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Human Rights Watch: Iranian judges have "shut down" dissent

judges have detained and tortured writers, student leaders and political activists in secret prisons and muzzled reform-minded newspapers to "shut down" dissent, Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday that holds out little hope the trend can be reversed.

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"There is widespread agreement that the political environment has become increasingly abusive and defined by force," Human Rights Watch said in a 73-page report based on interviews with former political prisoners.

The report, "Like the Dead in Their Coffins: Torture, Detention, and the Crushing of Dissent in Iran," echoed the pessimism of Iran's reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who has all but conceded defeat in his struggle with hard-liners. Khatami's calls for expanding democratic rights and easing strict Islamic social rules were applauded by many Iranians, but denounced by hard-liners as a betrayal of the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the shah and brought clerics to power.

The Iranian judiciary is seen as firmly in the hands of hard-liners, led by Iran's supreme and unelected leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. New York-based Human Rights Watch said the judiciary was "at the center of the human rights violations" documented in its report.

During his first four-year presidential term, Khatami had managed to relax some of the country's strict Islamic laws and allow greater media freedoms. By the time of Khatami's second-term victory in 2001, hard-liners were fighting back, shutting down more than 100 liberal publications and detaining dozens of activists and writers for criticizing unelected hard-line clerics.

"The Iranian authorities have managed, in the span of four years, to virtually silence the political opposition within the country through the systematic use of indefinite solitary confinement of political prisoners, physical torture of student activists and denial of basic due process rights to all those detained for the expression of dissenting views," Human Rights Watch said.

"A small group of judges accountable only to (Khamenei) has shut down public dissent," the group added, saying the judges had vigilantes and security agents at their disposal to detain and interrogate dissidents, hid their activities in secret prisons and shut down newspapers that had spoken up for political prisoners.

Asked Sunday about reports of human rights violations, judiciary spokesman Naser Hosseini said torture had decreased significantly in Iran since the judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, in April ordered a ban on the use of torture to obtain confessions. Shahroudi's ban was seen as the first public acknowledgment of the practice in the country.

Despite Hosseini's assurances, Iranian reformist lawyer Mohsen Rahami said human rights violations remained a concern.

Human Rights Watch, describing the future as "bleak," said: "The authorities have largely succeeded in their campaign to send a message to the broader public that the costs of voicing peaceful political criticism are unbearably high."

Human Rights Watch interviewed former political prisoners outside Iran. Many were afraid to allow their names to be used or speak openly inside Iran. They described beatings and long stays in windowless, soundproof solitary cells described as "coffins."

One student leader and outspoken critic of the government said he was psychologically tortured by being told during his detention that his parents had had a car accident as they rushed to jail to post bail for him. His father, he was told, had been killed.

"If you had not done this, your father would not have died. This is justice for what you did," the student said he was told. He realized it was a lie only when he saw his parents in court later.

The report was issued a month before the anniversary of a 1999 raid on a Tehran University dormitory that killed one person and touched off days of anti-government protests. The anniversary is usually marked by student protests - and attempts by security forces and pro-government vigilantes to suppress demonstrations.

Human Rights Watch singled out Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, a former judge, in its report. As a judge, Mortazavi ordered the closure of scores of reformist newspapers. Human Rights Watch said he "has been personally involved in a number of coercive interrogations, threats against individual arrestees, and has even allegedly given the order for individual arrestees to be physically abused."

Reformists in Iran have publicly accused Mortazavi of illegally detaining a Canadian photojournalist of Iranian origin and then covering up facts surrounding her death in custody last July.

In April, Iran's unelected clerics honored Mortazavi as "best manager" in the judiciary, under whose umbrella prosecutors fall.