Iranian Resistance calls for halt to mullahs’ meddling in Iraq, closure of torture chambers and freedom of two abducted PMOI members
The discovery of a new Iraqi Interior Ministry secret detention center in Baghdad controlled by agents of the clerical regime in Iran has shocked the international community. Based on news reports, more than 625 prisoners were held in inhumane conditions in the prison, located adjacent to the Interior Ministry. The victims had been whipped with electric cables, received electric shock, and had their fingernails pulled out in barbaric tortures. All of them suffered from starvation.
On November 16, another torture center linked to the Interior Ministry was discovered in the Al-Jaderiya district of Baghdad. The facility was found to have been run by an agent of the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The official reportedly fled to Iran after news of the scandal broke.
Two members of the People’s Mojahedin (PMOI), Hossein Pouyan and Mohammad Ali Zahedi, were kidnapped in Baghdad’s Karrada Street four and a half months ago. At the time, the PMOI provided details of the abduction, carried out by agents of the mullahs’ regime in the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The two hostages were initially taken to the Interior Ministry building and then transferred to an unknown location in two white patrol SUVs leaving the Ministry’s rear entrance. The PMOI said that the eight-man group that had kidnapped Messrs. Pouyan and Zahedi was a patrol unit from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The two Mojahedin, both protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, are still in captivity and under torture. Mr. Pouyan has Italian refugee status as well.
The atrocities perpetrated by the Iranian regime in prisons of Iraq give a glimpse of the treatment of detainees in Iran’s prisons and torture centers.
The Iranian Resistance calls on the international community to halt the Iranian regime’s meddling in Iraq, and condemn the regime’s atrocities in Iraqi prisons. The export of terrorism and fundamentalism and the establishment of a puppet regime in Iraq is a necessary part of the mullahs’ strategy to save their repressive grip on power.
The Iranian Resistance also urges the Iraqi government, the Multi-National Force – Iraq, and all human rights organizations to help save the lives of the two Mojahedin who were kidnapped 132 days ago by agents of the mullahs’ regime in the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
December 13, 2005
