Islamic Iran Tortures Activists

(Direct link to video)

Anderson Cooper asked:

What the purpose of torture in Iran is, Mazahery told Cooper, "To get these prisoners to say things that the regime wants them to say. In Ahmad Batebi’s case for example they wanted him to say that the blood on the shirt that he held up was not really blood … that it was you know everything from tomato sauce to blood of a sheep or what have you."

That’s a great question and let me explain on this issue a little here. The purpose of torturing detainees in Islamic Iran is to extract confessions, to make them recant their beliefs in televised announcement and associate activists (or dissidents or in fact anyone that regime opposes to) in activities such as spying for foreign intelligence services, violating of national security laws, insulting sacred religious icons, spreading Satanists beliefs, propagation of apostasy and etc. It depends on the person’s activity in society, for instance in the case of Mr. Batebi, an student activists, of course a televised confession would help regime’s propaganda machine to fabricate stories about foreign threats and then suppress dissidents.

There is one more thing in the interview that needs to be addressed is about following comment:

Three years ago, when Iran's judiciary admitted that torture was used to extract confessions, they had promised it would stop. But human rights groups say it has not.

It was a rare case that Iranian judiciary arrested son of former Member of Parliament then the father in a public letter to President Khatami, implicated Judiciray in the torture and secret detention of the detainees. As obvious as it is, it was just a sudden conflict of interests, so the story broke out and Judiciary didn’t have much of choice but admitting the torture. In the judiciary of Islamic Iran, they use “Tazir” (an Arabic word) which is basically refers to punishment instead of “torture”.

Iranian judiciary authorities claim that they don’t torture in Iran and always keep speaking against the torture and have condemned the judicial system of Shah Era and the judicial system of the other countries for having torture in their systems. However, they mean that there is no act called "torture" in the prisons and interrogation centers of the regime but if you ask them what about "Tazir", they say it is not torture, and it is the ruling of the judicial officials. Bahman Aghai Diba, Ph.D. International Law

Hat tips: Stop torturing us


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