In their reports, foreign journalists described the visit as total fabrication by the regime. The French News Agency AFP wrote, "The prison officials did not allow us to visit ward 209 which is believed that the political prisoners are held." On September 12 the LCI (a French T.V. network) reported, "The T.V. cameras only were allowed to capture a part of the prison. In a ward which the opponents of the regime are held, the eye witnesses unanimously believe, that there are not any [fancy] tile work and painful cries are heard. In 2003, the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, Zahra Kazemi was murdered under interrogations for taking pictures of the same prison."
Such show is run when in recent weeks pressure on political prisoners has been mounting in Iran. On September 11, Messrs Afshin Baimani and Javid Tehrani were severely beaten by the prison wardens in the notorious Gohardasht Prison in western Tehran.
Separately, Mr. Abdolreza Rajabi, another political prisoner held in Diesel-Abad Prison in the western city of Kermanshah is denied urgent medical attention due to the injuries inflicted by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) agents upon his arrest in 2001. The prison guards have refused to allow the 65-year-old Khalil Shalchi who has spent more than seven years in prison, receiving proper medical treatment.
In the past 27 years, the ruling clerical dictatorship has never opened its prison gates to international fact-finding missions. Evin Prison housed thousands of political prisoners who were tortured and later executed. A significant number of the 30,000 political prisoners massacred in 1988 were detained there. No outside observer has ever been allowed to see any parts of the dungeons.
The Iranian Resistance calls on all international human rights organizations to condemn such absurd shows which will cause more physical and psychological pressure on the political prisoners and reiterated that if the mullahs were true to their words, they should have allowed an independent international delegation, comprised of United Nations rapporteurs, human rights specialists, representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross and representatives of the Iranian Resistance, to visit Evin and other prisons – something which the Iranian Resistance has called for repeatedly.
The clerical regime’s atrocities, including 120,000 political executions and the assassination of the innocent in and out of Iran, are considered as crimes against humanity, for which the regime’s leaders must be prosecuted by an international tribunal.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
September 14, 2007