This is while in the past years, the mullahs' anti-human regime has executed more than 100,000 political prisoners in Iran and incarcerated a larger number under brutal torture in its medieval prisons. In many cases, those executed were charged only with the distribution of one leaflet or sale of publications.
In recent years, many political opponents and dissidents in Iran have been arrested or executed under the pretext of ordinary crimes such as drug trafficking.
According to the remarks on June 16 by Assadollah Lajevardi, head of the regime's prisons' organization, there are at least 138,000 prisoners in Iran. The increase in the number of prisoners, Lajevardi said, had forced him to turn all the mosques and cultural centers in the prisons into detention centers.
This official figure which is way below the actual number of prisoners in Iran, shows at least 40% increase relative to the number announced last year by Lajevardi. At the same time, the number of publicly announced executions tripled in 1996 relative to the previous year.
It is worth noting that yesterday, Yazdi's deputy, Mohammad Abbassifar, specifically announced that the regime's security is prior to the fundamental human rights and freedoms. He said that the mullahs ruling Iran will never allow "political and religious freedoms be abused as an instrument to jeopardize [the regime's] national security."
The Iranian Resistance once again calls on the international community to exert pressure to open the Iranian regime's prisons to international investigative missions accompanied by representatives of the Iranian Resistance, something that the regime has refused to do so for 15 years.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran - Paris
June 24, 1997
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