Call for prosecution of former Tehran Prosecutor

Saeed Mortazavi, former Prosecutor of Tehran

A group of Iranian Members of Parliament called for the dismissal and prosecution of Saeed Mortazavi, former Prosecutor of Tehran and all other perpetrators of the “Kahrizak catastrophe.”

A letter signed by 57 MPs and addressed to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Sadegh Larijani, Head of Iran’s Judiciary was published today on Alef website which belongs to Iranian MP, Ahmad Tavakoli. It urges the executive and judicial branches of the government to confront “the perpetrators of the Kahrizak catastrophe.”

Kahrizak was a detention centre run by the Police Department and used to keep some of the post-election detainees. Reports which were finally confirmed by a parliamentary probe committee confirm that detainees were severely tortured at the centre and four detainees were even killed as a result of the torture.

The MPs maintain that former Prosecutor of Tehran, Saeed Mortazavi, “against issued orders and despite possibility of Evin Prison to accommodate the prisoners” ordered the transfer of some of the post-election detainees to Kahrizak.

The signatories of the letter urge Sadegh Larijani not to allow “the Prosecutor of the time to remain immune from impartial and serious prosecution.”

The letter warns the judiciary that the episode portrays the Judiciary as the “murderer of the defenseless.” And they also caution Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he should not appoint “a person accused of such serious crimes to a such sensitive position as the head of the Task Force to Fight Smuggling.”

After Saeed Mortazavi, a staunch Ahmadinejad supporter, was dismissed from his position as the prosecutor of Tehran, he was quickly accommodated in the executive branch of the government by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The MPs maintain that if Ahmadinejad dismisses Mortazavi from his current position, he will reveal that he “respects” the decisions of the parliament and its official reports and “gives priority to honouring the law and the rights of the citizens rather than friendship.”

Saeed Mortazavi has rejected the parliamentary reports against him and maintains that he is innocent of any wrongdoing in the Kahrizak affair.