Global IssuesRIGHTS-IRAN: Damaging Forced Confessions
Iranian political refugees living in India say there is an all too familiar ring about the supposed confessions of arrested journalist Roxana Saberi, which they expect to see footage of on television soon.
Saberi, who has both United States and Iranian citizenships, was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the U.S.
Disturbingly, for hundreds of Iranian expatriates living in the Indian capital, even before the trial began, the deputy prosecutor, Judge Hassan Haddad, reportedly stated that Saberi had accepted charges of espionage activities.
Haddad's statement was greeted with shock by her father, Reza Saberi. 'Roxana told us her confessions were not true and that she had made them up under pressure. They had promised to release her after the confessions and she denies all of her confessions,' he told reporters in Tehran.
'Forced confessions made before television cameras by high profile detainees are routine in Iran,' Mohsen Namakian, member of the exiled Ale Yassin sect, told IPS in New Delhi. 'They are used to gain political mileage that has particular value during election time.'
'Unfortunately for the authorities,' added Namakian, 'no one in Iran gives any credence to such confessions and it is well known that most of them are doctored for added effect.'
Namakian cited the case of a student, Majid Tavakkoli, who, in March 2008, some months after he was arrested, released an open letter from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison with clues to the forced nature of his taped confessions.
'Although the confession was made at the chief’s office of the security ward 209, using a sofa, and TV in the background to show that everything was normal and natural, signs that we [Tavakkoli and two other arrested students] had been kept in jail for ten months were apparent from the prison clothing and our messy, dishevelled faces that were the result of torture,' Tavakkoli wrote.
A few months earlier, in January 2008, Tavakkoli had released an open letter describing some of the torture he had been put through. In it he had named the wardens who had pushed him around and punched him.
Ayatollah Boroujerdi, a Shia leader known for his secularist beliefs was made to recant and enact fake confessions for use on television.
In September 2008 Amnesty International (AI) said in a report: Ayatollah Boroujerdi has reportedly been tortured and ill treated on numerous occasions since his arrest. He is said to have been beaten, thrown against a wall, and to have had cold water thrown on him when he was sleeping. It has been alleged that photographs and videos were taken of him - while he was in a forced state of undress - which the authorities allegedly threatened to distribute publicly to pry a statement of repentance and confessions on a range of allegations.
Six months later, Ale Yassin experts launched a campaign to expose such unfair actions and analysed the confessions in a documentary. It was clear that Boroujerdi’s images were edited, said Namakian. There were more a compilation of faked confessions by other religious leaders who had fallen from grace.
Ale Yassin has reason to be concerned about fake confessions since the group’s leader, Payman Fattahi, is a well-known victim. AI said in a report: 'Payman Fattahi, the leader of a group known as the Ale Yassin, was arrested on Jan. 14, 2009 after being summoned to an interrogation session at the department for dealing with religions in the ministry of intelligence.'
'Payman Fattahi had previously spent about five months in detention after his arrest in May, during which he was reportedly tortured and interrogated about a variety of alleged offences, including acting against state security, establishing a sect, and promoting Christianity and atheism,' the AI report said. 'The group has also been vilified in state-owned press.'
Speaking by telephone from Canada where she is based, Yalda Noorshahi, the spokeswoman of Ale Yassin, told IPS that her community would work to expose the forced and faked confessions being used against Fattahi.
'They have made faked pictures, using editing techniques, to destroy Fattahi’s personality and destroy our credibility. We have the original version of the faked film and we have been showing both to expose the trick nature of these so-called confessions,' Noorshahi said.
In the faked version, Fattahi says: 'In the name of truth and legitimacy, in the name of justice and liberation, I confess there is no truth about me. My intent was my selfishness. I intended to divert people. I wanted to destroy people’s religion. I was wrong, I repent, I apologise to people.'
But in the original version he is saying: 'If great leaders and men like Mansoor were alive today, they have to confess in Inquisition Courts for the sake of releasing and they let them go. They have to appear against cameras and confess: In the name of truth and legitimacy, in the name of.'
According to Noorshahi, Fattahi is still in custody and under physical and psychological torture and his health is deteriorating - this suggests the poor state of other detainees in Evin prison, including Saberi.
The outside world’s best known example of televised fake confessions were supposed to have been made by a group of British sailors who had spent 13 days in an Iranian jail in March and April 2007, after having been captured in the Persian Gulf.
After they were released the sailors withdrew the confessions that they had made to their Iranian captors admitting to 'illegal entry' into Iranian waters.
According to Namakian, Iranian officials systematically try to convert situations into propaganda for local consumption and think nothing of distortion of facts or misrepresentation.
In the case of Saberi, officials initially said she was being held for buying a bottle of wine and then, later, changed the charges to working as a reporter without proper credentials, and finally to espionage on behalf of the U.S.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a journalists’ advocacy group, Saberi has been living in Iran since 2003, freelancing for a number of news organisations, and writing a book about Iranian culture.
Although Iranian authorities revoked Saberi’s press credentials in 2006, she continued to file short news items, the journalists’ group said. She was detained in January and on Apr. 9 word emerged that she had been charged with espionage.
Saberi’s situation is seen by many as similar to that of Canadian-Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, whom the authorities arrested in April 2006 and released after four months of detention once he had 'confessed' that his scholarly work had contributed to the planning of a 'velvet revolution.'
International human rights law protects detained persons from being forced into making 'confessions.' The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party, protects the right of every person not to be compelled to 'testify against himself or to confess guilt.'
It is unlawful for authorities to use coercive means to obtain incriminating statements - furthermore, broadcasting such statements is a form of degrading treatment prohibited by international law.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service