Rights groups accuses Iran of torturing critics

Nuclear program overshadowing human rights crisis: HRW

BRUSSLES/ TEHRAN (Agencies)

Iran’s human rights crisis deepened in 2010 as the regime used torture and intimidation to keep
up pressure on critics and consolidate power, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday. “Restrictions on freedom of expression and association, as well as religious and gender-based discrimination, continued unabated,” HRW said in its 2010 report. The rights group complained that Iran’s controversial nuclear program was “overshadowing serious concerns regarding the deepening human rights crisis in the country.”

Iran’s security forces had arrested more than 6,000 individuals after the disputed June 2009 presidential election, which reinstated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power amid fraud allegations.

“Interrogators used torture to extract confessions, on which the judiciary relied to sentence people to long prison terms and even death,” the group said.

Iran executed at least nine “political dissidents” since November 2009, all of them convicted of moharebeh (enmity against God), it said, adding that 16 Kurds presently face execution for their alleged support of armed groups.

“Hundreds including lawyers, rights defenders, journalists, civil society activists, and opposition leaders remain in detention without charge,” HRW said, accusing Iran of intimidating human rights lawyers and preventing them from effectively representing political detainees.

It named several journalists jailed on charges that include insulting government officials and harming national security with the heaviest sentence — 19.5 years — handed down to Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan.

The report also slammed Iran over its treatment of religious minorities, including Sunni Muslim, adherents to the banned Baha’i faith, Sufis and Christian converts.

“Iranian laws continue to discriminate against religious minorities, including Sunni Muslims, in employment and education. Sunni Muslims, about 10 percent of the population, cannot construct mosques in major cities,” it said.

Seven leaders of the national Baha’i organization have been sentenced to 10 years in prison, accused of espionage.

However, Shiite clerics critical of the government were not immune either as “the government relied on plainclothes security forces and the Basij, a state-sponsored paramilitary force, to target” them, the group said.

“Ayatollah Kazemini Boroujerdi, whose understanding of Islam calls for the separation of religion and government, entered his fourth year in prison … on unknown charges,” it added.

Activists hanged

Earlier on Monday Iran activists it said were members of an exiled group and who had joined protests against the result of the 2009 presidential poll, despite Washington urging that they be freed.

The official IRNA news agency says Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Hajaghaei were executed Monday after an appeals court upheld their death sentences.

It says they filmed and distributed footage of massive anti-government protests that swept Iran after the disputed presidential election in June 2009. The opposition contends Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won through ballot fraud.

The two men were also accused of visiting the opposition group, the People’s Mujahedeen’s base in neighboring Iraq for training.

The opposition says more than 80 demonstrators were killed in the post-election unrest. The government puts the deaths at 30, accusing the opposition of seeking to topple the ruling system.