Parts from the book:
Over l,200 political prisoners were executed, some of whom were said to have
received only prison sentences.
Thousands of others remained in prison, among them an unknown number of
prisoners of conscience. Torture of political prisoners remained widespread and
suspected political opponents of the government were sentenced to imprisonment
or execution after unfair trials. Flogging was frequently used as punishment
for a variety of offenses, sometimes in addition to other punishments. Some
convicted of repeated theft suffered amputation, There were at least 142
executions for criminal offenses such as murder, rape and drug-trafficking.
Many executions were carried out in public and announced in the official press.
Little progress appeared to have been made in redressing long-standing
structural weaknesses in the administration of justice and the protection of
prisoners from torture, ill-treatment and summary execution. The absence of
adequate safe-guards facilitated the stifling of peaceful political opposition
through indefinite detention without charge or trial of the government's
political opponents, among them prisoners of conscience.
Widespread secret executions were alleged throughout the year. In February
death sentence were reported to have been imposed on 67 political prisoners
held in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj and in Evin Prison in Tehran. Official
statements confirmed some executions of government opponents: for example, in
May the executions of Anoushirvan Lotfi, Hojat Mohammed Pour and Hojatollah
Ma'boudi in Evin Prison were announced in the official press. The three had
reportedly been convicted of armed opposition to the government but no
information was made available about the procedures followed at their trials,
or whether they had benefited from safeguards such as representation by a
lawyer and the right to appeal against the death sentence.
In August Iran and Iraq agreed to a cease fire after a war which had lasted
over eight years. In the months which followed there was a massive wave of
executions of political prisoners. One of the events which appears to have
triggered the killing of many real or aliased opponents of the government was
an armed incursion from Iraq into western Iran by the National Liberation Army
(NLA), a force formed by the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) the
Baghdad based opposition group. At least 15 alleged PMOI sympathizers or
collaborators were hanged in public in towns in western Iran; soon after the
incursion their bodies were left hanging for several hours and photographs of
the executions appeared in the official press.
Executions then spread to the prisons, where some political prisoners had
been engaged in protests which coincided with the incursion. Victims included
members and supporters of the PMOI and political prisoners from other
opposition groups.
Between the end of July and the end of December at least 1,200 political
prisoners were executed. The true figure was probably considerably higher.
Following the NLA incursion the policy of granting amnesties to political
prisoners came under severe attack in the Iranian press. Newspapers alleged
that former political prisoners who had been among the 3,000
"reformed" or "repentant" prisoners to benefit from
amnesties to mark the ninth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in February
had participated in the incursion.
Reports of executions came from all parts of the country and included many
victims who could have played no part in the July incursion. A large number of
those executed had been imprisoned for several years or had been detained
without trial.
Some had been sentenced to short prison terms in 1980 and 1981 for offenses
such as distributing leaflets and newspapers, or taking part in political
demonstrations, and had remained in detention after the completion of their
sentences. Among them was an unknown number of prisoners of conscience. Others
who had been released were reportedly rearrested and executed. In most cases it
was not known whether there were further judicial proceedings before the
execution took place.
Evaluation of the extent of the executions was made more difficult because
of a ban on family visits to political prisoners which began in August, but
information from a broad spectrum of opposition groups and from relatives of
execution victims, statements from the authorities, and eye-witness reports
confirmed that hundreds of political executions took place.
In one case a medical doctor held in Evin Prison since 1983, apparently
because of his political activities as a member of the Tudeh Party, was
executed secretly in the prison some time between May - the last time he
received a visit from his family - and November, when the family were informed
of his execution. He had been tried in 1984 but he had never been informed of
the length of his sentence.
There were many reports of desperate relatives touring prisons, government
offices and cemeteries searching for news of their family members. One woman
described how, while looking for her husband's body, among recently-made
unmarked graves in Jadeh Khavaran Cemetery in Tehran, she had dug up the corpse
of an execution victim with her bare hands.
In August the Turkish press reported an incident in which 40 out of a group
of 58 Iranian asylum-seekers handed over by the Turkish authorities to the
Iranian authorities were executed in Orumieh on the Iranian side of the border.
In November it was reported that about 12 mullahs associated with Ayatollah
Hussein Ali Montazeri, then the designated successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, had been executed, apparently as a result of factional conflicts
within the Iranian leadership.
There were also conflicting statements from the authorities about the
executions.
In August Ayatollah Moussavi Ardebili, Chief Justice and President of the
Supreme Judicial Council apparently called for the summary execution of
government opponents. In October there were reports that Ayatollah Montazeri
had criticized the executions. Other officials denied that large numbers of
executions were taking place and referred to reports of mass executions as
Western or opposition propaganda.
In May at least nine prominent supporters of the Association for the Defense
of Freedom and Sovereignty of the Iranian Nation, an organization closely
associated with Dr. Mehdi Bazargan who leads the Freedom Movement, the only
legal opposition movement in Iran, were detained following the circulation of
an open letter from Dr. Bazargan calling for an end to the Iran-Iraq war.
Hussein Shah-Hossaini, Abdel-Karim Hakimi and Ali Ardalan, Head of the
Executive Committee of the Association, were released in October, but six
others remained in detention without charge or trial at the end of the year,
months after a cease fire had been declared.
An unknown number of relatives of political suspects were imprisoned to
bring pressure on these suspects, who in some cases had left the country, to
give themselves up. Relatives of young men who had evaded military service were
also detained and effectively held hostage by the authorities in similar way.
Many other prisoners of conscience remained in prison, and political detention
continued to be used solely on grounds of suspicion without charge, trial or
supervision by a judicial authority. Some prisoners were held in indefinite
incommunicado detention.
In February Davoud Karimi, a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary
Komiteh, announced that there were 9,000 members of opposition groups and about
40,000 drug addicts and drug-traffickers imprisoned in Iran. In May Keyhan news
paper reported the arrest of 200 members of the People's Feda'i Organization
(Majority) and the Tudeh Party; further detentions of members of these and
other left-wing groups were alleged.
In July large-scale arrests of PMOI sympathizers were reported to have
followed the NLA incursion. Reports of the detention of supporters of Kurdish
opposition groups such as Komala were confirmed in the official press. Many of
those detained had allegedly been involved in planning acts of terrorism or
sabotage.
Political prisoners were tried and sentenced, sometimes to death, by courts
which failed to comply with international standards for a fair trial.
Defendants were not permitted legal representation nor allowed to call
witnesses in their defense.
Convictions were often based on confessions which, in some cases, were
reportedly extracted under torture during indefinite periods of incommunicado
pre-trial detention.
Allegations of torture of uncharged political detainees were received from
all over Iran. In February hunger-strikes led by women political prisoners were
reported to have taken place in protest against, among other things, persistent
torture and ill-treatment. A woman political prisoner held in Evin Prison since
1984 was reported to have been beaten and denied essential medical treatment,
which she had previously been receiving, because of her participation in these
protests. Methods of torture alleged to have been used included repeated
whipping with cables, particularly on the soles of the feet, and suspension by
the wrists with one arm passed over the shoulder so that the wrists met behind
the back. Both men and women detainees were reportedly subjected to sexual
abuse and mock execution. One former prisoner described how he was detained by
Revolutionary Guards and taken to Ettelaat Prison in Zahedan. There he was tied
to a bed, lashed with cables and subjected to mock execution. In the same
prison he claims to have seen Revolutionary Guards beating a young girl in
front of her parents to force them to make confessions, and to have seen a
woman beaten in front of her husband to force a confession from him. Judicial
punishment which constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment were
extremely wide spread. Large numbers of people were flogged as punishment for a
wide range of offenses. At least 22 people convicted of repeated theft suffered
amputation, usually of the four fingers of the right hand. In April an
18-year-old youth was sentenced to amputation of four fingers from his right
hand, 40 lashes, three years' imprisonment and two years' intimal exile,
reportedly after being convicted of charges of 25 counts of theft and of offending
against social and moral codes.
Scores of people were executed after being convicted of murder or
drug-trafficking.
In July Morteza Eshraqi, the Tehran Revolutionary Prosecutor announced that
a mandatory death sentence would be imposed on anyone found in possession of
more than 30 grams of heroin, or more than five kilograms of opium.
Convicted drug-traffickers and murderers were often hanged in public, in some
cases after being flogged. Four people were stoned to death after conviction of
"moral offenses". Those under age 18 were not exempt from execution:
in February a death sentence was passed on a 18-year-old youth found guilty of
murder, and in April a 17-year-old convicted of raping a six-year-old boy was
hanged in public.
In November Iranian diplomats in Turkey were discovered with a kidnapped
Iranian refugee bound and gagged in the boot of their car. They were apparently
attempting to abduct him and return him to Iran.
In March the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution
which "expressed again its deep concern about the numerous and detailed
allegation of grave human rights violations" in Iran. The Special
Representative on the situation of human right in the Islamic Republic of Iran
submitted his interim report to the UN General Assembly in October. His report
concluded: "it appears that the persistence of alleged violations of
human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in particular the recent reports
of a renewed wave of executions in the period from July to September 1988,
suffices to justify international concern".
In February Amnesty International submitted a written statement on human
rights in Iran to the UN Commission on Human Rights; in May it published Iran: Persistent Violations of Human Rights.
Amnesty International repeatedly urged the Iranian authorities to stop
executions and expressed concern on behalf of many individuals believed to be
at risk of execution. It repeatedly sought information from the authorities
about charges against individuals sentenced to death or executed and inquired
about trial procedures followed in cases involving the application of the death
penalty. These specific inquiries were not answered. In December it published
details of hundreds of political executions which had taken place in preceding
months and repeated its call for an end to such executions.
Amnesty International urged an end to cruel punishments such as
amputation and flogging and pressed for an end to torture, for the release of
all prisoners of conscience, and for all other political prisoners to be tried
fairly and within a reasonable time. Amnesty International also proposed, on
several occasions, that a delegation should visit Iran to discuss human rights
concerns with the government but did not receive a response from the
authorities.