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RIGHTS: Iran Tries to Quell Internet Media Wave
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (IPS) - Iran's judiciary has threatened Internet
journalists with torture and prison if they do not renounce accusations
that authorities abused members of the electronic media and dissidents who
were rounded up months ago.
According to New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), the chief prosecutor
of Tehran, Judge Saeed Mortazavi, threatened three recently released
detainees with severe punishment if they did not cooperate with him in
preparing a libel case against Ali Mazroi, the president of the Association
of Iranian Journalists.
Charges or torture and coerced confessions are not new in Iran, where
conservatives have been emboldened to act against their perceived foes by
their sweep of parliamentary elections last March and the continuing
conflict in neighbouring Iraq, where nearly 150,000 U.S. troops remain
bogged down 20 months after they ousted Iran's arch-foe, Saddam Hussein,
from power.
Washington's repeated demands that Tehran forgo its nuclear programme,
which U.S. officials says is aimed at acquiring a nuclear weapon within the
next several years, has also reportedly bolstered the conservatives'
position within Iran, despite perceptions here that the clerical regime
remains broadly unpopular.
Its unpopularity is repeatedly cited by U.S. hawks as evidence that the
country is ripe for "regime change." They have argued in favour of openly
or covertly supplying aid to exiled and internal opposition groups as a way
of mobilising the discontent. But such a move, according to a number of
Iran experts, could backfire by enabling the conservatives to rally the
country against foreign intervention.
While Washington is particularly concerned about Iran's nuclear programme
and its alleged interference in Iraq, it has also spoken out on the human
rights situation, particularly the recent crackdown.
Conservatives, cantered mainly in the judiciary have largely shut down most
of Iran's independent mass media, particularly reformist newspapers and
magazines, over the past year. As the more traditional outlets for activism
and free expression disappeared, the Internet took on an increasingly
important role for reformists.
A rare phenomenon four years ago, Internet usage has recently skyrocketed.
The number of regular Internet users increased by an estimated 1,820
percent between 2000 and 2004, according to InternetWorldStats.
Though the total number of users as a percentage of the population is still
relatively small - just over seven percent - Iran's demographic profile
indicates that Internet usage is set to grow rapidly. More than half of the
nation's population of 69 million is under the age of 25.
The most recent crackdown has been aimed particularly at Internet journalists.
In a public letter to President Mohammed Khatami on Dec. 10, Mazroi, who is
a former reformist member of parliament, had himself implicated the
judiciary in the torture and secret detention of more than 20 Internet
journalists and civil society activists during a crackdown that began in
early September. One of those detained was Mazroi's son.
The following day, Mortazavi filed charges against Mazroi and ordered that
three Internet journalists - Omid Memarian, Shahram Rafizadeh, and Ruzbeh
Ebrahimi - be detained as witnesses for the prosecution, according to HRW.
The three journalists and a fourth, Javed Ghlam Tamayomi, who had been in
detention since Oct. 18, were brought to the prosecutor's office.
According to HRW's account, Mortazavi threatened the four with lengthy
prison terms and torture if they did not publicly deny Mazroi's charges,
and they were subsequently interrogated for the following three days.
On Dec. 14, the four were taken to a televised press conference to deny
they had been subject to solitary confinement, torture or any ill treatment
during their earlier confinement. Tapes from the conference were
subsequently aired on government-controlled television in what HRW charged
was a transparent effort to whitewash what had in fact taken place.
One of the detainees said he had been held in a 30 square-metre room with a
colour television while another said their jailer handled them as "gently
as flowers."
"If there are credible charges against these journalists, the judiciary
should hold fair trials instead of forcing them to appear on television and
say their torturers treated them well," said Joe Stork, HRW's Middle East
director, from Washington.
In a report released two weeks ago, the rights group charged that secret
squads of interrogators - primarily former intelligence officers who were
purged in the late-1990s by Khatami's reformist administration but now
employed by the judiciary - forced detainees to write self-incriminatory
"confessionary letters," under "extreme pressure as a condition for their
release on bail."
The confessions, added HRW, were designed to "destroy individuals'
reputations, sow discord among activists, and ultimately shut down all
independent voices and organizations."
Consistent with Mortazavi's actions in the pending libel case, these
confessions also included assertions that the prisoners had not been
mistreated during their detention.
But HRW said it had obtained "detailed information" about the torture and
solitary confinement of the detainees at a secret centre near Tehran. Held
in small cells for up to three months, the detainees, it said, were
subjected to torture, including beatings with electrical cables, and
interrogations that lasted up to 11 hours at a stretch.
Throughout their ordeal, the prisoners were denied access to lawyers and
medical care, although family visits were permitted in rare cases. They
were often threatened with the arrest of family members and friends if they
failed to cooperate, and a number of them reportedly became suicidal, HRW
said.
The detainees were interrogated by the same person, an operative who used
the pseudonym "Keshavarz" who was, in turn, backed up by a magistrate known
as "Mehdipoor."
"Both the interrogator and magistrate repeatedly delivered messages and
threats to the detainees on behalf of Judge Mortazavi," HRW said.
The group's accounts have been backed up by Paris-based Reporters Without
Borders, which also denounced last week's television confessions as
"pathetic and grotesque. These testimonies," it said, "are pointless as
there is abundant evidence of the mental and physical harassment of
journalists."
"These detainees had been detained and tortured by secret squads apparently
taking orders from Judge Mortazavi himself," said Stork in his statement.
"Mortazavi obviously has a lot at stake in covering up his role in this
affair."
(END/2004)
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