Mayors of Tehran's different districts, detained on corruption charges, were subjected to various forms of physical and psychological tortures, the newspapers reported. The officials said that they also witnessed the torture of other prisoners.
The pro-Khatami daily, Toos, wrote that a number of Tehran's municipality officials were confined to solitary cells for five to six months and subjected to such tortures as "lashing," "beating," "deprivation of sleep and food," among other forms of maltreatment.
Previously, a senior Judiciary official had also acknowledged "the use of torture and cruel treatment to extract confession from detainees and the existence of secret detention centers run by different government agencies, including the State Security Forces, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Judiciary and the Armed Forces."
Obviously, when the Judiciary and other suppressive organs apply such tortures to government officials, one can imagine the kind of brutal treatment to which the Mojahedin and other political prisoners are subjected.
After Assadollah Lajevardi, the ex-head of Iran's Prisons Organization, described as Iran's Eichmann for murdering tens of thousands of political prisoners, was brought to justice on August 23, mullahs' President Khatami lauded him as "a servant of the people." He ordered "intelligence and security" officials to "identify [the perpetrators] as quickly as possible so that they are punished for their heinous act." In recent weeks, Ali Akbar Akbari, a 20-year-old member of the Mojahedin was slain under brutal tortures. Simultaneously, the Intelligence Ministry has arrested a number of former political prisoners and put them under torture.
These reports reaffirm that all claims about "the rule of law" and "civil society" are absolutely baseless and that as far as the suppression of the Iranian people is concerned, the clerical regime's factions do not differ in their conduct and share responsibility in the atrocities perpetrated in the last 19 years.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
September 6, 1998
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