Mrs. NARGUES MOHAMMADI, WIFE OF Mr. TAQI RAHMANI, ALSO ARRESTED
TEHRAN 29 Aug. (IPS) The Islamic Judiciary of the Islamic Republic arrested Tuesday Mrs. Nargues Mohammadi, the outspoken wife the Islamist-nationalist activist Taqi Rahmani, after she openly accused the Iranian authorities of "illegal, inhuman and immoral" detention of her husband in solitary cell.
Mr. Rahmani, an independent journalist, was arrested last March alongside tens of other Islamist-nationalist and members of the outlawed Iran Freedom Movement (IFM) days before the Iranian year, beginning on 21 of March, charged of "plotting to topple the Islamic Republic".
"Mrs. Narges Mohammadi was detained Tuesday evening after she showed up at the Bench 26 of Tehran's Islamic Revolution Court upon an earlier summons as an "witness", the Iranian official news agency IRNA reported, quoting an unnamed relative of the family, adding that nothing about her place of detention or the motive behind her arrest was known.
Bench 26 is the same tribunal that ordered the arrest of some 60 members and activists of the two groups, rounded up in Tehran and some other major cities, in a crackdown ordered by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the lamed leader of the Iranian ruling Islam-based regime, and held in solitary confinements in undisclosed jails.
In several interventions with the authorities and interviews with Iranian media outside the country, families of the detainees, including Mrs. Rahmani, accused the authorities of gross ill treatment of their relatives, like subjecting them to humiliating physical and psychological tortures, aimed at forcing them into faked confessions.
Four of the detainees have recently been released on heavy bails.
In a fax reproduced by some Iranian reformist newspapers, Mrs. Mohammadi, 29, who is also journalist affiliated to the movement, reiterated that her husband has been in solitary confinement for the last six months, during which time she was only allowed a few minutes telephone conversation.
"I have not had any news of my husband for the last 50 days. The court does not even allow him telephone contact", she said, adding: During his 170 days of imprisonment at an undisclosed location, I have only seen him once, for only a few minutes, at Branch 26 of the Revolution Court. I have not had any news of him since then".
"If the members of the religious-nationalist groups who were arrested en masse in the course of one night; taken to prisons; placed in solitary confinement; suffered humiliation; been accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic system and had strong and serious allegations made against them, then why is that some of these subversives are let out of their cells and allowed to join society, without any trial? And if they are not guilty and the charges against them are baseless, then all of them must be let free, without any condition" she observed.
In her view, the arrest of the religious-nationalist activists, including her husband, is a "faked" scenario hatched at the Islamic Revolution Court to round up some dissidents.
"This is the most inhuman, the most immoral and the most illegal case in relation with a prisoner who has not been tried and therefore his crime not been proved", she told the Persian services of the BBC and Radio France Internationale.
She had met briefly President Mohammad Khatami last week in the corridors of the Majles and was assured by his that she would not get arrested, according to some Tehran papers.
The family of Mr. Hoda Saber, another journalist and religious-nationalist activist said they had not received any news about him since the last four months.
Though supporting Hojjatoleslam Khatami and his promised reforms, the religious-nationalist who enjoy a great popularity in Iran, mostly among the students, do not give him a blanket approval, rather, they often criticise his leniency and lack of firmness in standing up to the conservatives. ENDS NARGUES MOHAMMADI ARRESTED 29801