WIDESPREAD CONDEMNATION OF MR. AFSHARI’S INTERVIEW CONTINUE
By Safa Haeri
PARIS 26 May (IPS) The family of jailed dissident student leader Ali Afshari have reiterated that his recent confession to anti-regime plotting was extracted "under duress," the student news agency ISNA said Tuesday.
Afshari, held in solitary confinement for over five months, had been shown on the leader-controlled television with his tired and pale face shaved, apologising repeatedly to the "supreme leader" for his "mistakes" while stressing that the interview was carried on his own demand.
Observers immediately said by having his beard shaved, the authorities wanted in fact to show his "allegiance" to non-Islamic, western ideals.
"Keeping him in solitary confinement for over 160 days, lack of access to lawyer and spreading lies against him all amount to torture", Mr. Afshari family observed in a letter to Hojjatoleslam Ali Mobbasheri, Head of the Tehran branch of the Islamic revolution Tribunal, cited by ISNA.
But Mr. Mobbasheri assured the same independent news service that not only the confessions were "not extracted under duress", but was requested by the prisoner himself.
"I swear to God that the confessions were not extracted under torture" Mr. Mobbasheri said, asking: "How do those gentlemen who are determined to sow the seeds of suspicion in the minds of our people know that Afshari made his confessions and gave that interview under torture and special circumstances?
Held first in the Evin prison, Mr. Afshari, alongside with Mr. Ezzatollah Sahhabi, a veteran journalist and dissident politician, was transferred to the Prison Number 59 in Tehran, controlled by the Revolutionary Guards intelligence and supervised by the new security services created recently by Ayatollah Khameneh'i.
Hojjatoeslam Hasan Yusefi-Eshkevari, a prominent Islamist reformer condemned to death by the leader-controlled Clergymen’s Special Tribunal is also reported to have been placed in this ward that specialises in extracting confessions from prisoners.
The three men were part of the seventeen Iranians who participated in the now famous Berlin Conference.
The meeting was denounced by the conservatives on the ground that it was organised by German pro-Israel lobbies and the United States, aimed at toppling the Islamic Republic.
In a letter to Mr. Kofi Annan, the General Secretary of the United Nations, a daughter of Mr. Sahhabi said when the family met him last time, he was in such a mentally distorted mood that he had pain to recognise them.
In the so-called "interview" Mr. Afshari said there had been plans to "overthrow the (theocratic) system by peaceful means", referring to charges brought by the Islamic revolution tribunal against Islamist-nationalists and Iran Freedom Movement, accused of planning to change the regime, and outlawed.
"It has been proven in the past that a military option is not feasible and the trend...is toward a cultural and political transformation of the system", Mr. Afshari said the unidentified interviewer.
Afshari, 27, was arrested in December after delivering a fiery campus speech questioning the authority, position and powers of the leader, a position held now by Mr. Khameneh'i, a junior cleric elevated overnight to the rank of Ayatollah after he was named to replace Grand ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic in 1989.
"Organising an interview with the conservative-run state broadcasting and remanding Afshari to solitary confinement all are proof of the rumours spread against you", Mr. Afshari’s family told Mr. Mobbasheri.
"I swear to God that I have met Afshari many times and I have enquired about and been assured of his mental and physical health. He did not make his confessions under torture, pressure or special circumstances. And those who have expressed their views without having any information about his condition are sowing the seeds of suspicion in our society", the Islamic revolution court’s head replied.
Asked by ISNA whether he would permit Afshari to give interviews to other media or express himself freely in public, Mr. Mobbasheri’s answer was a categorical "No". "The court would not permit that", he reiterated without elaborating.
But independent lawyers and jurists as well as the press rebuked the Judiciary, asking how comes that many dissidents request to be interviewed by the VVIR or other conservatives-controlled press like "Keyhan" after being held in solitary cells and subject to psychological pressures and months of uninterrupted interrogation?
The interview created such an outrage both in Iran and outside that even the office of the President that did not approved of Mr. Afshari’s activities was compelled to denounce it.
"Confessions that are recounted and obtained in prison and in particular circumstances cannot on the whole be very convincing to public opinion, even if they are true. We must try to ensure that society can understand what the situation is in normal circumstances and without misgivings", said Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the head of the President’s Office.
"Despite the many provocations, indignities and abuses directed at the student movement - especially in the university dormitory incident [in July 1999] - it behaves in a very enthusiastic, dignified and realistic way" he said laconically, quoted by the official news agency IRNA.
Contrary to the Radio and Television Organisation that is controlled by the conservatives, IRNA supports the embattled President Mohammad Khatami.
Mr. Abtahi also criticised the actions of the leader-controlled Islamic Judiciary against the Office for Consolidating Unity, Iranian students largest association, of which Mr. Afshari is one of the main leaders, saying: Unfortunately, in the current circumstances - because it is felt that the judiciary behaves in a discriminatory fashion with respect to the violations of the law - a large part of society is under the impression that the judiciary does not adhere to the law, and this is a great affliction.
"Discriminatory judicial behaviour ultimately leads to a lack of public confidence in the judicial system and this, too, is a great affliction for any state and system", he further added.
Iranian rights organisations denounced the interview that they said was a repetition of the infamous "Hoviyyat" and "Cheraq" (Light) series produced jointly by the Voice and Visage, the Intelligence Ministry and Revolutionary Guards during the presidency of former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.
The series badly slandered leading intellectuals and politicians, projecting them as immoral, corrupt, pervert people indulging in homosexuality, alcohol drinking, opium smoking and even paedophilia, because influenced by the western "corrupt" culture and civilisation.
Following the broadcast of the series, several intellectuals were found dead in mysterious circumstances, to be found years latter that agents of the Intelligence Ministry, then under Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian, had assassinated them.
Despite being sought after in an international warrant issued by German authorities for his role in the assassination of Iranian political dissidents in that country, Mr. Fallahian was wetted by the leader-controlled Council of Guardians to take part in the forthcoming presidential elections, running against Mr. Khatami.
In an interview with the Prague-based, US funded Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, Mr. Changuiz Pahlavan, a professor of Political Science expressed strongly condemned the interview and expressed his "profound concern" for the future of the students movement.
"There is no doubt that such confessions are obtained for specific, political purposes and intended to be broadcast at precise moments. It is therefore not surprising that Mr. Afshari’s interview is broadcast few weeks before the next presidential elections", Mr. Pahlavan observed.
Mr. Pahlavan, who now teaches in some German universities as guest lecturer, was also one of the participants in the Berlin Conference, described Iran’s Islamic Judiciary as a "catastrophe".
"Former head of the judiciary power Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi do not stop saying expressing one’s view is not a crime under Iran’s Islamic laws. If he is correct and knows what he says, the question then is why so many people are in jail charged for expressing their views in public forums?"
He described the whole issue of the Berlin meeting a "fabricated case" and pointing to the "terrible suffering" of both the condemned and their family, rejected the charges brought by the Judiciary against all those who took part in the Berlin meeting.
Following the Conference, Ayatollah Khameneh'i ordered the Islamic Judiciary to shut down all the independent and reformist publications and jailing influential journalists, editors and publishers.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hamidreza Kaviani, an independent journalist who had disappeared since Monday was reported by his family to have been back home late Thursday night.
However, the family did not say where the journalist had been all these days and in which conditions he was when arriving home.
Author of several books, including "In Search Of Criminals Circle", Mr. Kaviani had been abducted last April by unidentified plain-cloth agents believed to be members of Mr. Khameneh'i’s own security services and abandoned in a deserted Tehran street after several hours of interrogation and beating. ENDS AFSHARI PROTESTS 26501