Inside Ayatollah Khomeini’s prisons

Press, 4 September 1982, Page 14

Inside Ayatollah Khomeini’s prisons

. From RALPH JOSEPH, in Athens

The Iranian leader. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny last year permitted the authorities in his prisons to remove large quantities of blood from the bodies of political prisoners about to be executed by firing squad, so that the blood could be used for wounded revolutionary guards. A circular letter from Iran's revolutionary prosecutor-gen-eral addressed to lower level authorities around the country asked them to "issue an order whereby reliable medical staff would secretly take with a syringe the blood of those individuals who are sentenced to execution and whose sentences are to be carried out immediately." The blood so collected was to be “transferred to special containers, which should then be delivered to the nearest health centres or blood banks, so that the wounded Brother (Revolutionary) Guards would benefit from them in the earliest emergency situation." A revealing part of the circular said that “in order to make sure that no religious fault could be attributed to this

measure, the • matter was brought to the attention of His Exalted and Holy Excellency, the Velayat-e-Faqih, Imam Khomeiny, leader and founder of the Islamic Republic. He declared that it does not constitute a breach of religious law.” The letter, reproduced in facsimile from the original Persian, has been published in a book recently put into circulation in Europe by the Islamic leftist guerrilla group, the Mujahedin Khalq. It was one of the several examples of the atrocities being practised by the Khomeiny regime documented in the book, which is titled “At War with Humanity.” The date of the circular letter. October 12. 1981, shows that it was sent out about the time that heavy street clashes were taking place between the Mujahedin and the revolutionary guards. Because of the Gulf War, there was a shortage of blood in the blood banks. The book relates a vivid example of how this order was carried out: “On November 15,

1981. the corpse of a martyr (a Mujahedin Khalq member). Ali Niazabazamadeh . . . was brought to his native Dashtestan. He was found to have been executed with six bullets, but. there was no sign of bleeding on his body. The bullet holes on the body were covered with plaster. “His father said that he had visited Ali on the day before he was executed. He was brought to his father by two guards who had to carry him. His face was pale and his lips were cracked. Speaking with difficulty, he told his father that the guards had forcefully taken some blood from him." It has long been known that Khomeiny and his henchmen have been distorting the laws of Islam to suit themselves. Now evidence is emerging that this distortion has also extended to sanctioning the rape of women prisoners. In one example, a mother (whose name is withheld) described how she had redeemed the body of her executed daughter for 80,000 rials (nearly $US1000) only to discover, after having the body medically examined, that’ she had been raped before being executed. She tried to meet Ayatollah Khomeiny to complain to him

but was unable to do so. She did however manage to see Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, often considered to be Khomeiny's heir-apparent. Montazeri told her that from the religious point of view it was not “decent” for a virgin girl to be executed, and therefore the guards had to ensure that she was not a virgin before she faced the firing squad. More evidence of rape in Khomeiny’s prisons is provided in a letter first published in the underground newspaper "Rah-e-Kargar” (“Workers' Way"), and reproduced in the book. The letter was written by a girl who was arrested on suspicion but eventually released because the guards could find nothing against her. She was taken to Evin Prison in Teheran, where she spoke to some of the other prisoners. She had been taken blindfolded from place to place, until eventually the blindfold was removed in a prison hall. She wrote: “They took the blindfold away and made us sit with our faces to the wall. There I suddenly saw the prisoners’ tortured bodies. Most of them were tortured in the waist region and from there downwards. I asked a few people about the tortures they

had been subjected to. They told me of torturers using thick cables (to flog them), blocks of wood, the "Apollo Apparatus." lit cigarettes and sexual assaults on women prisoners, particularly those who are sentenced to execution. "This last act is often committed by Hadi Ghaffari (a mullah and member of Parliament). He has been seen inside Evin Prison and the torturechambers on a number of occasions, and I met a girl who was raped by this filthy mullah. “Male prisoners are often suspended from the ceilings and then obscene acts, such as the pulling of their testicles, are performed. Most of the tortures employed by the Shah's SAVAK (secret police) which were revealed before his regime was overthrown, are being reintroduced. “For example, they keep whipping a prisoner's feet until they are extremely swollen. Then the guards trample on these feet with their boots for so long as it takes for the swellings to disappear. Then the prisoner is ordered to run around the room at high speed several times or to do sit-ups for a hundred times. "At the same time, the torturers are extremely fright-

ened lest the news of such tortures leak out of (the) prisons. It is as if they know what people will do to them in future. When a prisoner was quietly talking about torture, one of the guards started beating her up. saying: ■Whoever said these are tortures. They are religious punishments.' This correspondent can say that during the 17 days I was in detention in Iran, including 11 days in Evin Prison. I was told by several prisoners of the tortures they had been through. Several of them showed me the marks, and their descriptions were strikingly similar to those in this book. I was inside Khomeiny’s prisons in 1980 when the wave of atrocities there had not quite reached its present heights. Shortly after I came out. Khomeiny set up a “commission” to investigate whether there was torture in his prisons. The “commission" was headed by Hojatoleslam Mohammad Montazeri, a son of his heir-apparent. After visiting several prisons the mullah made the bland public statement that there was no torture in Iranian prisons. He omitted to add that there was plenty of “religious penance" being handed out.