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RIGHTS-IRAN: No Winners in False Confession Game

Analysis by Omid Memarian*

BERKELEY, California, Jul 19 2006 (IPS) - On Jul. 15, a conservative Iranian newspaper with strong ties to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry reported that Ramin Jahanbegoo, a prominent scholar, had confessed to having collaborated with foreigners to spark a “Velvet Revolution” in Iran.

Jahanbegoo was arrested 50 days ago and is currently being held in the notorious Evin prison north of Tehran. The publication “Resalat” (which means mission) stated that Jahanbeglou’s confession was recorded on video, which was later screened for members of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, a committee lead by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In the video, according to Resalat, Jahanbeglou describes his connections to certain individuals in Canada, as well as the European Union ambassador. It was through such connections that Jahanbeglou allegedly penetrated anti-revolutionary groups. Resalat claims that Jahanbeglou confessed he was on a mission to participate in a “Velvet Revolution” in Iran, similar to the bloodless uprising in Czechoslovakia that saw the overthrow of the communist government there.

In an interview with IPS, Hadi Ghaemi, an Iran expert at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said, “Forced confessions are a trademark of the Iranian judiciary. Many detainees who previously made public confessions have revealed that they were coerced to do so by their interrogators. There is absolutely no credibility to such confessions taken under duress.”

Ghaemin added, “If Mr. Jahanbeglou is paraded in front of television cameras to make confessions, it will be another sad chapter in the Iranian judiciary’s ill-treatment of activists and intellectuals. No one will be convinced by such duplicitous scenarios anymore.”

Dariush Zahedi, who teaches political economy at the University of California and was himself detained in Iran three years ago, agreed. “Extraction of confessions under pressure and duress is inappropriate, and will automatically appear suspect in eyes of impartial observers,” he told IPS.

Zahedi first met Jahanbeglou at Harvard University where they both studied. A far cry from the elite campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, today Jahanbeglou sits in the same prison where Zahedi was held on charges of espionage in 2003.

After four months, Zahedi was released on bail and was later put on trial and acquitted of all charges.

“At a time when our nation is in peril, Iranians inside and outside of the country should coalesce around the idea of dissuading foreign powers from attacking Iran,” Zahedi added. “Ramin’s arrest and imprisonment will serve to create an entirely unnecessary wedge between the Islamic Republic and expatriates at this highly crucial and sensitive juncture.”

The timing of Zahedi’s detention meant that he was dealt a more fortunate hand than many other political prisoners. He was arrested during the Mohammad Khatami presidency, and had the backing of a number of prominent reformers in the government. He was not forced to make a false confession.

And his imprisonment coincided with the murder of Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi in police custody, when the world’s attention was focused on how Iran treated its political prisoners, and the reformists were at the peak of their power and helped him to get out of jail.

Today, however, all the semi-democratic and non-democratic institutions in the Islamic Republic are controlled by conservatives and radical fundamentalists.

False confessions are intended to destroy the personality of political prisoners and intimidate prospective critics of the government. Typically, they include mention of shared activities and exchanges of money with foreign entities. In order to achieve these false confessions, political prisoners are usually subjected to long periods of time in solitary, broken up by interrogation and torture. The Iranian Judiciary Ministry and Intelligence Ministry have employed this tactic steadily since the Islamic Revolution.

Intelligence services regularly “leak” certain information to conservative newspapers such as Resalat. Three years ago, Ali Afshari, a student movement leader, was forced to make a false confession. He appeared on government television and said that all of his activities were connected to “foreign enemies”.

He apologised to the Supreme Leader and asked the Iranian people to forgive him. But a few months later, he vehemently denied this “confession”, explaining that both the judicial prosecutor and his interrogators had pressured him both psychologically and physically.

A year later, the same prosecutor arrested 20 journalists and bloggers, two women and 18 men, detaining them without charge. After two months, 16 were released. The four remaining journalists were sent to Evin prison. A month later, all four journalists were made to confess to their crimes on television, admitting that all of their journalistic activities were part of a plan constructed and paid for by “foreign enemies” who wanted to paint a dark picture of the revolutionary establishment.

These journalists, with the backing of foreigners, were allegedly aiming for no less than the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But five days later, two of them did something highly unusual and extremely risky. At a committee hearing, under the auspices of President Khatami, they testified that they were pressured into making false confessions.

Human rights activists and organisations around the world have condemned the Judiciary Ministry tactic of using the “false confession” to intimidate and silence Iran’s civil society and academics. Last week, the European Union issued a separate statement expressing deep concerns over Jahanbeglou’s arrest.

Iranians around the world are standing up for the rights of political prisoners and calling attention to the farce of televised forced confessions. Last weekend, in response to the growing arrests of reformist activists, thousands of Iranians answered exiled rights activist Akbar Ganji’s call for a worldwide symbolic hunger strike, inside and outside the country.

Thousands of Iranians launched a three-day symbolic hunger strike in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York City. The political prisoners receiving the most attention at this time are Ramin Jahanbaglou, Mansor Osanlou and Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoeini.

In Tehran, they are calling this new tactic “the confession game”. Fear is spread far and wide amongst all the players in the game. Just one year since President Ahmadinejad took office, the voice of civil society is in peril.

Students, labour and women’s rights activists, civil society activists and academics are growing more fearful. They say that either their message is being suppressed or their words are twisted into lies.

It is crucial that Iranians express the diversity of opinion within the country, showing the distinctions between the Iranian government and its people. This is a moment, many say, when the world needs to hear from those in Iranian society calling for civil rights and freedom of expression.

*Omid Memarian is an Iranian journalist and civil society activist. He has won several awards, including Human Rights Watch’s highest honour in 2005, the Human Rights Defender Award. Omid is currently a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.