Alarming Report about Influence of Interrogators in Evin

Abdollah Momeni - the spokesperson of Iran’s largest university student alumni group - who was released in mid-March after posting $800,000 in bail, was returned to prison at the end of his temporary release.  Momeni returned to prison yesterday after being subjected to extreme pressures by Iran’s security apparatus.  His wife, Fatemeh Adinevand, told Rooz yesterday, “Every week they presented him with some request, and there was no way Abdollah could satisfy them.”  Meanwhile, Kalame website close to reformists released a report about the condition of political prisoners and behind-the-scenes interrogation practices in Iran’s prisons.

Momeni, who was also the head of Mehdi Karoubi’s “Free Citizen Campaign” was arrested last June in the first round of massive arrests of journalists, civil and political activists.  He was sentenced to six years imprisonment and two years of probation in court and was given a temporary release in early March.

Kalame reported that during his release Momeni was repeatedly summoned to the intelligence ministry and was asked to cooperate with the ministry by delivering speeches against Tahkim Vahdat, Iran’s student movement, the two leading opponents of the regime, i.e. Mehdi Karoubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi.  Security agents even asked Momeni to participate in student gatherings that they would set up and recite their dictated positions as his own.  The gatherings were scheduled to take place in various cities across Iran.  They conditioned the release of the Advar Tahkim Vahdat’s spokesperson on the satisfaction of these demands.  

Abdollah Momeni’s wife meanwhile said that the student activist’s temporary release was extended several times one day at a time, and once for 16 days, but each time they presented Momeni with a request that he simply not meet.

Noting that she didn’t expect her husband to be taken back to prison, she said, “The gentlemen called and said don’t allow Mr. Mousavi into your house.  I personally don’t allow myself to tell anyone not to come to my house, and secondly, Mr. Mousavi in my opinion is the pride of every Iranian.”

Abdollah Momeni’s wife added, “It’s not much of a difference whether he is in the smaller prison of Evin or the larger prison [of Iran].  Evin is smaller.  This is larger but it’s still a prison.”  

Torture and Added Pressure

In a report detailing the security apparatus’s interrogation and torture of journalists and political prisoners, Kalame wrote, “The interrogator for Abdollah Momeni and several other prisoners is an individual who introduces himself as ‘seyyed,’ which means a successor to the original Shiite imams. He proudly boasts having a background in the Shah regime’s SAVAK [intelligence organization].  He uses physical abuse and insult at all stages of his interrogations.  Even prison ward 209 officials have on a number of occasions objected to his methods of torture.  The prison guards have even asked prisoners not to let him treat them in that fashion. So fearsome is this seyed that some interrogators who become desperate with their prisoners threaten them by saying that they would bring in and let seyed do the interrogations.”  

The report added, “An examination of the experience of prisoners that are currently held in the intelligence ministry’s ward in Evin prison shows that interrogators, who identify themselves as experts on prisoners, determine the ultimate fate of these detainees.  In many cases their authority exceeds that of the judiciary’s prosecutors, the court and even judges.”