MAHABAD RIOTING CONTINUE
MAHABAD (WESTERN AZARBAIJAN, IRAN) 20 Sept. (IPS) Two weeks after at least one policeman was killed and scores of other security forces and rebellious prisoners were wounded, the situation in the city of Mahabad, in the Kurdish part of the Iranian province of Western Azarbaijan, was reported Thursday to be "tense", with the authorities maintaining a night to down curfew.
According to some Kurdish sources, the jail breakout by prisoners, in the city’s main prison, on 10 September, started after prison authorities started beating in public several political prisoners.
But Mr. Ebrahim Safari, the director general of prisons in Western Azarbaijan province, while confirming the events, said the death resulted from a shoot-out that erupted when several prisoners attacked a prison guard, smashed windows, and took a policeman hostage with the aim to escape prison.
He did not say where the prisoners had received arms to attack prison guards.
Kurdish sources told Iran Press Service that the jail breakout was connected to the killing, a week earlier, of at least three young Kurds, denounced by the authorities as alcohol smugglers, by the revolutionary guards.
According to reports, rioters and relatives of the youngsters attacked a string of public buildings, including state-owned banks and properties and set fire on public transport buses.
Security forces said 16 people were arrested in the unrest, but the Los Angeles-based
Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI), which has good connections with inside Iran, said the number of people killed in the Mahabad prison was much higher than what the authorities admitted.On
10 September, thousands of citizens took to the street of Mahabad to protest against the killing by police of three people who were arrested on suspicion of alcohol smuggling, the SMCCDI said in a dispatch from Tehran.Independent Kurdish sources denied that the three killed young ones were smugglers and said they had been shot by security forces following a political argumentation with the guards.
As to the prison rebellion, the same source said the Mahabad’s central jail is so crowded with prisoners to the point that the inmates have no room to sleep.
The events, nevertheless, translates the nervousness of the populations with the central administration in Tehran, run by a bunch of conservative clerics that, according to Iranian experts, are in the impossibility of ruling the nation properly. ENDS MAHABAD UNREST 20902