Iran: Investigate Detention Deaths
Two Alleged Prison Suicides Raise Suspicion
(Washington, DC, January 18, 2008) – Iranian authorities should investigate the sudden deaths of two people while in custody in northwestern Iran, Human Rights Watch said today.
Ebrahim Lotfallahi, 27, died in the detention center in Sanandaj sometime between January 9 and January 15. Zahra Bani-Ameri, a 27-year-old female physician, died in October while in custody in the town of Hamedan. In both cases, officials claimed the cause of death was suicide.
“The sudden death in detention of two apparently healthy young people is extremely alarming,” said Joe Stork, Middle East deputy director at Human Rights Watch. “The government only heightens our concern by quickly dismissing them as suicides.”
Security forces arrested Lotfallahi on January 6, 2008 as he was leaving the Sanandaj campus of Payam Noor University. Lotfallahi’s family does not know what charges, if any, the authorities had brought against him. Three days after his arrest, Lotfallahi’s family visited him in the Sanandaj detention center. His brother told Human Rights Watch that Lotfallahi was in good spirits and seemed fine at the time of the visit.
On January 15, officials from the detention center contacted Lotfallahi’s parents and informed them that they had buried their son in a local cemetery. The officials claimed that Lotfallahi had committed suicide in his cell.
The family told Human Rights Watch that they plan to ask the authorities to exhume the body for a forensic determination of the cause of death.
The death in custody of Bani-Ameri also occurred under suspicious circumstances. On October 12, 2007, police and security forces arrested Bani-Ameri and her fiancé in a public park in the city of Hamedan on charges of having an “illegal relationship.” According to Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, “immoral” relationships between men and women who are not married may be subject to criminal punishment.
On the following day, prison officials informed Bani-Ameri’s family that she had committed suicide in her cell. In statements at the time to the Iranian press, Bani-Ameri’s brother claimed that she had seemed fine during telephone conversations he had with her, including a call 30 minutes before the time of her reported death.
Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi is representing the Bani-Ameri family in their lawsuit against the officials responsible for her arrest and detention.
“These two young lives were extinguished in circumstances that make the official explanation implausible and cry out for accountability,” said Stork. “The Iranian authorities must take credible steps to determine what actually happened and hold accountable any officials responsible for these two deaths.”
United Nations Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions provide that there shall be “thorough, prompt and impartial investigation” of all suspected cases of unlawful killing, including where complaints by relatives suggest unnatural death. The principles state that if the “body has been buried and it later appears that an investigation is required, the body shall be promptly and competently exhumed for an autopsy [which] shall be available to those conducting the autopsy for a sufficient amount of time to enable a thorough investigation to be carried out. … In order to ensure objective results, those conducting the autopsy must be able to function impartially and independently of any potentially implicated persons or organizations or entities.” The principles also state that families of the deceased and their legal representatives shall have access to all information relevant to the investigation, and have the right to insist that a medical representative be present at the autopsy.
Previously, Human Rights Watch has documented and raised concern about the abuse and torture of detainees in Iran. Two reports, “You Can Detain Anyone for Anything” and “Like the Dead in Their Coffins” documented the mistreatment of dissidents and perceived critics of the government in detention centers. In August 2006, Human Rights Watch expressed alarm over reports of past torture and suspicious death in custody of student activist Akbar Mohammadi. In December 2006, Human Rights Watch called on Iran’s Judiciary to investigate the arbitrary detention and alleged torture of bloggers arrested in 2004.
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?
it is easy to predict that the success of student activists in imposing their will and demands on government officials at academic institutions, such as the Teachers Training college and Zanjan University (where the students boldly took the initiative into their own hands), would result in a backlash by extreme right-wing officials who would plan an “instructive” counter-attack against the student movement.Hopefully such a reaction will not come. But from an analytic perspective, one must not negate it altogether.
This is the reason that the moment imprisoned students step out of prison, it becomes clear to every one why they were put behind bars: for simply criticizing the president. It becomes instantly clear why they were subjected to interrogations and what questions were asked of them. These are the events that portray the image of this country. Students, social activists and journalists are certainly not on the list of those that dent this image. The publication of the arrest of students because of their criticism of the president brings forth a caricature image of Mahmud Ahmadinejad which does not match the claims that he made at Columbia University or the image that the regime strives to present about its standing.
There are at least 70 young people on death row who at the time of their arrest were under the age of 16. In the past 12 months, Iranian organisations claim that 80 feminists have been arrested and 20 of them have been sentenced from three to five years in jail. A total of 54 journalists have ended up in prison, several were released without trial after serving jail time, while others remain behind bars. In the past 12 months, 34 newspapers and magazines, among them the feminist magazine Zanan, have been shut down.
