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RIGHTS-IRAN: Countering Coerced Confessions

Kimia Sanati

TEHRAN, Nov 2 2006 (IPS) - The release of Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoini, one of Iran’s more famous prisoners of conscience in recent years, was not accompanied by the usual round of televised confessions.

But then Khoini, a former reformist member of parliament (MP) who fought for improvement in jail conditions, was prepared for what lay ahead when he was arrested on Jun. 12 – at a demonstration organised by women’s rights groups demanding changes in the country’s laws, repressive and unfair to females.

“What I have said or the stances I have taken outside prison are criteria of credibility of what I say now. Any kind of written statement or film in contradiction to what I have said outside prison or my stances before being arrested are not to be trusted,” his wife quoted him as saying three days after his arrest.

Vigorous campaigning for his freedom and an open letter to authorities signed by 81 members of the sixth parliament (of which he had also been a member) was reported by various Internet portals.

Khoini, represented by Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace laureate, was finally released on Oct. 21. ‘’I am paying for my activities as a representative of the people in the parliament and a member of the student movement, for being persistent about prisoners’ conditions, for criticising,” he was quoted in the media as saying soon after his release.

“God willing, I will continue my social, human rights and political activities within a legal, peaceful and civil context. All accusations against me are unfounded as what I have done in the past has been related to my duties as a people’s representative or lawful activities after that. I hope the prosecution will stop by the order of a fair judge and I’ll be acquitted,” he was quoted saying.

Khoini spent 130 days in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, under the very conditions that he had opposed as a legislator from 2000 -2004. He was kept in ward 209 where other prisoners of conscience and political detainees are usually held and where Akbar Mohammadi, a student activist, lost his life during a hunger strike last August.

As a legislator, Khoini had visited ward 209 several times to investigate the conditions of political prisoners, journalists and students arrested in connection with the Tehran University ‘dormitory incident’ in June 1999.

After being disqualified from contesting for re-election in February 2004 by the conservative clerical body charged with supervising elections, Khoini continued to campaign for human rights and reforms in the judiciary and intelligence services and was secretary general of the activist Islamic Iranian Alumni Organisation when arrested.

“He was very active. He visited the ward several times and at the meeting of MPs with the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, he reported the conditions of the imprisoned students and named them all, telling about the injustice done to them,” Ahmad Batebi, himself a prisoner of conscience for nearly seven years and a resident of the ward when Khoini visited it as a people’s representative, wrote. He is still kept there.

“As a result of the activities of Mousavi Khoini and other reformist MPs, a number of unsupervised detention places that were run by various intelligence, judiciary and military bodies were closed down. People were sometimes held in these detention centres for months without anyone ever knowing about their whereabouts,” says an activist who spent some days in the ward.

“A couple of months ago when two reformist MPs visited Evin they were not allowed to see ward 209 where Mousavi Khoini was kept. It’s really ironical. He did so much to change the situation for the others there and he ended up there himself, in the worst conditions and under torture,” he said.

When Khoini’s father passed away he was not allowed to attend the funeral except for the 40th day ceremony when he was taken under heavy guard to the mosque. Khoini, who had visible bruises on his neck and head, took the chance to shout out and tell people that he was being tortured in prison.

“My hands and feet are cuffed and I’m kept in solitary confinement. They interrogate me several times a day and wake me up in the middle of the night for more interrogation. They want me to repent for my past activities and write to Ayatollah Khamenei (the Supreme Leader) to ask his pardon,” Advar News, the official site of the Alumni Organisation reported him as saying. The site, like hundreds of others with news and political content, is filtered in Iran.

“From the experience of others like Ali Afshari and Abbas Abdi, Mousavi Khoini had become well acquainted with the practice of taking fabricated interviews and letters of repentance from prisoners, so he resisted the pressures and didn’t fall in the trap. He warned his family and others about that immediately after he was arrested so that if he broke down, he wouldn’t harm others,” said the activist.

Afshari, a student activist now living in the United States, was made to appear in such a fabricated interview in early 2001. The interview, broadcast over national TV created a huge impact. But Afshari, who spent 328 days in solitary confinement, later wrote an open letter to Iran’s judiciary head describing the torture he had been put through to consent to the interview which, he had been told, was meant only for the interrogation team and some officials.

“After one month, I suddenly lost all my resistance and my character collapsed. I became like a child in a strange environment, dissociated from the past and like a person without any willpower. I turned into something like clay in the hands of my interrogators,” Afshari wrote in the letter to the chief justice.

While Khoini was in prison, another prisoner of conscience, Ramin Jahanbegloo, was released on bail without being officially charged or a trial date set. But a film of his confessions was shown to members of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council before his release and the possibility of airing the confessions on the national TV hinted at by a high ranking judiciary official.

Curiously enough, immediately after his release from prison, Jahanbegloo popped up at the offices of Iranian Students’ News Agency and said he wanted to give an interview regarding the reasons for his arrest.

In that interview, Jahanbegloo, who was accused of trying to launch a “velvet revolution” by Iran’s intelligence minister, said he accepted the charges of acting against Iran’s national security but had done it unknowingly. He also criticised the U.S. and said he had fallen in a trap set for him and other intellectuals by the U.S. and Israel. He took care to say he was not acting under pressure and described the spell in prison as quite comfortable.

“The very lengthy interview and writings that have appeared on his personal website, since his release from prison, have caused lots of suspicion to everyone. Some claim his recent writings are not in his normal style of writing and that the notions are strange, suggesting he was being dictated to. He is not talking to anyone or giving interviews – so it’s very difficult to know if he has genuinely changed or he is still under pressure,” the activist said.