Iranian political prisoners challenge legality of their incarceration

A group of Iranian political prisoners have written an open letter addressed to Ayatollah Rafsanjani describing their continued incarceration “in violation of the law” and in the “framework of settling political accounts.”

According to Kaleme website, 16 political prisoners from the prisons of Evin (Tehran), RejaiShahr (Karaj) Ahvaz and Behbahan inform the Chairman of the Expediency Council that the treatment of political activists in the Islamic Republic today “bears no sign of the principles of the Revolution and its constitution."

The prisoners maintain that their charges are fabricated and false and add that they have committed no crimes and the “heavy sentences and restriction that they have been handed is part of a political and security plan by the establishment to completely erase the political opposition.”

The letter urges the Expediency Council to seriously consider the issue of political crime in their agenda in view of the fact that the judiciary has been laying widespread charges against political activists.

The prisoners compare the situation of the Islamic Republic’s current political prisoners to the political incarcerations prior to the 1979 Revolution and insist that while pre-Revolution prisoners were challenging the system, the current political prisoners are individuals who are “concerned for the society and adhere to the provisions of the constitution.”

The letter indicates that the security officials force prisoners to give false confessions and then issue sentences according to these coerced confessions.

They insist that the officials exercise no limit on their “inappropriate methods” which include “violation of the prisoners’ personal, religious and moral space.”

They add that the fates of those who have been coerced into confession and those have refused to do so have not been much different and “the issued sentences in view of level and kind of punishment seem to indicate that they have been set by security officials based on their own ideas and personal preference, and relayed to the judges.”

Omission of political opposition has been cited as the aim of the arrests and sentences endured by the prisoners.

The signatories of the letter maintain that the absence of a legislation clearly describing political crime and the methods of confronting it, has led to the “current violations of the law” and they urge the Chairman of the Expediency Council to remedy these violations.

The letter which has been signed by prominent political figures and journalists such as Mohsen Aminzadeh, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Bahman Ahmadi Amouyi and Mohammad Nourizad has also been forwarded to head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani and Head of the Parliament, Ali Larijani.