Details of Ali Karoubi’s Arrest and Torture

Two days after Mehdi Karoubi’s wife published a letter about her son’s torture, Tehran’s prosecutor general denied the arrest of Ali Karoubi, Mehdi Karoubi’s son, and announced, “He must prove that he was arrested.”

Meanwhile, Nafiseh Panahi, Ali Karoubi’s wife, has revealed new details about her husband’s arrest and torture.  According to her, the head of the special guards threw Ali Karoubi in the back of a pick-up truck and broadcasted through the drive that Karoubi’s son was in his possesion, using abusive language.

The prosecutor, however, said in an interview with ILNA yesterday that Mehdi Karoubi’s son must provide the reasons for and the place of his arrest to prove his allegation.

Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi claimed that Ali Karoubi had not been arrested on February 11 and demanded that he had to provide evidence to prove his allegation.

According to Nafiseh Panahi, however, in addition to having been threatened to rape, Ali Karoubi heard the nastiest insults during his arrest and returned home with a fractured arm, cut open head, swollen body and bloody pants.

Speaking to Deutsche Welle, Nafiseh Nafiseh Panahi said that her husband attended the February 11th rally along with Mehdi Karoubi, adding, “Suddenly a large number of people attacked [Mr. Karoubi] with pepper spray.  The clip is available.  They fired so much pepper spray that nothing was left in the cans.  The situation was such that everyone’s eyes were burning and visibility was reduced.  As a result people lost each other and dispersed.  The bodyguards remained mostly around [Mr. Karoubi] and one of the colleagues noticed that the special guards had captured Ali and were taking him away.  Had he not seen this, we would not have know that Ali had been arrested.”

Mrs. Panahi, who visited Evin Prison after learning of her husband’s arrest, added, “There they told me that everyone arrested that day has been transferred to Evin.  Honestly I felt better, because we know that Evin is more law-abiding than other detention centers.  But when he was released and returned home last night and described his ordeal, we realized what kind of a place he had been kept in.”

She said, “After interrogations were over they had told him, to go and thank God that they had asked us to release you, because if you had stayed here over night we would have killed you.  His eyes were closed until the last moment.  Then they opened the door and throw him onto the street.  A car suddenly stopped and took him home.”  

She says, “When Ali Karoubi arrived home, his pants were bloody, his head was cut open, and his hands were so inured that they had given him something to wrap it with.  They beat him with a baton, fracturing his arm.”  

Ali Karoubi’s mother, who is the sister of three martyrs from the Iran-Iraq war, noted that her mother too was writing a letter about this incident.  She added, “We are worried about people’s children and families that are unknown, and have no outlet to describe the ordeals that they have been put through.  Our aim from these letters and revelations is to prevent others from harm and not allow these incidents to be repeated.”