– Shocking report on widespread torture, rape of women prisoners, judicial chaos in 19 prisons in Tehran
– Iranian Resistance urges international monitoring of human rights in Iran, immediate halt to EU’s Human Rights Dialogue policy
In a report to the Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Tehran’s Province’s Justice Department Chief Abbas Alizadeh revealed a glimpse of the clerical regime’s atrocities in 19 prisons and detention centers in Tehran, including the arbitrary, long-term detentions without trial, widespread torture, rape of female prisoners and judicial chaos.
– Shocking report on widespread torture, rape of women prisoners, judicial chaos in 19 prisons in Tehran
– Iranian Resistance urges international monitoring of human rights in Iran, immediate halt to EU’s Human Rights Dialogue policy
In a report to the Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Tehran’s Province’s Justice Department Chief Abbas Alizadeh revealed a glimpse of the clerical regime’s atrocities in 19 prisons and detention centers in Tehran, including the arbitrary, long-term detentions without trial, widespread torture, rape of female prisoners and judicial chaos.
The report was issued as feuding and confrontations among the regime’s internal factions and agencies continue to escalate.
It referred in part to the appalling conditions of prisoners and inhuman treatment of detainees in Tehran, army counter-intelligence, Ministry of Defense counter-intelligence, a.k.a 64, State Security Forces (SSF), Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the 160th precinct, Varamin, Shahriar and Shahr-e Ray undercover police departments, the anti-narcotic headquarters in Shahriar and Shahr-e Ray detention centers as well as Intelligence Ministry ward 209 in Evin Prison, Gohardasht (Rajai-Shahr) and ward three of Qezel Hessar prisons in Karaj (west of Tehran), Khoy and Varamin penitentiary, Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court and district seven Prosecutor’s Office.
According to this report, at least 1,400 prisons have remained in legal limbo in Gohardasht Prison. One prisoner, held there since 1988, has no record of committing any crime in his indictment and has not been sentenced yet. A secondary school girl and an invalid woman are also detained. A 73-year-old woman has been jailed for not being able to pay back a debt. In a move reminiscent of tribal punishments before laws were drafted, a woman has been arrested and imprisoned in place of her husband who is wanted for substance abuse. In Varamin detention center, a 13-year-old has been jailed for stealing a chicken.
The report also pointed to beatings and torture of prisoners to extract information. The accused, including women, were interrogated blindfolded. In many cases, women and girls have been raped by prison guards. In Gohardasht prison, a large number of women have committed suicide due to intolerable pressures and mistreatment by the guards.
In the Intelligence Ministry’s detention center, 28 people, arrested for having links to a satellite television station, remain in limbo. Most were illiterate.
The report also referred to many cases where the accused were denied the right to counsel. It also pointed to blatant discrimination in the prisons. In many detention centers, prisoners are held in areas with less than one square meter of space for months at a time.
The shocking revelations by Tehran’s Justice Department chief, who has an abysmal record in torture, murder and corruption himself, and is without doubt a criminal against humanity, shed light on only a glimpse of the atrocities perpetrated by the mullahs’ medieval regime. The report was rather selective and politically slanted. It failed, for example, to mention the dreadful condition of political prisoners and their prisons.
Underscoring that the report by one of the most senior officials of the Judiciary in the past 26 years undercut any justification to continue appeasing the clerical regime, Dr. Sanabargh Zahedi, Chairman of the Judicial Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, called for an immediate end to the EU’s "human rights dialogue" with the clerical regime, which he said had only resulted in exacerbating human rights abuses in Iran.
He also drew the attention of the UN Human Rights Commission, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the General Assembly and international human rights organs to the appalling state of prisons in Iran, and underlined the need for appointing a special rapporteur by the Human Rights Commission and the resumption of monitoring the situation of human rights in Iran.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
July 24, 2005
