October 3rd, 2010

The 1980 Qarna Massacre

On September 2, 1980, the village of Qarna witnessed a massacre committed by Revolutionary Guards. Behdad Bordbar, an Iranian Kurd living in exile in Scandinavia, asked some of his fellow-Kurdish refugees about their recollections of this now little-remembered act. The translation is taken from Radio Zamaneh, http://zamaaneh.com/humanrights/2010/09/post_703.html. A video of one of his interviewees speaking in Kurdish is posted here.

Depiction of the Qarna Massacre taken from the Komala website (http://komalaorg.org/Direje_F.aspx?Cor=Witar&Jimare=66).

“We spent several days searching for corpses for several days. They removed the corpses from the village and threw them into the surrounding valleys. They brought the corpses to the wilderness to make it as if they had been killed in hit and run battles.

“Their faces could not be made out. We determined the victims’ identities from their clothes. When we pulled on a hand or parts of the body to carry it, it would separate from the body. The villagers were terrified and were in a state of shock for several months.”

This was part of what Soltan-Khosravi and Omar Karimi, two residents of Qarna, said. Qarna is a Kurdish village in the Naqadeh district in the province of Western Azerbaijan, seven kilometers South-West of Naqadeh.

This village was attacked by armed agents of Gholam-Reza Hasani, the Friday Imam of Urmia on 11 Shahrivar 1358. In the course of this attack, 42 women,men, children, infants, and old peoople from the village were killed. This disaster occurred in the disturbed atmosphere following the revolution when armed Kurdish groups were fighting the government’s forces, but according to the existing information and eye-witnesses’ explanations, the villagers of Qarna were unarmed and were not members of the opposition parties.

Thirty-one years after the tragedy of the massacre and forced migragion of the Kurdish villagers have passed and these stories have only been passed around by word of mouth and the limited number of witnesses of these crimes are passing away.

In order to keep alive the memory of the victims of these crimes, I sat down to interview eye witnesses to set down what they saw.

Omar Karimi, how old were you at the time.

I am a villager. Villagers do not have proper birth certificates and at that time I had just returned from military service and so I was probably about twenty three.

What was the population of Qarna?

I cannot say. We were eighty families. We numbered ourselves by the number of animals we had.

What was the background of the attack on the village? Why did they attack your village?

At the time, the Kurdish parties were active in the area and there were nationalist tensions. For example, the members of the local komites were Turkish and had differences with the Kurds, but the population of our village played no role in the conflicts.

I had left with my brother and another family member to bring straw. We were going along the road when we saw Khosro Pahlavan, who was speeding alongside us in a jeep heading for Naqadeh.

Khosro Pahlavan before the revolution was a strongman and performed, pulling apart chains. After the revolution he became a Revolutionary Guard. When I saw him, I figured that something was up. That day, my tractor’s compressor had broken and it took a very long time to get my work done. We returned to the village and saw the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij heading for our village in their cars along with Khosro Pahlavan.

The sound of gunshots was heard from afar. Haji Sharif, who lived in our village caught up with me and said, “Omar, I think these cars have gone to destroy our village.” I told him, “Haji, whoever has a gun must defend himself.”

So the people of Qarna were armed?

No, maybe four or five families had a gun. In Kurdestan in those days, a few people had weapons to defend themselves. We were not armed. We were not at war with anyone. The Revolutionary Guards had come to our village before. They cursed at the villagers and dishonored them but the people were not worried about them. We did not think that something like this would happen. We had received a message from the chief of the Naqadeh komite four days before this event. It was a writ of safety in which it was written that they had the right to pass through to the city. It was also written that no difficulties would arise with the village.

What did the letter say?

I don’t know. They had given it to the village chief and the members of the village council, the village council, who were its elders. The people were happy about it. We did not expect anyone to trouble us.

When did you return to the village?

At noon, my brother said that we should return to the village. Only the sound of gunshots could be heard from afar.

How did the attackers behave?

When the attackers came to Qarna, the village’s cleric, Mullah Mahmud, went, Koran in hand, and said, “By God, we are not armed and had no role in the attack on the Do Ab Police Station. Have mercy on us, we’re Muslims too.” They apparently released him twice but in the end they decapitated him. Later, when we searched the corpses, we found all the corpses except for his head. The people said that they brought it to the city. Within the village, the people hid themselves in their houses. The attackers would knock on doors and say, “Let the men come out so that the chief of the komiteh could speak with them in the coffeehouse.” They had killed several people behind the coffeehouse and thrown their corpses into a water canal. They chased the people from their houses and later killed them. In one field alone, they killed the members of a family in one place and left their bodies there. In one place, they killed nine shepherds and members of the village, who were busy at work. They wounded two children alongside them, one was five and the other was twelve and left them there.

I saw a villager along the road. He had a five year old child with him who had been wounded. He asked me to bring the boy to his father. After that, I went to my uncle’s house. About fifty people were sitting there. They were terrified and weeping and wailing.

So the attacking forces did not stay there?

No. When they did their job, they evacuated the area. They were there for a few hours, maybe four hours. After that, we began t search t find the corpses. They had martyred three brothers behind our house, Kak Rahman Khosravi, Kak Abu-Bakr Khosravi, and Kak Abdollah. All three had married and had a wife and children. Several people saw their killing and were extremely terrified and hid themselves in an orchard which was full of trees.

No one knew how many had been killed and who had been able to flee. The first person they martyred was one Amu Rahman. When we found his corpse, there was a plant in his hands. He was clearly at work. After him, they killed two shepherds named Ebrahim Rasuli and Jaafar Ahmadpur, who were shepherds in the village. They did not even spare their flocks and beasts; they shot their dogs, sheep, mules, and whatever else was by the road.

Then, when a number of them who were in the process of cleaning chickpeas in a field heard the shooting, they thought that there was an armed conflict and that they would surely be safe inside the village. They were just returning to the village when they were ambushed by the attackers.

A child named Hamzeh was wounded. Although he was wounded, he headed for the village. Sayyed Fattah saw the child and wanted to bring him to his father. His mother, who saw him drenched in blood, began to scream when the Revolutionary Guards arrived and killed her, too. When her husband saw that they had martyred his wife, he left his house. As soon as he left, they martyred him as well. They also martyred the fourteen year old son of this family. They also martyred Sayyed Fattah, who had brought the wounded child home.

Did anyone take any pictures so that there would be a document of the crimes committed?

No one in the village has a camera. We were very terrified and no one thought about this. I asked around a great deal. The people are still afraid to speak up about this. But apparently a few people who had left the village took some pictures some days later.

Has anyone ever asked to interview you?

By God, you are the first person who has sought me out, me and Kak Soltan, who is living in Sweden and with whom you’ve spoken and one other person who has settled in Norway and who was then ten years old are the only witnesses of this event. Media connected with the parties in Kurdistan have made a few reports on this matter, but their information is somewhat confused. This story is being forgotten and no one has done anything about it. A book has apparently been written on it, but it is hard to obtain.

You mean the book by Mr. Behzad Khokhhali? I examined it. It is mostly a collection of articles from the newspapers of the time. Ettelaat and Keyhan wrote articles about it.

Yes. But the problem is that it only mentions two villages, Qarna and Qalatan, while I, being a resident of that region, can bear witness that several other villages had also been attacked, but they are not written about anywhere or recorded. Our few documents are disappearing.

I heard that in the village Sarv-e Kani, they gathered the people into the mosque and killed eighteen people on the spot. In the village Chaghal-e Mostafa, they killed forty-eight people and threw their corpses into a stream. When the stream reached its end and was too little, the people found the bullet-riddled bodies.

In the villages Vilan Charakh and Karijeye Shakakan, the government forces killed several people. IN the village of Mohammad Shah, the Revlutionary Guards cut open ths bellies of pregnant women and took out the children. They burned the arable land of the village Kaniye Mam Si Deh and shot the defenseless people and their flocks and killed them.

Many villages were victims of crimes which occurred in the mountainous regions and because they were isolated and so no news came out about them. The people were oppressed and the defenseless villages were not able to defend themselves. Of course, that was during wartime. The Kurdish parties also oppressed the Turks. Komeleh and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan were fighting, but we are talking about farmers and shepherds. They were not political people, but were minding their own business.

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September 21st, 2010

The Endless “Tawana”1 Mousavi Case

Reza Valizadeh, Taraneh Mousavi, Layla Malemmohammadi

On May 19, 2010, Omid Habibinia, a self-described media analyst who played a key role in publicizing the Taraneh Mousavi story, denounced it for the hoax that it is. My first introduction to this event was a comment posted by one Mina dated June 14, 2010 on my article decrying Amnesty

Omid Habibinia

International’s embrace of the hoax. She said, “Recently Habibinia changed his mind and promised to write the truth.” Of course, the clear implication is that Habibinia had before this time been consciously lying about this story. The post contained a link to the first article translated here, “Taraneh Mousavi has No Existence in Reality,” published May 19, 2010 on a website initiated by Habibinia call Azadi-e Bayan/Iran’s Freedom of Expression.

This article features an interview with an alleged investigator of the Taraneh Mousavi story living in Iran. This story is problematic from a number of perspectives. No background is provided on the interviewer. Moreover, it is hard to understand why this interviewer would not have communicated his doubts about the story as they arose, rather than waiting for over a year.

Moreover, the “interviewee” says more than Habibinia seems to realize. For instance, he openly says that it was clear that the story was baseless from the start and that the story should never have been believed.

A second article published August 26, 2010, later presents a history of the hoax and the rise of Habibinia’s doubts about it which would seem to be irreconcilable with the first one. In this second story, Habibinia heard at the tragic fate of Taraneh Mousavi from Leyla Malekmohammadi and Reza Valizadeh, sources inside Iran, and earnestly tried to find reliable sources for it, all in vain. In other words, in this story, unlike the previous one, Habibinia portrays himself as doing due diligence as a journalist. The doubts are his doubts, as he relates in the first paragraph, and not a revelation from outside.

Habibinia poses as a victim of Malekmohammadi’s manipulations and lies. Indeed, he said that he had “serious doubts” about the story when Malekmohammadi was still in Iran, a mere four months into the story and the better part of a year before he decided to walk away from it. According to this version, even after it was becoming clear to him that they were using him, he still tried to connect his two sources with the BBC, Voice of America, and other sources with which he was well-connected. Even after they left Iran, he allowed this hoax to be perpetrated until the two rumor-mongers could find asylum. Presumably he would have allowed this hoax to have been propagated indefinitely otherwise. This tying of the story to the fate of these refugees is particularly hard to sustain given these two do not appear in Habibinia’s first explanation of what he was abandoning the story.

The Twitter record left by Habibinia on the story is revealing. His first twitter was July 14, 2009 and the twitter confirming her “murder” appeared two days later.

But his complicity in promoting this hoax, which he tries to cover up, particularly in the second version of events, is revealed in a tweet dated July 16, in which says that he had been responsible for an “interview” with a so-called friend of Taraneh. This interview receives no mention in either of his versions of the events and, indeed, its existence is implicitly denied in his first version, where his “interviewee” writes, “Can it be that for this entire year, no sign of her family, her friends, or her acquaintances has been found?” Even if we suppose that this is a genuine interviewee and not a sock puppet, one would imagine the interviewer would have objected that there had indeed been contact with at least one of Taraneh’s friends.

On August 14, a full month after Habibinia “broke” the story, he posted an article on France, for which he worked, saying that “Shahrzad, 26, is a photographer” had tried to call Taraneh, whom he’d lost in a tumultuous demonstration but who did not answer her mobile. The next day, he heard that she had been arrested there. There are a number of problems with this report. To start with, this would be a second “friend” of Taraneh’s, whose existence Habibinia would later deny. Moreover, this “friend” describes the 7 Tir demonstration at which Taraneh was arrested as “reformists … celebrating the anniversary of Hafte Tir,” the anniversary of the bombing of the Islamic Republican Party’s headquarters, apparently by the People’s Mojahedin, “which caused the police to attack us.” Of course, what was really going on was a meeting featuring Ali-Reza Beheshti, the son of the IRP’s founder, marking the anniversary of his father’s death in that explosion. It is hard to imagine how anyone following events in Iran making such a gross error, let alone an eye-witness.

But eventually, Habibinia’s interest in the topic flagged. On August 30, two weeks after his previous tweet on the subject, he gave one last tweet to defend the story (promoting an article on the subject posted on Iranian Leftists) and then moved on, although Habibinia’s comrade bloggers, particularly Malekmohammadi’s Zirzamin, continued posting lugubrious articles on Taraneh. It is hard to imagine that this was the result of “severe doubts”. The story had taken on a life of its own, sprouting like kudzu all over the blogosphere, chiefly among credulous Iranians and Western Islamophobes.

The Western press gave the Taraneh Mousavi story wide berth. It maintained a lively existence in the Iranian blogosphere and is widely believed by Iranians, but the better Iranian blogs studiously ignored it. This is not sufficient for someone with greater ambitions than spending his career in an Iranian ghetto. We conclude that Habibinia walked away from this hoax he launched when it became clear that it was not gaining traction in the international community and was even becoming an embarrassment. Alternately, he had had a political falling out with, say, his two Iranian comrades in rumor-mongering and decided to hang the story around them to discredit them, or simply that these two were simply spinning the story out of control until it collapsed due to the pile of irreconcilable lies being piled on top of it..

We now turn to the manifesto written by the two sources of the story who continue to promulgate it.

Layla Malekmohammadi (web page in Persian) and Reza Valizadeh declare bluntly that they have no intention of answering any of the questions raised by Habibinia. They “refuse to be players in a dangerous game which some who have personal political and ideological interests have set up.” They “shall not fall into the swamp of sensationalism [!] or be present in the dubious games of others, even as spectators.” They repeatedly declare that those who doubt the story have unspecified hidden personal motivations for denying the story and that these doubters “stand in the same ranks as Taranehs’ rapists” and “directly take their stand with the interrogators and security officials of the Islamic Republic to arrest and bring further pressure on the witnesses of this incident with their posturing of professionalism in a dubious and demagogic game with lying claims of enlightenment.” Again, at the end of their manifesto, they say that those who deny the hoax benefit from the support of the Iranian government, insinuating that Habibinia has sold out to the ruling regime, although there is not a scintilla of evidence for this. Moreover, those who perpetuate this hoax also benefit from powerful political forces and are sustained by an Iranian community which is ready to believe the worst about the Iranian government.

The one brand-new detail the authors add to the actual story of Taraneh Mousavi is that the famous picture they had of Taraneh was obtained from a computer of hers to which they, in an unclear fashion, obtained access after her disappearance. It is extremely odd that such a privacy-conscious family would allow a stranger to examine their missing daughter’s computer. Moreover, it is standard operating procedure for the regime to raid the home of arrestees and seize such items as computers. Finally, Azar, a writer for Leftist Iranians, answered skeptics who had complained that all they had to go on to verify Taraneh Mousavi’s existence was a single picture that she had access to many more pictures which she would reveal when she deemed fit. This offer is irreconcilable with the two authors’ claim.

The two authors promise that friends and family of Taraneh would come forward and break their silence. They forget that two such “friends” were supposed to have already done just that, as we have mentioned. Their apparent ignorance of these “friends’” existence is further evidence that Habibinia was consciously participating in the hoax. Moreover, it is hard to imagine why these “friends” would find the current political atmosphere, in which the regime is tightening its grip over society, having driven the opposition off the streets, more congenial for speaking out than a year ago, when the Green Movement was at the height of its powers.

The two authors believe that the Committee to Investigate the Condition of the Victims of the Post-Electoral Events had launched its own investigation into the Taraneh Mousavi case and confirmed this story on its own. More is the pity that it has not seen fit to publish its results after a full year.

The one blow the authors of this manifesto landed on Habibinia is their answer to his insinuation that they had concocted this story in order to get political asylum. They convincingly pointed out that they had a strong enough case to get asylum, and certainly a much stronger case than that of many Iranian refugees.

Reza Valizadeh and Leila Malekmohammadi’s story ended on a note which made clear their general intellectual dishonesty. They invited those who object to their story to produce the living Taraneh Mousavi. But, of course, Habibinai’s whole point is that she never existed in the first place. They call on them to produce documents to prove their case. But, of course, one cannot prove a negative. It is precisely the perpetrators of this hoax who refuse to provide documentation.

These two authors go so far as to say, “If only Taraneh Mousavi did not have an existence in reality and the world was not a scene of such horror. Then we, too, would be fine and our minds at rest and we would smilingly close our eyes to this night of murder.” This is a direct affront to Iranians who suffered at the hands of the Iranian regime. Simply put, the authors are saying that if the Taraneh Mousavi story proves false, they could be at peace with the current situation in Iran.

Appendix: Full Translations of the Two Articles by Habibinia and a Partial Summary of the Article by MalekMohammadi and Valizadeh

Taraneh Mousavi Has No Existence in Reality

Azadiye Bayan: For nearly a year after the publication of conflicting rumors and report about the arrest, rape, and, finally, murder of Taraneh Mousavi, an informed source now says that this story was false and forged from the start.

Azadiye Bayan dropping the full names and relevant information about some of the people involved in this affair or who claimed to have information about its details, produces the publishable part of an interview with an informed source done in Tehran about this matter.

AB: When did you learn of the Taraneh Mousavi Affair?

I heard of it from some of my colleagues, but no matter how much I tried to follow this affair, I got nowhere in particular and so I saw only two alternative explanations for its being spread: Personal advantage or the intervention of the intelligence establishment.

AB: What did you do to follow it?

I pursued it from several directions and tried to find traces of someone, [her] family, her friends, her coworkers, or even residents of the village in which it was claimed that she had been buried using all the information existing on the blogs Iranian-e Chap, Cherik Online, and Zirzamin, but I obtained no evidence that such an individual ever existed in reality.2

AB: Say something about your efforts.

I contacted sources which these three blogs introduced. There was no sign of Taraneh Mousavi’s house, no one by the name of Mousavi lived in the house which one of these sources had claimed was her former house. It was like an Indian film. It kept changing and became more and more painful until every line of pursuit led to a dead end. For instance, in a late stage of these blogs, there was mention of how the family moved from its residence to the north and that later, Taraneh’s father passed away.

Aside from the fact that not a single person was found who said he or she was Taraneh Mousavi’s friend, the girl in the picture and the murder victim in this story, but the person who claimed to have witnessed the affair kept contracting himself and, indeed, he was at work on the day he claimed to have witnessed it, i.e., 7 Tir.3

At a later stage, I inquired in all the schools for beauty, sewing, cooking, etc. and not a single one of their owners confirmed the existence of such an individual. Interestingly, one of the blog sources said that this picture had been taken from the owner of a beauty school near the Hoseiniyeh Ershad and another claimed that it had been “lifted” from her home!

AB: But Mehdi Karoubi and, later, Moreza Alviri announced time and again that Taraneh Mousavi did exist in reality and that the affair was true.

Mehdi Karoubi was deceived by these same sources, while if there was any other evidence of her existence available, either he or Alviri would have presented it. I suspect that after the Saideh Pouraqayi affair, it was hard for Karoubi to admit that he had been fooled yet again.4

AB: But then in your opinion, Karoubi stood by this affair even though he knew that it was a lie?

I do not know what evidence Karoubi has, but while this affair even reached the American Senate,5 and the international media,6 wasn’t there a single person to be found to say that Taraneh Mousavi is her friend, her niece, her neighbor, her classmate, etc.? And then there are the personal interests of those who made various claims in this regard. Karoubi does not have an intelligence service to be aware of the truth or falsehood of everything, while there are hundreds of cases of rape, sexual harassment, and torture in the prisons which Karoubi and his comrades are investigating and had real evidence and witnesses for. A few lying cases used in asylum cases are lost in the shuffle7 and, naturally, the fact that there exists rape, kidnapping, or even murder by the security forces, the Basij, or the police results in these cases, too, being mixed in among the true cases!8

AB: So how is it that the regime has not pressured Karoubi to expose the original sources of the Taraneh Mousavi story?

I have no information about this, but there could be two reasons for it.9 One is the abundance of true complaints and cases of rape and torture in the detention centers. The other is the possibility for taking advantage of the spread of these rumors to strike still greater fear and terror in the hearts of the people, especially women and young girls.10

AB: But the Islamic Republic’s Voice and Visage made that stupid program to deny this affair, which in itself resulted in strengthening the sense that it was true.

This report was one of the strange events for which I have yet to find an explanation. For example, in the case of Saideh Pouraqayi, while it resorted to those same falsifications,11 it was not as ridiculous as the report concerning the Taraneh Mousavi affair, which, moreover, it had left a visible trace in, i.e., using people from a family which was close to Taeb and whom Mehdi Karoubi knew.

AB: Finally, Jaras reported that Taeb, the former commander of the Basij, had probably raped Taraneh Mousavi.

The commander of the Basij has apparently raped everyone: Taraneh Mousavi, Bahareh Maqami, etc.! Although there is no doubt that these two have an existence in reality, there is no sign of Taraneh Mousavi. Bahareh Maqami, who says that she has taken asylum in Berlin, has emailed from Arizona in the United States, which is where Jaras is based, and no further sign of her has appeared and her blog, too, has suddenly been hacked by the Cyber Army.

AB: What other evidence do you have that the Taraneh Mousavi affair is false?

In addition to reasons which cannot be raised, a very intricate story has been created and spread throughout the world, but what is the evidence for it? Only one picture! Can it be that for this entire year, no sign of her family, her friends, or her acquaintances has been found? Is there any other blog but these three (Cherik-e Online, Zirzamin, and Iranian-e Chap), two of which are in fact one, to be found which claims that it has seen Taraneh Mousavi in that basement, or that it knows her at all?12

Has any evidence or reason been presented except for scattered words by people who have no evidence at hand?13

Aside from all this, when we look at the story, we see so many contradictions and falsehoods that it is nearly impossible for it to be true.14

Yet, the reality of rape, kidnapping of women and girls in demonstrations, and even murders after their rapes by the military and security forces is completely likely and has occurred repeatedly, but in this particular case, it must be said that Taraneh Mousavi has no existence in reality and that this story is false from the start.

The Truth about how the Pseudo-story about Taraneh Mousavi Was Published

Finally, after nearly a hear of silence, I can now write about my serious doubts about the Taraneh Mousavi story and explain why I was silent [about it] for a year.

Last year, many reporters and human rights activists gathering news, videos, and pictures of demonstrations and sending them to various media outlets, including France 24, for which I was working, were in touch with me. On 21 Tir [July 12], one of these reporters, whom I will cal L M, informed me that a girl named Taraneh Mousavi had disappeared and it was feared that she had been gang-raped.

LM said that her source had, as it happened, been arrested as he was leaving the Qoba Mosque along with Taraneh Mousavi and was in a detention center.

Two days later, she sent me a picture of Taraneh Mousavi and more details, including her telephone number.

In the meantime, a group of leftist friends, most of whom were inside the country, set up a blog called Iranian-e Chap (Leftist Iranians). I asked one of them, whose pen-name was Azar, to call the phone number which had been sent me.

The next day, Azar reported that this telephone number did not exist in the network or was temporarily out of service. But she published in this blog the same story which I had sent her.

And so, for the first time, the Iranian-e Chap blog reported the alleged rape of Taraneh Mousavi. This was word for word the same report, apart from some changes, which had been published hours before by the blog Zeerzamin, which belonged to L. M., but since no one knew about this blog, the news was published as having come from Iranian-e Chap, and I posted it on Facebook and Twitter and placed a link about it on Balatarin. As a result, I was considered the only actual person who was the source of this story.

Since I trusted L. M., I imagined that this story might be true and so I spoke with her for hours about the details of the matter.

The next day, another blog called Cherik Online published other details about Taraneh Mousavi’s alleged death. This blog belonged to R. V., whom L.M. described as her cultural correspondent and an employee of Voice and Visage.

Several days later, L. M. reported that Taraneh Mousavi had been killed and her body had been burned. No other news source existed to confirm the truth of this event. The two sources who anonymously published the two blogs plus Iranian-e Chap were the only sources spreading this story. Ultimately, the story had been given me by L. M. and I sent it to Azar, who was following it, and she published it and this was later copied, with some changes in detail, in the two other blogs. [sic]

Just then, I asked L. M. for further information, including the address and telephone number of Taraneh Mousavi’s home. She claimed that R. V. had lifted a picture of Taraneh Mousavi from there, but just then, she reported that Taraneh Mousavi’s family had gone to the north and her father had passed away.

After I insisted, L. M. announced that a neighborhood near Azadi Street was where Taraneh Mousavi lived. I immediately reported this to Azar and she went there and asked the local people for the Mousavi family. She reported that no one knew of such a family.

At this time, I was referred to as the one who was defending this rumor in Balatarin and other websites. Things reaching the point where all the links referring to Taraneh Mousavi were removed, since Balatarin’s editor believed that this story was a fraud.

Two weeks later, after my efforts to find a trace of Taraneh Mousavi had come up with nothing, friends in Tehran, one after the other, announced that there was neither mention of her in the schools nor had anyone else seen her in that detention center.

At that point, I raised my doubts with L. M. She said that she had gone directly to the Karoubi’s investigatory committee and placed evidence connected with this matter at its disposal. I asked her to tell me the name of the person who had been arrested along with Taraneh Mousavi and she gave me the name. When I spoke to her some time later, I noted that she kept contradicting herself and was openly disinclined to speaking about that day. But the gravest doubt with which I was faced arose when two different sources investigated the individual in question and it was determined that he was at work on 7 Tir and that at the time when L. M. said he was in detention, he was busily at work.

I now had serious doubts about this story’s veracity. Above all, I had no sign of her family, friends, or relatives. One day, L. M. phoned me and said that it was over, and that she had to flee the country with R. V.

Naturally, I did whatever I could do for them, connecting them with Reporters without Borders and other friends in that country to find work for them.

I asked L. M. if she could publish more news abroad concerning this matter.15 One could do this easily abroad, but she kept saying that she was maintaining her silence because of this one individual.

But one day, she said that this individual had been arrested and she now wanted to speak out, and I connected her and R. V. with the BBC and Voice of America and said that I could get this covered the next day on France 24, since I now finally had two people who could follow this affair from close up and be considered news sources.

But there was no news of these two journalists several days hence. They then told me that since the individual in question had been freed, it was best that they maintain their silence for now, since the Ministry of Intelligence now knows who the source of the Taraneh Mousavi story is.

I had no choice but to write on Facebook and on Twitter that the witnesses to the affair would speak out and was silent once more.

But when I spoke with one of the colleagues of that individual some weeks later, he assured me that the latter was at work those days when it was claimed that he was under arrest. I told this to two others and checked. Everyone strongly confirmed that the rumor of this individual’s arrest was false.

As a result, I became certain that this news was false from the start, but I still kept my silence until these two reporters had left Iran and had been transferred to a third country.

Just then, one of my friends reported that R. V. spoke about false news in a public meeting in this new country and used the example of Taraneh Mousavi as a case in which its being false was obvious!!!

I asked L. M. about this. She said that this had doubtless been said out of expedience. I told her that the individual whose presence in Tehran she had always used as a reason for her silence while she was out of the country had never been arrested, neither on 7 Tir nor lately, i.e., around Dey of the previous year. She said that she would publish the documents on a blog which she was publishing under her real name on cultural matters.

Several weeks passed. I asked her why she was still maintaining her silence.

She gave no answer whatsoever. It was then that I decided that since the necessary conditions existed for these two sources’ security and credibility not to be compromised, I would go public with this matter.

Unfortunately, this came at a time when [Behzad] Nabavi’s lies against me and my crushing response caused my former Facebook account to be blocked.

But in any case, I promised that I would write about this matter. Since L. M. and R. V. had hidden behind blogs, many considered me to be the source of the Taraneh Mousavi story, since it was I who had published this story on every side and, despite some notes and criticisms and even deletions of links on Balatarin, as a result of its being repeated and its having all the qualities of a melodrama, everyone got used to it and believed it.

As a journalist who published this story for this first time based on the word of these two sources, I am duty-bound to announce that I erred in hastily publishing this news without sufficient details and being deceived by the information of my sources. But I went to great lengths to find the truth and it has been months that I have had serious doubts about the existence of Taraneh Mousavi, but I waited until these two journalists had been transferred to another country so that they would not meet with any difficulties. Now that I can speak out with an easy conscience about the details of this affair, I still ask these two individuals to emerge from behind the veil and reveal their documents and take responsibility for the report which was accompanied by so much doubt.

Declaration of the First Publishers of the News of Taraneh Mousavi’s Martyrdom concerning the Truth of This Event

Reza Valizadeh, Leila Malekmohammadi

We, Leila Malekmohammadi and Reza Valizadeh, are today compelled to address all of you, you who have been wounded and who wound, who have entered the field and given your all to disgrace our enemy’s oppressors, and entered the field, or who have chosen to stand aside and forget or have lent hand and voice to the foe’s benefit and have become a scourge to the people. For it is a very rare event which led to a declaration addressed to such a mixed and divided population. But which of you is it who has not heard the name Taraneh Mousavi and has not wished to investigate the puzzle of her story? This is what we have in common. This statement is addressed to all of you who either want to listen to this story or have suffered its horrifying pain or had sincere doubts about its reality or called it a fake and a fraud upon orders.

We, the authors of this letter, officially declare for the first time that the news of Taraneh Mousavi’s arrest and alleged rape and the discovery of her body—someone who was arrested on 7 Tir 1388 and interrogated in an unofficial detention center with a number of cellmates, suffered grievous physical harm and, according to her family, was burned—was published on our blogs. We, who have been active for years under various titles in Iran’s news stations and newspapers, were aware of our grave duty and responsibly published a report confirmed by various sources and pursued witnesses and evidence of its details. After 14 months, we are still firmly of the opinion and have not the slightest doubt about the reality of this crime, for during the days when Taraneh’s fate was shrouded in ambiguity and after her body was discovered, we were the closest representatives of public opinion to Taraneh’s family and were aware of its anxiety and suffering when, after several days of having no news of Taraneh, it learned that the family had received a dubious phone call.

[The authors continue, saying that they have worked in the field of journalism for years, but do not say for what publications or in what capacity. They do not indicate, for instance, that they were actually reporters and not, say, proofreaders or engaged in production.]

Malekmohammadi was the proprietor of Zeerzamin and Valizadeh wrote Cherik Online. They continued that they cannot reveal their sources because they are still in Iran.

They are “prepared to accept the professional criticism of fair critics and the wounds of unfair critics” but “refuse to be players in a dangerous game which some who have personal political and ideological interests have set up.”

[Those who do not accept the story either 1) do not understand the security atmosphere in Iran which forces reporters to hide their sources or 2) are influenced by theories of journalism common in journalism school or 3) are behind the line opportunists.] “They can, while making themselves out to be heroes of journalism, make themselves out to be heroes of denial when necessary. This group always follows its own political, party, or personal motivations and, in attaining its interests, will do whatever it can to be the focus of discussion and invent lies and distort the truth in order to win at pointless personal or political struggles and so stand in the same ranks as Taranehs’ rapists. Aside from the efforts of the Voice and Visage of the Islamic Republic and the security institutions and government media in spreading lies to deny this event, there are those who directly take their stand with the interrogators and security officials of the Islamic Republic to arrest and bring further pressure on the witnesses of this incident with their gestures of professionalism in a dubious and demagogic game with lying claims of enlightenment.”

“The story of Taraneh Mousavi’s arrest and disappearance was related to us for the first time directly by one of her cell-mates, and it was confirmed by another witness. After that, to be certain of the story’s veracity, we contacted Taraneh Mousavi’s family. The story of her ill father and aged mother will certainly be told someday. Taraneh’s computer was full of pictures which she had taken after the elections of electoral meetings and protest marches. Her family would not turn over any of the pictures, despite our insistence except for a picture from which we all know her. Our initial reason for publishing the picture, which was agreed to by her family, was that perhaps someone would find some trace of her if it were published. In those days, neither media activists nor human rights activists nor intellectual or political leaders recognized the depth of the catastrophe which was occurring in the most horrifying prisons, named and unnamed, and none of us imagined such things. Publishing Taraneh Mousavi’s picture led to obtaining the most upsetting information. Part of this information was passed on to us by someone close to her family, information which was later published about her alleged rape and murder and the discovery and burial of her body. After this news attracted public opinion and was very effectively republished, our contact with Taraneh Mousavi’s family was cut. Of her family’s three members, only her aged mother remained, for her father died two weeks after her murder. Our telephone contacts with someone close to the family gradually grew vaguer and tended towards hints and talking in riddles mixed with terror until they were completely cut from that side. But we more or less maintained other means of contact. No matter how much we tried to get her family to appeal for justice, we failed, for obvious reasons. We now see families which have opened their mouths after a year and speaking out about the fate which befell them and their loved ones. We think that it is not unlikely that Taraneh’s friends will speak out in the future. Under such difficult conditions, we did our best and clung to every resource to have Taraneh’s screams heard. In the meantime, we deposited a collection of news documents in the presence of one of the eye witnesses of Taraneh’s arrest and several media activists—whose names will not be disclosed—with the Committee to Investigate the Condition of the Victims of the Post-Electoral Events. Since the most prominent protesters later confirmed the veracity of the Taraneh Mousavi affair, it would appear that the Committee did its own independent investigation over the affair and found other witnesses, too.

Nearly four months after the publication of this news, the members of this commission and the people with whom we were in direct contact were arrested. We described the affair to them and Mohsen Ezhei’s references in the television program were a danger sign and if, according to the Islamic Republic’s security and intelligence institutions, publishing reports about the post-electoral events is considered a crime, we added other crimes to this, such as distributing pictures, videos, and reports of the post-electoral demonstrations to the foreign media. We consider it important to repeat that we remained in Iran for four months after the publication of our report. We remained and worked to obtain more witnesses and evidence of the Taraneh affair. What addle-brain would imagine that something like the Taraneh tragedy would be concocted simply to obtain asylum. Is obtaining asylum for two reporters, one of whom was freed by the issuing of an order (?) and the other had sent dozens of reports, pictures, and films of the repression to the foreign media after the elections, such a difficult thing that they should create such a story? So far, thousands of people have escaped Iran and accepted asylum; must they each have had such a bloody story and pledge their entire character and honor to its confirmation or refutation?

It has now been ten months since we have left Iran. We have considered it our professional and human responsibility to pursue this painful affair and work to obtain more witnesses and documents in order to be able to turn the Taraneh Mousavi affair into a court case against the Islamic Republic’s repressive and criminal machine. Towards this end, we extend a hand to all people all over the world who are pledged to truth and freedom. We do not despair over the doubts cast on the veracity of this news and we ask those who have, for various reasons, tried to refute this story not to be satisfied with their own beliefs and stirring up their audience. Let them bring pictures, show the world that Taraneh Mousavi is alive and well, she whom the world considers the model of the Islamic Republic’s crimes against the protesters against the electoral results. Let them get their own witnesses to speak and present documents which confirm and convince. This task will be easier, since denying this news not only does not involve being threatened; indeed, there is a government full of resources which will place all its might at the disposal of the deniers. If it be confirmed that the Taraneh affair has no reality, the one year’s nightmare of ours and all those who wept blood in the name of Taraneh will have ended. We will be completely delighted to trade in our professional character and our very being to either find a trace of Taraneh Mousavi or confirm that the affair was made up. If only Taraneh Mousavi did not have an existence in reality and the world was not a scene of such horror. Then we, too, would be fine and our minds at rest and we would smilingly close our eyes to this night of murder. Investigating the Taraneh Mousavi affair is above all the responsibility of everyone who values truth. We, too, will maintain our independence in this regard, and shall investigate despite the numerous obstacles, but not to confirm it, but to find out how it occurred. But for all this, we shall not fall into the swamp of sensationalism or be present in the dubious games of others, even as spectators.

Notes

1This is a reference to the Tawana Brawley affair, in which a black teenager claimed to have been raped by six white men, including policemen, and smeared with filth and left in a garbage bag. The story was exposed as a hoax and the accused turned the tables on their accusers and prosecuted them successfully for libel. See the New York Times editorial, “The Endless Tawana Brawley Case”.

2 Here, the “informed source” is admitting that the three rumor mongering blogs gave no evidence of the existence of Taraneh Mousavi, i.e., that there was no reason for anyone to believe the story. This raises the obvious question of why Habibinia would take this rumor seriously if he was not in on the hoax himself.

3 This is entirely peculiar. How did this “informed source” discover the identity of this friend, who was underground?

4 This is entirely likely.

5 A reference to a statement of McCotte,r a prominent Republican hawk who specializes in Middle East affairs.

6 I.e., Facebook and the blogosphere. The print press has largely ignored the story.

7 This is the insinuation referred to in the letter of the two.

8 The true scope of the damage done by this case is ignored by this “informed source.” Green Movement rumor-mongering harms its integrity and is an insult to the real victims—as if their suffering is not sufficient and the movement needs to invent atrocities.

9 This is an entirely unlikely question to ask someone who has repeatedly declared that he has no insight into Karoubi’s inner workings. It is more along the lines of an internal monologue of the author of this “dialogue.

10 Here, the author of this dialogue is saying that the regime is using these atrocity stories to intimidate the opposition. But the two explanations he gives are mutually contradictory. If there is indeed a plethora of such real events—women being raped and murdered in captivity—this story would not be needed to terrorize protesters.

11 It did?

12 Again, this has been the case for an entire year. Did it really take an “informed source” to explain this to Habibinia?

13 Again, this should have been obvious from the start. It certainly did not require a year and enlightenment from an “informed source.” Assuming that this “informed source” existed in reality, Habibinia does not contradict him.

14 Again, this should have been obvious from the start. It certainly did not require a year and enlightenment from an “informed source.”

15 This is odd. L. M. was unable to provide him with any information, indeed, had provided false information to him repeatedly.

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August 8th, 2010

Call for Hunger strike To Support Iranian Hunger Strikers

Dear Freedom Loving People!

The oppressive Islamic Republic regime has turned Iran into a large prison for people by denying them their basic human rights such as freedom of expression and association. Within this general prison are specific locations such as the notorious Evin prison that the regime locks up political activists that mostly have peacefully demanded their democratic rights such as free media and fair elections. Most of these people are kept for months without being charged or tried. Some are kidnapped in the middle of night without informing their family or lawyer. Most are denied visitation rights. The slightest protest lands them in solitary confinement. Even after “judges” rule that they must be freed, some are kept for indefinite amount of time.

It is in protest against such mistreatment and demand for improving their prison conditions that 17 political prisoners in Evin who are kept in solitary confinement have gone on hunger strike since July 26, 2010. Their families outside the prison have joined them and gone on hunger strike after being denied visitation rights. Three of these prisoners are on “dry” hunger strike and a number of independent medical authorities have warned that most of strikers are in frail physical conditions, some life threatening.

The Solidarity Committee for Advancement of Democracy in Iran (SCADI-NY) is calling for a two-day symbolic hunger strike in front of the United Nations building in Manhattan from Thursday August 12th at 10 AM to support Evin strikers’ demands. Please spread the word and plan to join us for as long as you can afford.

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July 26th, 2010

Iranian Journalist for Time Magazine in Prison

Reza Rafii-Forushan, an Iranian stringer for Time magazine, appeals his frame-up in the following open letter. The Persian original is published on RAHANA’s website.

His Eminence Ayatollah Amoli Larijani

While submitting my greetings,

God is the Manifestation of truth, He loves truth and is disgusted with lies, for piety only takes form in truth and nowhere else, for without truth, neither faith nor piety appears before us. The human who worships God and seeks Him has the power to see the truth and can distinguish it from the false. The only people who refrain from seeing the truth are those who are afraid of it for various reasons and plot to eliminate it.

(Explanation: Publishing this as an open letter means that it is possible to send it on government stationary through the prison and the predetermined deadline to investigate it has come to an end, since nothing has effectively been done by Your Eminence about Your Servant’s appeal, and it has not even been confirmed that Your Eminence has yet received it, and since it has passed its legal course and there is nothing else to be done but to publish this appeal and complaint publicly and in an open form, we have thus come do to so.)

This appeal has been sent to Your Eminence so that, while stating the facts and distinguishing truth from falsehood and right from wrong, it might help you to come to the aid of trampled righteousness and the oppression which has been visited upon me, and by acquainting you with the essence the frame-up in Your Servant’s case and, in accordance with Article 34 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, I meekly appeal to you to review the absolute truth about Your Servant and the complaint lodged against the judge of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, Mr. [Abol-Qasem] Salavati,1 the Ministry of Intelligence, and the Voice and Visage of the Islamic Republic in a blatant and conspiratorial frame-up to hide the truth and poison the officials’ ideas and public opinion in such a way that they could not see the crowd and trample underfoot Articles 23, 35, 37, and 39 of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution and, ultimately, trample underfoot Your Servant’s human, Islamic, legal, and civil rights. According to Article 181 of the Constitution, I have the right to compensation for material and psychological damage and a rehabilitation of my character and punishment what those who spoke and acted against me.

A frame-up is not as a lack of knowledge, but active, the effect of evil forces the source of which is corrupt and violent efforts to mislead our senses and which nourishes in our souls the habit of resistance against right and wisdom. Should I have for an instant found it in myself to trust the idea that this frame-up resulted from the judges not having infinite wisdom and perhaps erring regarding some facts and that the judge does not investigate any case fully, and so Your Servant’s case, too, might perhaps be one of these instances, I would never have published this letter, and so I state that although you consider the institutions and individuals whom Your Servant is criticizing to be pure and clean, it might not be so, and their actions might to a large degree unconsciously arise from political aspirations or void perspectives.

And now I will break my bitter silence of one year. I will command you the proper and in the meantime call upon exalted God as witness that I am not saying anything but the truth and am avoiding lies and insults, and proceed to write the facts and my long-suffering complaint in hope that it might be received in that spirit.

An Explanation of the Events

At noon on Tir 6, 1388 [June 27, 2009], agents of the Ministry of Intelligence arrested Your Servant in his mother’s home and transferred him to of the Ministry of Intelligence’s terrifying Detention Center 209 located in Evin Prison. They imprisoned me in the narrow and filthy Solitary Confinement Cell 105, which measures 2 by 1.5 meters. I was kept for 43 days in the worst physical and psychological conditions and interrogated with beatings and deprived of any human or civil rights, my eyes blindfolded. These interrogators kept me under severe moral and psychological pressure, with threats and terror mixed with deception and trickery, trying to extract false confessions against myself and others.

For example, they insistently asked me to make a false confession against the sons of one of the statesmen whom I have the honor of knowing and pressured me to make a false confession to his having had an illegitimate relationship with the faithful and honorable wife of a former Majlis representative. Although I resisted their illegitimate and false demands, the psychological pressures exerted on Your Servant caused him to him to suffer anal bleeding which remained with me for some time.

Although in Your Servant’s opinion and according to Article 38 of the Constitution, all confessions under torture or duress lack value and credibility, explaining them to you will make you aware of the sort of interrogations which are practiced on the accused when he was arrested, and so  I will lay them out for you.

The interrogators centered on campaigning and electoral activities and investigating opinions about support for my preferred presidential candidate, whose suitability had been recognized by the Guardian Council, activities which had been carried out to attract votes of Iranians living abroad. These interrogations, contrary to Article 23 of the Constitution, were accompanied by inquisitions into beliefs and inappropriate insults and lying exaggerations, and on top of that, they brought under question the fundamental rights included in Article 27 of the Constitution about participating in the peaceful protest marches of 25 Khordad 1388 [June 15, 2009] in protest against how the elections were held and the votes were tabulated, the violation of the principle of impartiality by the Voice and Visage, the illegal support  by a number of members of the Guardian Council of one of the candidates and the culture utilized by the winning candidate and tried to link it with the street disturbances.

The interrogators then tried to denigrate Your Servant’s proud history as part of their agenda, an example of which follows:

First, there was Your Servant’s long years of press activity and collaboration with the respectable magazine Time, by insinuating this false presupposition that Time belonged to the Pentagon and was run by the CIA. I was accused of collaboration with the American intelligence organization merely based on this presupposition, overlooking the fact that this respectable magazine had had an active desk in Iran with the permission of the Ministry of [Culture and] Islamic Guidance for over twenty years and that all the presidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including Mr. Ahmadinejad, sat for interviews with it. Moreover, the Distributors’ Company, which is part of the Ministry of [Islamic] Guidance, distributed it in Iran.

Following this, my legal activity as president of the Iran-Swiss Friendship Society, which is an NGO and has been confirmed as being licensed by the Iranian Ministry of the Interior and works to bring the people of Switzerland and Iran closer and which organized cultural and scholarly meetings and exhibitions to gather funds for student stipends for the children of this homeland, done with the legal cooperation of the Swiss embassy in Tehran as laid out in the society’s founding statement, was also denigrated and I was accused of spying for Switzerland. On the excuse that the Swiss embassy staff members in Tehran are American spies, they continued hurling groundless accusations against Your Servant.

From the point of view of the honorable interrogators, Your Servant was and is absolutely a born American spy. They had no need to present any arguments or documents to confirm this charge and Your Servant’s higher education and long sojourn in Switzerland and America were only presuppositions and false evidence against Your Servant. But since I answered all the interrogators’ oral and written questions honestly and rejected all their vain charges decisively, the interrogators focused on Your Servant’s activities in the media companies in the UAE.

Your Servant began his activity six years ago in a private media company in Dubai by starting broadcasts and providing technical support for television channels via Arabic satellites, the greatest pride of which was founding and supporting the television channel Kerbala, whose endowment was for the pure shrine of Imam Hosein (Upon whom be peace!). This channel spread Shiite culture among the Arabic countries and was under the direct supervision of Ayatollah Sistani and the honorable officials of the pure shrine of Imam Hosein (Upon whom be peace!)

Five years before, one of Iran’s statesmen, who had been one of the highest officials in the system for years, asked Your Servant to set up a special satellite television channel. This channel was set up, but I refrained from sending its programs up from the antenna because of the National Security Council of Iran’s clear statement that this channel’s activities were illegal, and I even accepted all the resulting financial losses of these people. The Ministry of Intelligence’s interrogators, paying no attention to my having held fast to the law, took this as another excuse to charge me.

Finally, Your Servant’s broad working connections with state and government officials of Iraq and the UAE, which were the result of having set up the Kerbala Channel, and which had no connection with Iran, was also taken as an occasion for raising the charge of espionage, of which I considered and consider myself exonerated by honest answers to the questions they raised.

On 12 Mordad 1388 [August 3, 2009], the interrogators sent a copy of Kayhan to solitary confinement cell 105 in which the confessions of some leading figures of the reform faction in court were published, and the accused, who from the beginning of his confinement had no access to newspapers or any kind of news about the events outside the prison, studied them earnestly. That very night, the interrogators threatened me, saying that I had shown absolutely no cooperation and so they would issue a hodud punishment and that if I were to continue to not cooperate, Your Servant would be sent to the basement of Detention Center 209 for a “reception” and the execution of hodud.

This session lasted for hours and finally, frightened of a lengthy and illegal imprisonment in a cage which they named a seclusion cell and in which I would be at the mercy of the guards for the most minor human needs, such as going to the toilet, so that they might keep the accused prisoner for hours under the pressure of his intestines, colon, and bladder or even be so obstinate as to make the accused wallow in his own excrement and so force him to give in to their demands.

I firmly believed that the day would come when their lawlessness and the frame-up for implementing this conspiratorial plot of the Ministry of Intelligence would be exposed. And so, I prepared myself to cooperate with them to be freed from my imprisonment. What I did not expect was the Ministry of Intelligence’s insistence on Your Servant’s continued and unrelieved imprisonment to prevent the revelation of this great feast.

Starting the next day, the interrogation sessions were turned into sessions for making excuses and practicing the text of a false and forged defense prepared by the Ministry of Intelligence. In the space of less than a week, I went before the cameras three times to read a statement prepared in advance and it was revised according to the interrogators and people who had by now joined them, though I could not see their faces because of the blindfolds. Then, on Friday, 16 Khordad 1388 [June 6, 2009], which fell on mid-Shaaban, the birthday of His Holiness the Imam of the Age, they transferred me to the Palace of Justice. It was closed, but I, and nine other prisoners, all of whom were dressed in the uniform of Detention Center 209, along with a number of Ministry of Intelligence operations officers, entered the courtroom and read the prepared text before the Judiciary’s representatives of that time and representatives of the Ministry of Intelligence and the Voice and Visage cameras which had been brought along by Mr. Shamshadi’s organization’s reporters. Voice and Visage, in an inappropriate, un-Islamic, and illegal move, went and broadcast this false and forced exercise in its 8:30 Channel Two program.

From among the ten people present in the exercise session in the Palace of Justice, five were chosen to be present in the fake show trial of Saturday 17 Mordad 1388 [August 8, 2009], known as the Foreigner’s Trial. This was a show trial since it was rehearsed before it was performed and it was fake because the texts which we read had been prepared in advance.

Saturday morning, I, along with Ms. Reiss, the French citizen, was once more transferred to the Palace of Justice by a personal car accompanied by Ministry of Intelligence operations forces so that I could be “tried” in public by Judge Salavati, the judge of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, in front of the Voice and Visage’s cameras and in the presence of the magazines’ journalists and photographers. Yet the Voice and Visage’s broadcasting and the magazine’s reporting of Your Servant’s name and taking advantage of me before having even confirmed the charges was against the shariat and a clear violation of the law and Article 29 of the Islamic Republic’s constitution. This has offended the accused’s honor and person and is therefore illegal and can be litigated under criminal law, particularly since it was a conspiratorial frame-up between various security institutions, the judiciary, and the Islamic Republic’s Voice and Visage to deceive public opinion and the court of the nation’s officials concerning an event, which had vast consequences in the country’s security, this in and of itself being a clear measure against national security through conspiring and making a frame-up.

In this fake court, Judge Salavati officially began the trial with a pure lie. He announced before the Voice and Visage cameras and the reporters, “The accused had defense lawyers and met with their lawyers and their lawyers reviewed their clients’ files.” This speech of the judge was not true, at least in my case, since not only had I been deprived of having a lawyer and had not met with any lawyer, but there was not even any cross-examination (unless it could be done blindfolded) and the code of appeals was not obeyed in Your Servant’s case. I saw that individual who was forced by the court to be my imposed lawyer for the first time in the courtroom.

Did such a court, under such conditions, generally satisfy my human and legal rights? Do we need another reason for a retrial? Wasn’t the Islamic Republic’s judiciary aware of this frame-up?

In this court, I read prepared texts parts of which, of course, I refrained from reading on the excuse that I had forgotten them. But on the whole, instead of defending myself, I would confirm the charges brought against me in the indictment against myself and here I believe that according to Article 38 of the Constitution, since these statements had been expressed under pressure and compulsion, they lacked and lack any value or credibility.

After the court, along with Ms. Reiss, and separated from the other accused, were sent to Iran’s Guantanemo, i.e., Detention Center 209 of the Ministry of Intelligence, Your Servant was once again transferred that same day to cell 52 in which three accused were imprisoned which had twice the dimensions of the previous cell, that same day and after 43 days of imprisonment in solitary confinement.

Forty days later, I was summoned to Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court. There, Judge Salavati, in the presence of the lawyer appointed by that court, gave me a letter of representation by the imposed lawyer for me to sign. I told them that I had a defense lawyer and preferred to have a lawyer of my choice take up my defense and that I would refrain from signing. Judge Salavati announced that no other lawyer would be allowed access to the case and that should I refuse to accept the imposed lawyer, the next session to investigate my case would be put off for six months. I was therefore forced and, in order to prevent my period of imprisonment from being extended, I accepted the lawyer appointed by the court as my lawyer.

The only written question which was then asked of me as my last defense was, “You are accused of spying. What defense do you have?” And so I explained my defense and rejected the charge, which was given me by my court-appointed lawyer, who had still not studied Your Servant’s case and could be of no help for me on the defense brief. Then, when I protested the judge’s disregard for the courtroom’s bylaws and how he was taking false statements, I was expelled from the court’s office.

Yes, Your Eminence Ayatollah Larijani,

Your Servant was tried and convicted without the court’s bylaws being followed, without cross-examination, and without having a lawyer for the defense. Please say how an innocent man, a protesting citizen who, in the course of being interrogated with eyes blindfolded, slapped and punched on all sides by interrogators and forced to make a false confession against himself and, when he looked with hope on the judiciary, saw such courts and behavior and activities which violate the judicial dignity and honor of the judge and despaired of achieving what was right and just for him, he could do anything and to what sound authority could he complain?

By writing this letter, I want to set the truth and the lie before your eyes and those of other officials, since everyone knows that if they face each other on an even and just playing field, truth will defeat falsehood.

At the beginning of Aban 1388 [the end of October 2009], I was once more summoned to Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court and made aware that I was condemned for the crime of espionage and sentenced to at least seven years of prison and forbidden to leave the country for five years after suffering imprisonment because of the unjust trial against me.  I protested this.

Ten days later, Mssr. Judge Jaafari-Dawlatabadi met me in Interrogation Center 209 and I declared that I had still not had an opportunity to study the charges and prepare a defense brief for a retrial and asked him to kindly do something so that I could meet with my own chosen lawyer and prepare a bill of defense for an appeal and present it before the twenty day deadline is up.

This turned out to have been possible two days before the deadline and the imposed lawyer, instead of Your Servant’s chosen lawyer, holding a hand-written copy of the charges which he refused to provide me, received permission to meet with me for two hours for me to, within two hours, lay out a defense brief for an appeal concerning a vital and essential case concerning charges which were so vast. In fact, I did practically all the work.

After 150 days of prison in Detention Center 209 of the Ministry of Intelligence, early in Azar 1388 [late November], I was transferred to Prison 250 in Evin Prison in a cell with five prisoners. The ruling on my appeal arrived in 12 Bahman 1388 [February 1, 2010]. In this ruling, Your Servant’s crime was changed from Article 501, i.e., espionage, to Article 610, i.e., conspiracy against national security and the period of imprisonment was changed from seven years to four, although I was still firmly forbidden from leaving the country. It was very satisfied that the crime of espionage had been removed. Although the judge did not explain the new crime to me and I had no possibility of defending myself, this was not so strange, considering the illegal policy pursued in Your Servant’s case.

Now that I am writing you this letter from the hoseineh of Hall 8, Cell 3 of the Rajaishahr prison of Karaj, which is Your Servant’s illegal place of exile, it has been over a year that I have been imprisoned in the Islamic Republic’s prisons. Now that I have broken the silence, I expect that you will say what my rights were as a citizen and how they have been trampled, how the dignity of a citizen can be so assaulted and how his character and honor can be so trampled, being called a spy for a foreign power and having this charge mentioned in all the magazines and the Voice and Visage, along with his name and photograph being broadcast and called a plotter against national security and there being no avenue for redress in this ancient land which calls itself Islamic to the oppression visited upon him.

Now that so much of what they wanted to keep hidden has been expressed and you as Chief Justice have become aware of the truth, your duty as a human, in accordance with the sharia, and in accordance with the law is to investigate and protect Your Servant’s legal and human interests. I ask you that, in speedily and justly investigating the statements included in this letter and in reviewing the case, to do something about the requests and complaints set out in this appeal and impartially allow the truth to come out and consider the instructions called for regarding the following matters:

  1. I request that you issue an order that Your Servant’s case be sent to a suitable trial owing to violations of the juridical bylaws for judicial review so that it might be organized publically and in the presence of reporters so that Your Servant might be able to defend himself with a defense lawyer of his own choosing.
  2. I request that until this trial is organized, it be ordered that the execution of the sentence be suspended so that there might be sufficient time to gather documents and summon witnesses to confirm my innocence.
  3. I request an investigation into Your Servant’s complaints against the Ministry of Justice and those who spoke and acted to put this conspiracy into action to trample Your Servant’s rights, force him to state lies and use this to mislead public opinion and outrage his honor and character and, while calling for damages for financial and psychological loses, call for punishing the guilty in a suitable court.
  4. I request an investigation into Your Servant’s complaints against Judge Salavati, who was the driving force behind this conspiracy and broadcasted Your Servant’s charges, name, and face before confirming the crime which led to offending Your Servant’s honor and character, along with his recklessness in not carefully implementing the judicial bylaws, behavior violating judicial prestige and honor, preventing the accused from having a defense attorney chosen by himself, issuing an undocumented and unreasoned opinion, to compensate for the material and psychological damages done and to punish the guilty.
  5. I request an investigation into the Your Servant’s complaints  against the Islamic Republic’s Voice and Visage, which broadcasted interrogations and false confessions issued under duress and without Your Servant’s consent and published Your Servant’s face, name, and accusations before the crime was confirmed, and compensation for the financial and psychological damages suffered and being given the possibility to have equal time to restore my character, and to punish the guilty, in a suitable court.
  6. I request you order a judgment to remove existing obstacles to choose and meet with a defense attorney and prepare and organize a brief in a true fashion and present it to the judiciary.
  7. I request that you order a judicial inquiry as soon as possible to return Your Servant’s wealth seized by the judiciary’s officers, the value of which is about twenty million tumans and which includes a number of photographer’s cameras and film holders and a number of computers and a number of mobile phones, etc., and return my national ID card, my military service exemption card, my passport, more than six international banking cards and credit cards, and personal documents and computer memory cards which include family pictures. According to law and Ayatollah Khomeini’s testament, entering into the private sanctuary of individuals is a crime.
  8. I request that you earnestly issue an order for a judicial inquiry concerning restraint on the judiciary’s officers in using or abusing family and private pictures and photographs in an effort to denigrate and taking advantage of them in the magazines and Voice and Visage with the aim of character assassination and bringing under question issues raised in this letter and trampling the rights of the complainant so that not obeying this matter will be followed by their legal prosecution.

Your Eminence Ayatollah Amoli-Larijani,

I know that the violation of Your Servant’s fundamental, human, and legal rights took place before your enthronement as president of the judiciary and that your lack of awareness regarding these complaints is understandable and no one had accused you or is accusing you of anything. I completely believe that this frame-up was kept from the high-ranking officials and was carried out by a special group acting on its own, but now that Your Eminence has heard what I have to say, let him take speedy measures to eliminate oppression and carry out justice. Any delay or attempt to prevent justice from being carried out through neglecting the requests laid out here or thought transferring Your Servant to an unknown place or cutting off relations between Your Servant and his family would mean eliminating the possibility of restoring Your Servant’s rights and character by the judiciary of the Islamic Republic. Therefore, may you consider these rights restored and protected for Your Servant and my family living abroad so that, through investigation and implementing justice for Your Servant using all suitable international authorities and organizations in objecting and complaining in every way deemed proper, we can struggle against oppression. And so, in order to witness the exercising of justice in our homeland and hope for a daily increase in pride and prosperity for the Iranians and Iran, we await Your Eminence’s speedy measures.

Reza Rafii-Forushan
Prisoner of Jail 2, Salon 8, Rajaishahr Prison, Karaj, Alborz Province, Iran

cc: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Leader of the Islamic Republic, so that he might be apprised and do what is proper
Article 90 Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, so that it might do what is proper
National Supreme Court, so that it might do what is proper

Notes:
1 “Chief of the Revolutionary Islamic Court and alternative judge of the Tehran Public Courts. He has in recent years been the judge for sensitive cases.” These included the trials of those accused of participating in the Velvet Coup, leading to the execution of Mohammad-Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipur. He also convicted the journalist and human rights reporter Said Matinpur to seven years in prison on charges of engaging in propaganda against the Islamic Republic. When he was not able to get the satirist Sayyed Ebrahim Nabavi to answer a summonds, he detained his lawyer and threatened him. (Wikipedia)

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