Iranian human rights activist Soheila Hejab suffering from Covid has been transferred to hospital following cardiac arrest after days of neglect in a prison in Iran.

According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Hejab was taken to a critical care unit (CCU) at a Kermanshah hospital on Thursday after she passed out following days of struggle with a severe case of Covid-19 along with 13 other inmates in her ward.

Hejab was sentenced to 18 years in July 2020 for "propaganda against the regime", "forming a women's rights group" and "calling for a referendum to change the Constitution", by notorious judge Mohammad Moghiseh.

She was first arrested in Shiraz in January 2018, and after five months at Adel-Abad Prison in the same city, Hejab who hails from a Kurdish family from Kermanshah was pardoned and freed. She was violently arrested again in June 2019 by IRGC intelligence, taken to Evin prison, and later released on a large bail.

In May 2020 she was arrested again by Revolutionary Guards' Intelligence Organization and was taken to Qarchak Prison for women in the south of the capital. She was then transferred to Kermansah prison in early January.

Earlier in the year, Iranian poet Baktash Abtin died of Covid-19 complications following a medically induced coma after he was denied timely treatment by officials at Evin prison, Tehran.