Ahmad Ghassaban, one of the imprisoned students, was badly beaten by the guardians of the Evin prison while he was being transferred from section #8 to section #7. Yesterday morning Ahmad Ghassaban was informed about being transferred to Section #7 of the Evin prison. While preparing to be transferred, Ghassaban went to Bozorgnia’s office (the director of section #8) to ask about the reason. A few minutes after, the laud voices of arguing, bad language and beating was heard from the office. According to this report, Ziyaie, Bozorgnia’s assistant started a bad language and beat Ghassaban for no reason.
Majid Tavakoli, another imprisoned student who helped Ghassaban to move his belongings and accompanied him to the office, was also beaten by Ziyaie without having any argument with the authorities. According to the same report, several prisoners gathered in front of Bozorgnia’s office after hearing the arguments and beating of the students. The guardians immediately locked the doors and threatened the prisoners to return back to their cells. The students were being beaten for 20 minutes in the office. At the end, Majid Tavakoli and Ahmad Ghassaban, who were seriously injured, were transferred to the open-air section of the prison. Ahmad Ghassaban was then transferred to salon #1 of section #7 and Majid Tavakoli returned back to the section #8. The students’ situation was reported to be very serious. Their clothes were ripped apart and blood stains could be observed on their clothes. Ahmad Ghassaban’s glasses were also broken. They were not able to speak to their families for several hours after.
Several people including Bozorgnia, the director of the section #8; Ziyaie, Bozorgnia’s assistant; Monazzahian, the chief attorney of the section; Asghari and Abbasi and two other guardians were involved in beating the students. Ziyaie is a former officer of the ministry of information who has been recently appointed as the deputy of the section #8. He threatened the students to be killed and told them “all the preparations have been previously made and no one is going to prevent this”. “I will kill you and no one can do anything about this” he told the students. Interestingly, Ziyaie told the students that he has been working as one of the interrogators under Lajevardi (the former head of the Iran prisons organization) in the past. Other reports state that taking actions against the students has been started from several days ago when a person named Janidi repeatedly used bad language against the students and tried to have argument with them.
After several reports concerning the students will be transferred to Ghezel-Hesar Prison or will be separated from each other, the families of the students were assured by the authorities in the justice system that these are not going to happen. It seems that these horrible actions against the students have being ordered as revenge to the students’ resistance by the security forces behind publication of fabricated journals of Amirkabir University.
It was obvious that such a sinister action was preplanned. While the time of meeting with families is every Wednesday, the students were beaten on Wednesday afternoon to allow sufficient time for the wounds to be healed over the next 7 days (prior to the next meeting).
Also there has been worrying news of torturing and beating of Ali Azizi, another student who is imprisoned in section #209. Those who have been recently released from this prison have also confirmed the news regarding the torture of Ali Azizi. These reports mention that his clothes had been ripped apart and horrible wounds could be seen on his face. According to these reports, he has been terribly tortured and he suffers from severe back pain. As a result, Azizi has asked the authorities several times to be checked by the physicians of the prison.
In the summer of this year, the head of judicial system asked the chief prosecutor of Tehran to investigate the news regarding the torture of the students imprisoned in section #209. After 5 months of investigation, Avayee reported that there is no evidence of torturing and wounds in the students’ bodies and the medical documents of section #209 are missing. Thos students who have been recently released from section #209 have also confirmed the news regarding the torture, beating and assaulting the students. Interestingly, the torturers are exactly the same persons in charge of torturing of the eight Amirkabir University students in the spring. This news has been reported several times from the Evin prison and the families of the students are now very concerned about the health and safety of their love ones.
What we have said here is only a brief listing of academic violations and denial of right to education in Iranian universities today. Students are determined to continue their legal and rightful struggle to promote independence of universities and uphold academic freedoms, although many are sacrificed down this path.
Iran is a state party to both the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (without reservation) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), both of which prohibit the execution of persons under the age of 18 at the time of their offense. In ratifying the CRC, Iran declared an extremely broad reservation, “not to apply any provisions or articles of the Convention that are incompatible with Islamic Laws.”
one must not forget that one aspect of “security” cases is the image that they carry for the groups that advance such issues. Therefore, before fake charges take to the news-media and become public, those who have had a hand in arresting the students must be weakened. Otherwise, after the severe charges are made public, repeated and are tied to the image of the actors, even the intervention of the head of the judiciary (as history demonstrates) cannot be of much help to the detainees.
How can we tell the judiciary officials of Iran that according to law juveniles can stay alive and continue to live with appropriate and suitable punishment? How must one make this request from the judiciary a public and wide-spread demand and point out that killing a juvenile who has not wholeheartedly committed an act does not solve any of the real problems facing the country?
Thousands of university students in an Iranian city have held a protest against the attempted sexual harassment of a female colleague by a top university official, the press reported on Monday. About 3,000 students at the university in the northwestern city of Zanjan staged the sit-in protest over the weekend at a sports hall on campus, the reports said.
