It's the morning of Thursday, 28 November 2024. The state wants to hang Masoud Rahimi bin Mehrzad tomorrow morning. But his father hasn’t been able to visit him yet.
Masoud’s father lives in a remote part of Iran and is in poor health. He applied for a visa to enter Singapore immediately after he heard the news of Masoud’s execution notice, but it took time for the visa to come through—precious days that Masoud and his family can ill afford. Given the distance that will need to be travelled, and all the logistics involved, it doesn’t look like his father can make it to Singapore in time for Masoud’s final visit this afternoon. There are also worries about the toll this would take on him. “I don’t want my father to come all this way in this condition, maybe see Masoud for half an hour at best if he makes it in time, and then the next time he sees his son, it’s his dead body,” says Mahnaz, Masoud’s younger sister.
Masoud’s sisters have been begging prison officers to facilitate a video call for Masoud’s father, just so they can see each other one last time. The prison has so far refused to do so.
I met Masoud’s father in 2018. I can no longer recall how we were connected, but I remember that first meeting was in a bustling café in a mall on Orchard Road. I remember him as quite a big man, but he spoke softly and had a gentle smile.
His son had been sentenced to death, he told me. Masoud had only been 20 years old at the time of arrest. He’d been completing his National Service, had had to return to Singapore from Dubai to serve. His father hadn’t wanted him to go, had worried that Masoud was too young to leave home for military service. But of all the things he’d worried about his son facing, he’d never imagined this. At points in our conversations, he had to stop talking to dab at his eyes. There was nothing I could say when that sturdy man was reduced to tears for his boy.
Masoud and I are around the same age, so I remember his father joking that I could be his daughter too. We met up a few more times during his trip to Singapore from Iran that year, but didn’t really know each other that well. It didn’t matter; the fact that I’d listened to his story, that I cared about Masoud, meant that he cared about me too.
Masoud is fiercely loved. But time is running out and his father is not going to make it to Singapore in time to say goodbye. A video call is the least that can be done for father and son. It's not an outrageous or extravagant request. The prison has facilitated Zoom sessions for multiple death row prisoners to attend court hearings from Changi Prison. This is not an issue of lacking resources or facilities; this is a matter of will and of compassion.
Masoud’s family and the Transformative Justice Collective are appealing to the public to support their request for the prison to grant Masoud a final video call with his father. You can email Tan Bin Kiat, the superintendent of A1 at Changi Prison, at tan_bin_kiat@pris.gov.sg. If you’d like to copy in a few more prison officers, you can find the list of officers in the Cluster A Management Office here.
This isn’t about any of our views on the death penalty. This is about compassion and kindness. Regardless what any of us think about the death penalty, surely it isn’t too much to say that a father should be allowed a chance to see his son—a boy who's been kept away from him since he was 20 years old—one last time.