YUSEFI-ESHKEVARI TRANSFERRED TO THE NOTORIOUS PRISON NUMBER 59
By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor
PARIS 14 Apr. (IPS) Hojjatoleslam Hasan Yusefi-Eshkevari, a prominent and
popular nationalist-religious activist has been transferred to a special Islamic
revolution Guards prison, his family and relatives confirmed Saturday,
expressing "serious" concern over his fate.
The sudden transfer of Mr. Yusefi-Eshkevari to the secret Revolutionary guards prison could be in relation with both the recent crackdown on the Iran Freedom Movement (IFM) and Islamist-nationalist groups and the coming presidential elections, Iranian political analysts said.
On orders from Mr. Ali Khameneh'i, the Islamic revolution tribunal of Tehran arrested some 60 members of the IFM and Islamist-nationalists in two successive waves and officially banned all their activities.
Mr. Yusefi-Eshkevari was arrested last August, accused of participation in the now famous Berlin Conference of April 2000 and latter charged by the controversial leader-controlled Clergymen’s Special Tribunal (CST) of activities against the security of the State, offending the leader and above all, apostasy and "moharebeh", an Arabic word meaning fighting God.
If confirmed by the Appeals Court, the above-mentioned accusations carry death penalty.
In a speech pronounced at the Berlin meeting, Mr. Yusefi-Eshkevari, a leading islamist reformer, had defended the right of Muslim women to choose their dress, saying wearing "hejab", or the Islamic dress imposed on them by the Iranian clerical rulers, was not compulsory.
Arguing that the Conference to debate the future of reforms in the aftermath of the landslide victory of reformers in the February 2000 Legislative elections had been organised by "enemies" of the Islamic Republic on "inspiration" from "international Zionist circles", including the German Green Party and the United States, the badly lamed Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i orchestrated the arrest of all the 17 Iranian personalities who were invited to the Conference and shut all but few independent and reformist press.
But Iranian political observers said the crackdown was part of a project worked out by former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani in agreement with the leader to close the reformist-dominated Majles (parliament), dissolve President Mohammad Khatami’s government and replace it by an "emergency cabinet".
Speaking to Persian services of BBC and RFI (Radio France Internationale), Mr. Ruhollah Eshkevari, the 19 years-old son of the detained cleric said he ignored the reason for the unexpected transfer of his father to the secret prison.
Known as the Prison number 59, the notorious jail situated in Tehran’s Eshrat Abad garrison, depends on the Special Secret Agency, the parallel security organisation created by Mr. Khameneh'i, outside the control of the government, including the Information (Intelligence) Ministry.
He said his father was unaware of his imminent transfer to the fearsome jail when he last met him on Wednesday.
"In Evin (prison), my father, who suffers from an acute diabetes, was receiving adequate attention, but I don’t know about health care and conditions in the new prison", the young Eshkevari said.
Observers said Prison number 59, where other nationalist-religious and some student’s leaders like the veteran political activist Ezzatollah Sahhabi and Mr. Ali Afshari, a member of the Office of Consolidating Unity (OCU), Iranian students largest organisation are held is notorious for extracting confessions from political detainees.
"Though the reasons behind Mr. Yusefi-Eshkevari’s transfer to a new prison might be in connection with the recent clampdown on Islamist-nationalist, but experience shows that there are no reasonable logics behind the conservatives actions but sheer madness", explained Mr. Mohammad Reza Darvish, a Paris-based nationalist-religious close to Mr. Yusefi-Eshkevari.
Talking to Iran Press Service on the phone, Mr. Darvish said "astounded" by their heavy defeats at all the last elections, the conservatives, led by Mr. Khameneh'i, are after booting out all other players from the playground.
"Facing a terrible challenge, the hard-liners do not know how to handle it but to use force and violence. However, having engaged all their weapons and might, they are frightened at the prospects the next presidential elections harbours", he added.
In his view, the 8th June race is important not because of because of the participation or not participation of Mr. Khatami, but on the way the people behave, "as, whether the turn out is low or massive, the result for the conservatives and the regime they incarnate would be a terrible fiasco" he observed. ENDS ESHKEVARI JAIL TRANSFER 14401