INTERNATIONAL CONCERN GROWS OVER THE CASE OF SIAMAK POORZAND
New York 23 Dec. (IPS) As Iranian clerical-led authorities continue to keep their silence over the case of Mr. Siamak Poorzand, an Iranian independent journalist "abducted" a month ago by plainclothes people presumably agents of the Judiciary, international human rights and organisations continued to express concern about his whereabouts.
Though it is not clear why Mr. Poorzand had been abducted, but informed family and friends sources say his abduction might be connected to his working for foreign-based Iranian media, including radio and television stations based in Los Angeles that beams programmes by satellite to Iran, including interviews with influential Iranian dissidents opposed to the Islamic Republic, including Prince Reza Pahlavi, the 40 years-old son of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
After the Paris-based press watchdog "Reporters Sans Frontieres" (Reporters Without Borders), the Pen Club International and Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was gravely concerned about the detention of the 73 years-old Poorzand.
Mr. Poorzand was last seen leaving his sister’s house at 9:00 pm on November 29. There was no news about him until December 14, when his family received a phone call from the Vice and Virtue Committee in Tehran asking for more clothing for him.
The pressures forced the regime to acknowledge the abduction/arrest and avoid that Poorzand share the fate of several other journalists and intellectuals who were found slaughtered after their abductions.
His family’s efforts to find out where he was being held have been unsuccessful. An ominous development in his case occurred in early December when plainclothes security personal seriously beat Ms. Venus Farimehr, a colleague of Mr. Poorzand. She was reportedly forced to sign a statement confessing to an adulterous relationship with Mr. Pourzand, and incriminating him in other unspecified offences.
In a statement released Saturday, the New York-based HRW said it believes that the Iranian government may be seeking to "fabricate" criminal charges against Mr. Poorzand, "perhaps with the intent to silence him and deter other open critics of the government".
Mr. Poorzand is the husband of human rights lawyer, Mehrangiz Kaar, an outspoken lawyer and human rights activist who continues to face charges in connection with her participation at the now famous Berlin Conference, which in the German capital on April 2000. She is also a former prisoner of conscience.
"We are alarmed by a growing pattern of arrests in Iran where the authorities deny the whereabouts of those detained for weeks or even months", said Hanny Megally, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. "It is precisely during such periods of incommunicado detention that individuals are at greatest risk of being tortured or otherwise pressured into making confessions", the statement said.
According to Amnesty International, Mr. Poorzand heads a newly established Artistic and Cultural Complex, which organises cultural gatherings and provides facilities for artists, writers, journalists and other intellectuals, including well-known women's rights activists, for performance and to discuss their work.
In recent years he has worked as a cultural commentator with several reformist newspapers. All of them have since been closed. Mr Poorzand has also been accused in the past by conservatives in Iran of being sympathetic to the "monarchist" cause, partly because of his association with the press during the reign of the Shah of Iran and also because his estranged first wife is currently working abroad as Chief of Staff for Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah.
"Siamak Poorzand’s safety is at risk," said Megally. "Unless he is charged with a valid criminal offense, the authorities should release him immediately," said Megally.
Over the past eighteen months more than sixty reformist newspapers have been closed and the conservative-dominated Iranian Judiciary has imprisoned scores of journalists and editors working for them. The reformist press has consistently been accused by conservative clerics, including the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, as being "a base of the enemy" and as "satanic," working to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Reporters Sans Frontieres has named Mr. Khameneh’i as "one of the world most dangerous predators of freedom of the press".
Human Rights Watch is gravely concerned that Mr. Poorzand could face
fabricated charges on the basis of Ms. Farimehr’s forced confession or his
alleged links to supporters of the monarchy. ENDS POORZAND HRW 231201