Clerical regime's Prosecutor General admits that prisons were "overcrowded with political prisoners" while mullahs denied this and described them as criminals
- In letter to Kofi Annan, Rajavi calls for international mission to Iran to investigate fate of political prisoners

In response to a question about formation of "political courts" and the Judiciary's 20-year delay in this regard, Prosecutor General Morteza Moqtadai said: "At the time, we were preoccupied with the problem of opposition groups. The prisons were overcrowded and all of them said they were political prisoners. It was, therefore, decided at the time to shelve this issue. It was announced that there were no political prisoners and that they were all criminals."

Moqtadai's remarks represent a brazen confession to the presence of a large number of political prisoners in Iran.

On numerous occasions, including on May 17, 1997, Judiciary Chief Mohammad Yazdi had falsely claimed that "no one in Iran is imprisoned for his thoughts and beliefs."

Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, wrote a letter to the UN Secretary General, in this regard: The brazen remarks by the clerical regime's Prosecutor General and his explicit acknowledgment that the presence of political prisoners had been deliberately denied by the regime's officials, confirm the Iranian Resistance's repeated appeals to international organizations over the past years about the massacre of political prisoners and its request for dispatch of a delegation to visit the prisons of the mullahs' medieval regime in Iran.

Mr. Rajavi added: At least 120,000 persons have been executed for their political views and beliefs under the mullahs' rule. Many more have been incarcerated and tortured for the same reasons. In addition to official prisons, agents of the Intelligence Ministry torture, interrogate and obtain forced confessions from political opponents in hundreds of safe houses in cities across the country.

Referring to the regime's penal laws, the NCR President added: Under a regime where every form of gathering of more than two persons is banned even outside its borders, and every form of insult to its leaders are heavily punished, even by death, hundreds of persons are arrested every day and subjected to torture and interrogation under the pretext of political opposition. The regime's official dailies are also full of the news of shortage of space in official prisons and arrest and executions under the bogus pretext of "drug smuggling."

Mr. Rajavi once again emphasized the need for the UN to dispatch an international delegation to investigate the fate of political prisoners in Iran. He urged the United Nations to adopt practical measures and international sanctions against the mullahs' inhuman regime.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
June 30, 1999

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