Ashraf attacked – Statement 99
NCRI – The suppressive Iraqi forces on Thursday afternoon beat and torture the 36 members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran for more than two hours before boarding them to vans for their forcible transfer from Khalis city prison to Baghdad.
Initially the suppressive Iraqi forces raided the room in Khalis prison in which the hostages were held. The Iraqi forces attacked the hostages beating them on their faces, heads and chests. They were dragged violently on the ground handcuffed and dumped into the vans while they were shouting for justice. They had blood on their clothes. The brutal attack today took place while they were on their 66th day of hunger strike.
Iraqi forces took Mehdi Zare to a separate room brutally torturing him, kicking and punching him in the head, face and eyes. They brook an arm of Ahmad Tajgardoon. Hossein Fili and Rahman Heydari went unconscious due to the beatings. It is reported that the hostages transferred to Estekhbarat (military intelligence) in Baghdad.
Hours after the attack, the Iranian regime’s Fars News Agency associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps quoted “an Iraqi security source” that the 36 were transferred to Baghdad for “trial of their illegal presence in Iraq,” adding that “the detainees were transferred to Baghdad in three vans under very heavy security.”
Simultaneously, in Tehran, Larijani, the Iranian regime’s parliament speaker, in a joint news conference with the Iraqi parliament speaker “expressed hope that the two countries’ cooperation will help improve the situation in the region so that the terrorists like hypocrites (the term used by the Iranian regime to refer to the PMOI) could not have a presence in the region.” (State- run news agency IRNA, October 1, 2009)
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
October 1, 2009
