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Indicting Rafsanjani

Page 11

Annex II

LETTER FROM MR. AMIR ENTEZAM, FORMER VICE-PRIME MINISTER
AND SPOKESMAN OF THE FIRST PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF
THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN, TO THE SPECIAL
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMMISSION

Referring to the following evidence I hereby charge the Islamic Republic of Iran for crimes and misdeeds committed by this regime during the past 12 years, and ask for this international body's attention, hoping to have the possibility of a retrial in order to defend my most obvious rights and those of my compatriots.

 

I cite the contraventions of the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and explain further the said violations.

 

The Iranian Government vowed to abide by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted on 16 December 1966 by the United Nations General Assembly, when this Covenant was put to a vote in the Iranian Parliament on 14 December 1972 (23 Azar A.H. 1351).

 

During these 12 years, and during the months I have spent in prison, I have been witness to various violations of the aforesaid rights. I have been witness to hundreds of people being tortured and I, myself, have undergone the same treatment, notably:

 

- Suffering fist punches;

 

- Solitary confinement for 550 days without any break;

 

- Deprivation of visits and speech: until today, two and a half years of stay in a 1.5 x 2.65 cell together with 27 people behind closed doors and having 3 toilet visits in 24 hours. One shower in (for 27 people with only 3 showers) (sic);

 

- Three hours of sleep (stretched) in 24 hours;

 

- Lack of hygiene, skin irritation (because of sitting still for two years);

 

- Disease of the pelvis;

 

- Developing eye and prostate illness. Waiting four years under suffering for prostate and left knee surgery. Suffering from stomach ulcer and other illness without adequate food and treatment until now;

 

- Hospitalization after six years of waiting under surveillance by six guards - two of whom accompanied me in the surgery hall;

 

- Having my hair cut with sheep-wool shears in the presence of hundreds of inmates and ridiculing me;

 

- Cutting my relation with my wife and children until today;

 

- Having taken me out twice in the middle of the night for execution and keeping me for 72 hours without explanation;

 

- Keeping me on my feet for 27 hours and hundreds of other cases.

 

One might be led to think that actually such treatment has ceased to exist; here are some examples of its continuation:

 

- During the autumn (Azar) of 1991, 24 hours after Mr. Galindo Pohl reached Iran, at 9 o'clock in the evening, in pouring rain and cold weather we underwent a prison-section change and were transferred from section 3 to section 4, upstairs in unit 325 (named "Foreigners' section"). Open trucks were used for the transfer and as a result I developed a cold in my ear. For 40 days I was denied access to the ear specialist, and in the end the infection ruptured my eardrum.

 

After two months of suffering and rupture of both ears a specialist was summoned, only to confirm that I had lost 40 per cent of my hearing.

 

In this cold winter of 1992 we are deprived of heating and warm water in the prison, as they claim there is no more than a few hours of warm water in the heaters due to malfunction of the central heating apparatus.

 

The temperature in the cells where we stay is between 5° and 12°.

 

Other people being tortured:

 

- Breaking of the tooth and rupture of eardrum of Taghi Rahmani; whipping of Ali Khianiha; torture and execution of Sadegh Azizi, Houshang Shahin, Alireza Ashtiani, Heydar Mehregan and Ardeshir Yeganeh; connecting electrical mains to the back, suspension from a leg or arm, keeping one on his feet for eight days;

 

- Starving the prisoners: one loaf of bread and one dish of rice for 10 persons in 24 hours;

 

- Another torture practised is keeping the prisoner in a small coffin for months (50 x 80 x 140 cm). In 1984 (A.H. 1363), there were 30 prisoners kept in these coffins. They became mad.

 

These are examples of torture in the Iranian regime.

 

(Signed) Amir ENTEZAM
1992