Beatings, torture and threats of execution to political prisoners

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

Behrooz Javid-Tehrani has written a letter of complaint about the beatings, torture and threats of execution while under interrogation. In the letter he has specified that during the inquisition-style question and answer sessions in Evin prison's ward 209 (the solitary ward famous for it's horrors) the ribs on the right side of his body were broken and he sustained long-term head injuries. He said: "With this letter I am lodging a formal complaint against my interrogators."

Javid-Tehran who is presently being detained at Rejaiishahr prison in the Tehran suburb of Karadj, has been suffering from dizziness and incremental loss of vision due to the head injury. The prison doctor has also attributed Javid-Tehrani's headaches and blurred vision to those very blows to his head. READ MORE

It is important to mention that at present his case has been referred to the medical examiner and with corroborating evidence to his file which also contains an X-ray of his ribs, taken in the prison infirmary, has implicated the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and his team of interrogators.

Strangely his interrogators, during the course of the grilling were trying to force him to admit to being a sympathizer of the Mojehedeen Khalq (also known as MEK, MKO or National Council of Resistance).

Javid-Tehrani was arrested on May 24th of this year, at his house in Tehran and has spent more than 3 months in ward 209 of Evin prison. Branch 26 of the revolutionary court sentenced him to 74 lashes and 7 years in prison, to be spent, for now, at Rejaiishahr.

At the same time, Valiollah Fayz-Mahdavi, a member of the Mojahedeen Khalq, was directly threatened with execution by the assistant public prosecutor, named Alizadeh. Alizadeh who on Wednesday, October 5th, visited the Rejaiishahr prisons, in response to Fayz-Mahdavi's request to settle his case, announced to him that: "We will definitely execute you and this will happen very soon. Don't go thinking that at present because we're under international pressure, we would forgo the opportunity to execute you; we're still ballsy enough to carry out this verdict, if we want to."