NCRI – Yesterday, the mullahs’ inhuman regime in a disgusting stage-managed show, took some foreign and domestic reporters into the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran. The show was reminiscent of similar stage-managed shows by the henchman of Evin, Asadollah Lajevardi, in the midst of mass executions of the 1980s.
The act is aimed at diverting international attention from the increasing number of executions and the dreadful conditions of Iranian prisons especially after the execution of Mr. Hojjat Zamani, a member of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, in February.
In their reports, foreign journalists described the stage-managed visit as fabricated and reiterated that the prison official did not allow them to visit the men’s wards. The women’s ward which was visited did not include prisoners with political convictions. The women were not allowed to speak in private with reporters.
The regime has staged this ridiculous show while in a report last July about 19 prisons and detention centers in Tehran, the province’s former Justice Department Chief Abbas Alizadeh admitted that arbitrary, long-term detentions without trial, widespread torture, rape of female prisoners were rampant and a state of judicial chaos persisted. The report pointed to beatings and torture of prisoners to extract information. It added that the prisoners were interrogated while blindfolded. In many cases, women and girls were raped by prison guards. He admitted that in many of these detention centers, prisoners were detained in a space of less than one square meter for several months.
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. Canadian-Iranian photojournalist, Zahra Kazemi, was tortured, raped, and murdered in Evin.
Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said in this regard, ” 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.”
He urged the upcoming session of the UN Human Rights Council to force the religious fascism to accept an international fact-finding mission. He added, “This regime should provide a complete list of all executions, secret prisons and mass graves of those massacred in 1988 and identify those involved in the brutal and arbitrary executions.”
“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,” the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee Chair underscored.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
June 14, 2006
