Who Are Iran’s Political Prisoners? – Roxana Saberi
Roxana Saberi
Oct. 6, 2011
She was happy I was released but wondered how her case differed from mine and why she had to remain in prison. “What kind of justice system condemned [Roxana] to such punishment,” Ms. Rouhi asked, “and which justice freed her at such speed?”
I asked myself the same question. Why was I released after 100 days, having appealed an eight-year prison sentence for a trumped-up charge of espionage? What is clear is that as a foreign citizen, I was fortunate to receive international support, while the plights of other innocent prisoners were less known outside Iran.
Last month, two American men incarcerated in Iran on accusations of espionage and crossing the border illegally—charges they contested—were freed after being sentenced to eight years in prison. Their release is welcome news and cause for relief.
At least 28 of Iran’s prisoners of conscience are journalists, according to the media rights group Reporters Without Borders, which ranks Iran the third largest jail for journalists in the world after Eritrea and China. In addition, six Iranian filmmakers were recently arrested for allegedly cooperating with BBC Persian. (The station insists no one in Iran works for it.)
Well-known attorneys such as Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been sentenced to six years in prison, also are locked up in Iran. Last month, Abdolfattah Soltani, who like Ms. Sotoudeh defended many political prisoners, was arrested for the third time. I first heard of his courage from my cellmates in Tehran’s Evin Prison. I requested that he represent me, but the prosecutor threatened me against retaining “a human rights lawyer.”
Mr. Soltani was arrested while he prepared to defend several Baha’is detained for providing higher education to other Baha’is barred from university in Iran because of their religion. He was also an attorney for my two Baha’i cellmates, Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet, who are each serving 20-year prison sentences for various unsubstantiated charges including espionage.
Most recently, the headlines have focused on Youcef Naderkhani, a Christian convert from Islam who faces possible execution after refusing to renounce his faith.
Many of Iran’s prisoners of conscience have suffered torture—both physical and psychological. It is common for them to be held in solitary confinement for months, even years. They often lack adequate access to their families and attorneys and go through sham trials. Some are coerced to give false confessions and inform on their friends.
If detainees are lucky, their captors offer them release on bail, but the amount is typically exorbitant, and prisoners who can post it tend to live in fear that they could be sent back to jail any day. At the same time, a rising number of executions has made Iran the world’s largest executioner on a per capita basis. According to Amnesty International, in 2010, at least 23 Iranian prisoners convicted of politically motivated offenses were executed.
The Iranian regime needs to address human rights violations instead of denying their existence. If Tehran has nothing to hide, it would permit the recently appointed United Nations special rapporteur on human rights to enter the country. Tehran should also grant access to several other U.N. special experts who have been blocked from visiting since 2005.
U.N. officials—particularly Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay—plus member states and other individuals must place constant pressure on Tehran just as they have in cases such as mine. This will bring attention and justice to the real heroes, the everyday Iranians in prison for pursuing universal human rights and demanding respect for human dignity.
Ms. Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist detained in Iran’s Evin Prison in 2009, is the author of “Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran” (HarperCollins, 2010).
UN Human Rights Expert Delivers Interim Report
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran Ahmed Shaheed
19 October 2011 –
There were also reports of capital punishment in juvenile cases, and the use of the death penalty for cases that do not meet the level of serious crimes by international standards, he said.
“In some cases, elements of Iran’s penal code and legal practices amount to contravention of those international laws it acceded to,” said Mr. Shaheed.
He said Iran’s record seems to have gained particular attention because of the country’s “lack of substantive cooperation with the UN human rights system and because of the existence of frequent reports of suppression of those self-correcting mechanisms that deprive Iranians from freely seeking redress or reform within the parameters of their human rights.”
The “self-correction mechanisms” that are suppressed include free and fair elections, denial of freedom of expression and assembly, allegations of depravation of the right to education, harassment and intimidation of religious and ethnic minorities, human rights defenders and civil society and religious actors.
He urged Iranian authorities to provide adequate medical access to the well-known cleric Ayatollah Kazemeini-Boroujerdi, and to consider his immediate release.
He also called upon Tehran to consider releasing all individuals listed in his report, including political leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who consider themselves detainees of the Government, human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, student and women’s rights activist Bahareh Hedayat, student activist Abdollah Momeni, and Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani.
He also urged Iran to cooperate with him as he carries out his mandate. “In the absence of this, however, my course of action will be to continue to obtain information through interaction with Iranians both in the region and in other parts of the world, as well as with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other parts of the UN system.”
Mr. Shaheed said he had been informed of the arrests and prosecution of at least 42 lawyers for their attempts to provide legal counsel. Charges brought against the majority of them include acting against national security; participating in illegal gatherings; insulting the Supreme Leader; and spreading propaganda against the regime.
He took notice of the positive steps taken by the Iranian authorities, including the Government’s recent decision to release between 60 and 100 prisoners, many of whom had been arrested as a result of their participation in events related to the 2009 presidential elections.
via UN
Human Rights Watch – Issues Regarding IRI
Submitted by Human Rights Watch to the UN Human Rights Committee on the occasion of its Pre-Sessional Review of Iran
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Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 22, 2011.© 2011 Reuters
This memorandum provides an overview of Human Rights Watch’s main concerns with respect to the human rights crisis in Iran, submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (“the Committee”) in advance of its pre-sessional review of Iran in 2011. We hope it will inform the Committee’s preparation for its review of the Iranian government’s compliance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“the Covenant”).
It has been 17 years since Iran last submitted its State Report to the Committee. During this time, the government has engaged in systematic violations of the Covenant, including extensive restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association, and the widespread use torture, ill-treatment, and unfair trials of political detainees. The number of executions, including those of juvenile offenders, has steadily risen in recent years. The government intensified its targeting of human rights defenders following the disputed presidential election of June 2009. Pressures on civil society groups have increased sharply during President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration, and Iran continues to discriminate against religious, ethnic, and other minorities both in law and practice.
Iransubmitted its latest report to the Committee a few months after the June 2009 presidential election and the ensuing violent crackdown against largely peaceful demonstrators and opposition activists. Violence initiated by security forces, including the basij militia affiliated with official security forces, led to the killings of dozens of demonstrators. Authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained thousands of demonstrators and opposition figures in the months after the election. Several detainees died at Kahrizak detention facility in Tehran after being subjected to torture and ill-treatment. Public street protests all but ceased by early 2010 as a consequence of the government’s crackdown, but resumed in February and March 2011 when thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to show their support for pro-democracy protests in neighboring countries and protest the arrest and detention of opposition leaders. The authorities’ violent response led to at least three deaths and hundreds of arrests. The Ministry of Interior continues to refuse to issue permits for peaceful rallies and demonstrations.
As in years past, the government, including the judiciary, has failed to hold accountable officials responsible for committing serious human rights violations. There have been no comprehensive or transparent investigations into government repression, including the killings of demonstrators and custodial deaths of detainees. Although several security personnel were tried in closed military courts for the deaths of detainees at Kahrizak, no high-level authority has yet been charged, let alone convicted, for these crimes. At the same time, the judiciary prosecuted hundreds of demonstrators, civil society activists, and members of opposition parties, some of whom were paraded on national television during several show trials on vague national security-related charges (including “propaganda against the regime”), and sentenced many to lengthy prison terms and, in some cases, to death.
Notwithstanding the numerous and serious abuses committed by state officials, Iran’s State Report does not begin to adequately address allegations concerning violation of core civil and political rights under the Covenant. There are frequently references to legal provisions in Iran’s Constitution and criminal and civil codes but no discussion of how the authorities are implementing or complying with these provisions. Rulings that may or may not address the specific issue in question are simply listed. And the portions of the report that address specific articles of the Covenant contain glaring omissions and inaccuracies, such as providing no information on Iran’s abusive revolutionary courts, which seriously distorts the current situation of human rights in the country.
Among the most serious problems with Iran’s 2009 State Report are the following:
- The report devotes little attention to the death penalty under Article 6 (right to life), even though Iran is believed to have executed 388 people in 2008, and is second only to China in the number of executions carried out annually;
- The section on torture and ill-treatment (Article 7) recounts provisions in Iranian law that prohibit the use of torture and references several cases where government officials were apparently convicted of torture, but nowhere addressing credible reports regarding the authorities’ systematic use of torture in Iran’s detention facilities;
- The section on Iran’s compliance with the prohibition on arbitrary arrest and detention (Article 9) provides some references to rulings presumably related to convictions of government officials who violated these rights, but it contains no discussion of arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention carried out by Iran’s security and intelligence forces;
- There is significant discussion on the treatment of detainees and prisoners (Article 10), but it largely describes the systems and programs that ostensibly have been put into place. The report does not address serious problems incurred by detainees and prisoners, particularly those accused of national security-related crimes or convicted by revolutionary courts;
- The section on due process and fair trials (Article 14) fails to provide any relevant information regarding the workings of the revolutionary courts, where the state prosecutes most political dissidents and commits systematic and gross violations of the right to a fair trial;
- The report’s discussion of the right to freedom of expression (Article 19) does not address the government’s severe restrictions on peaceful dissent by using both criminal law and repressive practices;
- Regarding the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of association (Articles 21 and 22), the report fails to acknowledge the ways in which the government systematically prevents civil society organizations – including student, women’s, labor, journalist, legal, and human rights groups – from meeting or conducting their activities.
In short, the Committee’s concluding observations with regard to Iran’s report 17 years ago unfortunately remain equally applicable today: Iran’s report provides “virtually no information about factors and difficulties impeding the application of the Covenant.”
