![\"iran](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/iran-savak-parviz-sabeti-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Four-minute read<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n On October 6, a U.S. federal judge allowed<\/a> a civil torture case against Parviz Sabeti the former head of the Shah\u2019s secret police, SAVAK\u2019s Third Directorate (Internal Security) and one of the most powerful security officials under Iran\u2019s last monarchy, to move forward.<\/p>\n Three former political prisoners allege that Sabeti directed or oversaw their detention and torture in the 1970s. Judge Gregory Presnell rejected his effort to end the case on statute-of-limitations grounds, allowing litigation over the underlying allegations to continue.<\/p>\n The importance of the case extends beyond what happened five decades ago. It revives a question directly relevant to Iran\u2019s current opposition politics: how completely has the monarchist movement broken with the authoritarian system from which it derives its political identity?<\/p>\n The brutality of the Shah\u2019s secret police, SAVAK, was neither revolutionary propaganda nor a historical allegation invented after the monarchy\u2019s collapse. It was documented while Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was still firmly in power. Throughout the 1970s, Amnesty International and other human rights observers exposed<\/a> a machinery of repression in which political opponents were subjected to arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention without fair trial, systematic torture and, in some cases, extrajudicial killing. Behind the walls of Evin Prison and the notorious Joint Anti-Sabotage Committee detention centre in Tehran, prisoners endured savage beatings, electric shocks, whipping with cables, burns, and confinement in specially constructed torture devices, including the infamous heated metal cage known as the \u201chot box\u201d. One particularly chilling example came in April 1975, when nine political prisoners were shot dead by security personnel. The authorities claimed they had been killed while attempting to escape, a version subsequently contradicted by testimony concerning their deliberate execution.<\/p>\n Ex-SAVAK Chief Parviz Sabeti Sued in U.S. for Brutal #Torture<\/a> Under Shah\u2019s Regimehttps:\/\/t.co\/wLrPeVGIdd<\/a><\/p>\n — NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) February 27, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nSAVAK\u2019s Record Is Not a Historical Invention<\/h2>\n
\n