hunger strike made him return to the hospital.
“He had already had two angiography operations, and the pacemaker was put there since his heart rate remained at around 40. …If he had not gone to the hospital due to hunger strike, the physicians would not have realized the problem with his pacemaker and that could have caused a disaster”, Mr. Karrubi told Farda.
We hope the administration will keep their word, otherwise we are definitely in for a lot of troubleMohammad-Hossein Karrubi, Mehdi Karrubi's son on a promise made by Rouhani's administration to pull out security agents from his father's residence
Asked about his father’s demands for security officers to be removed from his residence, Mohammad-Hossein said the administration of President Hassan Rouhani and his Intelligence Ministry promised to send home the security personnel stationed outside Karrubi’s house.
“We hope the administration will keep their word, otherwise we are definitely in for a lot of trouble,” the younger Karrubi said.
Almost two weeks ago, Mehdi Karrubi’s family announced that after two angiography operations, the ailing opposition leader received a pacemaker. Following the surgery, Karrubi announced his hunger strike, demanding an open trial in a court of law and the removal of security agents from his residence.
He ended his strike after his son announced that promises had made by the health and intelligence officials upon they visited his father at the hospital.
The Health Minister Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi told the official IRNA news agency that Rouhani had ordered the hospital visit and that Karrubi's is in stable condition.
But the minister made no mention of any promises or concessions.
Karrubi, along with Mirhossein Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, have been under house arrest since February 2011 without any trial or a clear order by any Iranian authority. It is generally believed their detention was the decision of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mousavi and Karrubi were both presidential candidates running against Mahmud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections. Official results gave Ahmadinejad the victory, which enraged the public and led to months of unrest and the deaths of dozens of protesters.