Iran, government crackdown on protesters continues unabated amid summary trials, executions and suspected suicides

ROME – According to Center for Human Rights (CHRI) in Iran, the first task of the UN fact-finding mission should be to investigate the suspicious deaths of some protesters arrested during the protests. These are people who died within days of being released. The government has rushed to label these deaths ‘suicides’, but there is actually a lot of evidence gathered by the CHRI which would demonstrate how these people died as a result of the torture they suffered in prison.

The story of Atefeh Na’ami. Found dead at the age of 37 in her apartment, the authorities put pen to paper that Atefeh, who was actively participating in the protests, committed suicide. But al Center for Human Rights his brother Mohammad, who lives in London, said that Atefeh had on his body the signs of torture suffered in prison. The police destroyed evidence of her death to validate the suicide hypothesis and the family was prevented from obtaining an independent autopsy. Atefeh had been identified as one of the protest leaders in Karaj. She had received threatening messages, so she had cameras installed in the house. On November 26, she was found lying on the sofa at home, in her underwear and with a gas pipe in her mouth. “The blanket they had thrown over her body was not hers, it was clear to us that they had taken her home after killing her,” her brother said. Police officers made the blanket disappear hours after her body was found on the grounds that it smelled bad. In reality, the goal was to hide evidence useful to demonstrate that Atefeh’s was not a suicide but a state assassination.

The story of Abbas Mansouri. Abbas Mansouri was a 19-year-old boy who died within a week of his release. A source told the CHRI who had signs of physical assault on his body. Authorities ordered a quick and secret funeral for the family. Mansouri was arrested during a protest in Shush, Khuzestan on November 16, 2022, on charges of distributing chocolate and leaflets with the slogan “Woman, life, freedom”. He was released on December 5 and was buried on December 11. “Like many boys his age, Abbas was participating in the protests when security officers took him away,” his uncle told the CHRI. “When he was released twenty days later, he looked like a prisoner, he barely spoke. He said he and other inmates were given pills and drug injections on the pretext that they would sleep better.”

The story of Yalda Aghafazli. Even around the death of Yalda Aghafazli there are a number of doubts. Yalda, 19, was arrested on October 26 while she was writing political slogans on a wall in Tehran and taken to Gharchak prison. In an audio file that she recorded after her release and which was later posted on social media, she said she was so badly beaten in detention that she went on hunger strike for a few days. “I screamed to the point I couldn’t speak anymore, but I have never regretted my actions,” she said on the recording. Five days after her release she was found dead in her room. Mohammad Shahriyari, the judge in charge of the criminal case in Tehran, wrote that Yalda died of an overdose of pills, but the family disputed this version and is still waiting for the result of an independent toxicological examination.

Letter from lawyers. Meanwhile, a group of forty-five jurists including lawyers and professors has published an open letter to the Iranian judiciary, asking for respect for the fundamental rights of the defendants. The letter stresses that the right to be assisted by a freely chosen lawyer is constitutionally guaranteed and its failure to apply represents a “legal dilemma”. During the protests of recent months, thousands of people have been arrested and forced to consult lawyers chosen from a list approved by the top Iranian judiciary. And in principle these are lawyers who have already collaborated with theestablishment of state security, or do not have sufficient resources to guarantee the defense of their customers, denounces the CHRI. According to estimates by the Rights Organization, at least forty-four lawyers have been arrested since September just because they tried to guarantee justice to the protesters arbitrarily arrested. Eighteen are still in custody while the others have been released on bail, but are at risk of being imprisoned again for their activity in defending justice.