NCRI – The website of Britain’s Daily Mail has reported on the campaign by members of the Anglo-Iranian community to highlight the appalling human rights situation in Iran under the mullahs’ regime.
The following is the text of the report published on Monday by the Mail Online:
Mail Online
‘Their voices are trapped behind prison walls’: Protesters launch three-day ‘hunger strike’ outside Downing Street in anger over mass executions in Iran
• Iranian protesters launched three-day ‘hunger strike’ outside Downing St
• Urging government to condemn hangings of up to 30 prisoners this week
• Relatives called to Iranian prison to say last goodbye were instead told to go straight to the morgue when they arrived, say reports
• Comes on the anniversary of executions of some 30,000 prisoners in 1988
By IMOGEN CALDERWOOD FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 8 August 2016
Furious protesters launched a three-day ‘hunger strike’ outside Downing Street following the mass execution of prisoners in Iran.
Campaigners said they are refusing to eat in a desperate attempt to bring those they brand the ‘perpetrators’ of the killings to justice.
They are urging the UK government and the UN to condemn hanging in the country, which carries out the second highest number of executions in the world.
Protester Ahmad Ebrahimi, 55, told MailOnline: ‘This is very important for me. I was a political prisoner for 10 years and I know how it feels for the victims and their families.
‘Their voices can’t get out from behind the walls of the prison. We’re here for them, it’s our responsibility.’
The electrical engineer added: ‘Nobody has taken action against this crime against humanity.’
Business graduate Naghmeh Rajabi, 29, said: ‘I’m doing this in solidarity with the political prisoners in Iran.
‘I’m a victim of the Iranian regime as well, I’ve had two aunts executed. I think it’s my responsibility not just as an Iranian but as a human being to be the voice of those who are tortured.’
It comes after up to 30 Sunni prisoners from Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, were executed on Tuesday.
The day before, guards raided up a number of death row prisoners.
‘Their hands and feet were chained, mouths shut with tape and heads covered with plastic bags,’ reported the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
They were taken to an undisclosed location, and on Tuesday morning their families received phone calls warning them to be at the prison before 3pm to say their last goodbyes to their loved ones.
But some arrived at the prison only to be told their relatives were already dead, according to human rights groups.
‘We got on the road, but they called us on our way and told us not to go to prison, and to go to the morgue in Kahrizak instead,’ a family member of executed 28-year-old Shahram Ahmadi told the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
‘They called again to say that we should go directly to Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. They had executed him before we arrived. We were only able to get the body.’
Mr Ahmadi was convicted for ‘enmity against God’ and sentenced to death in a trial that lasted only a few minutes and which Amnesty described as ‘grossly unfair’.
Tuesday’s executions came on the anniversary of the 1988 massacre of up to 30,000 prisoners across the country – many political prisoners.
Protester Zohreh Moalemi, 56, added: ‘We are here asking for action to be taken against this brutality, injustice and this crime against humanity. Enough is enough. It is something that has to be stopped.’
The fast in Whitehall has also attracted the attention of Conservative MP Dr Matthew Offord.
‘The mass execution of Sunni political prisoners is deeply disturbing and has rightly been condemned,’ he said in a statement sent to the NCRI.
‘We will continue to stand with you all and highlight your concerns in parliament.’
Iran has not provided much explanation for Tuesday’s executions.
The intelligence ministry issued a statement on Wednesday saying members of a Takfiri-Salafish group named ‘Monotheism and Jihad’ had been arrested and some sentenced to death.
‘These people had committed murder… killed women and children, caused destructions and acted against the security and killed Sunni religious leaders in some Kurdish regions,’ IRIB television quoted Prosecutor General Mohammad Javad Montazeri as saying.
The claims, however, could not be verified.
Although Iranian state television broadcast what it claimed were the confessions of some members of the Sunni Muslim group before the executions, activists and human rights groups claim the prisoners had been tortured.
It is estimated that some 2,400 people, including juveniles and women, have been executed in Iran in the past three years.
