Tuesday
Sep152009
UPDATED Iran: Complete Text of Karroubi Letter to The Iranian People (14 September)
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 6:46
Iran: English Translation of Judiciary Report on Karroubi Allegations
The Latest from Iran (14 September): Countdown to Friday
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UPDATE 15 September: We're now posting the translation provided by Evan Siegel on his site "Iran Rises". The original summary translation by an Iranian activist via Twitter follows below that:
23 Shahrivar 1388/September 14, 2009
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
To the Noble and History-Making Nation of Iran.
As you know, Your Servant during the days following the elections stormy events have passed these last three months for this country and this system. Letters of admonition and information were written one after the other to the officials in the hope that there would be an opening and lest rights be trampled and there be oppression and the suffering and sighs of the oppressed would seize our skirts and not release them. For as we know from religion’s counsel and history’s experience, “The realm survives in unbelief but does not survive in oppression.” [In Arabic.]
Three months have passed for our country, but what three months! In our ninth presidential elections we slept for an hour and woke up, it was as if we had fallen into the sleep of those of the Seven Sleepers2 everything was changed. But in the recent presidential elections, as I have said before, staying awake until dawn would not have done any good, since the ugliness had passe from stealing by night to the point of highway robbery. But this was not the beginning of the matter. I could never have foreseen the day that in the Islamic Republic the people’s calm and peaceful demonstrations would be answered as they were. The people’s questions and confusion about the fate of the votes they had cast were answered, but not with proof and logic, but with bullets and batons and clubs and beating. I saw everything which was far from the expected, scenes which re-awoke memories of my youth. As time passed and events unfolded, though, other news came, of torture and astonishing deeds from within nameless detention centers, news which increased the astonishment of myself and every other observer. People came and reported or presented documents and offered witness about what they had undergone during their days in prison.
My God, what did Mehdi Karoubi see and hear? Amazing! If only I was not alive and had not seen the day that in the Islamic Republic, a citizen would come to me and complain that every variety of appalling and unnatural act would be done in unknown buildings and by less known people: Stripping people and making them face each other and subjecting them to vile insults and urinating in their faces and releasing boys and girls with their hands and eyes bound into the wilderness. It was not long after that reports also arrived of the rape of girls and boys in the detention sites. I said to myself, “Where indeed have we arrived three years after the revolution and two months after the Imam’s death?”
It was natural that our zeal would be aroused. I wrote that reports of rape and torture and the practice of unnatural acts were arriving and I ask you, without my prejudging the matter, to investigate and learn if these disasters have occurred or not. This letter was published. But the reply was a hue and cry and insults and threats rained down on me. Friday preachers used their Friday prayer tribunes to say whatever they could against me and attribute things to me in a coordinated effort originating from the administration’s orders. As this happened, my doubts became more grave. I said to myself, “If such disasters had not occurred, they would have said so. But such unnatural attacks from the tribunes, large and small, of Friday prayers and such unnatural insults from some of the press show that some fire had landed on a number of people’s crops. I saw myself as duty-bound to stand up and not abandon the field.
Read rest of translation....
The summary translation of "PersianBanoo" (14 September)
As you know, I as your servant have written several letters to the authorities about the post-election events. I could have never predicted that in the Islamic Republic, they would answer people's peaceful demonstrations with batons and bullets. I witnessed the unthinkable on the streets and alleyways. I saw scenes that reminded me of my younger years.
As time passed, I heard the news of torture in the prisons and unthinkable acts in unnamed and unknown detention centres and unknown buildings and by unknown people. Detainees were treated with shameful and indecent acts, from making prisoners sit naked across each other, urinating on their faces, to releasing young girls and boys handcufffed in outskirts of the city. As though these were not enough, I started hearing reports of rapes. Three decades after the Revolution and two decades after Imam [Khomeini]'s passing, what have we become?
So I wrote a letter to the authorities asking for an investigation into these matters. Their answer was bombarding me with slanders and threats. The Friday Prayer Imams, by order, across the country slandered me. I told myself, if such atrocities had not happened they should just deny them, but instead from Friday Prayer tribunes and their media they attacked me, so I decided to stand firm.
For example I told them about a person who had been raped. Judicial authorities arranged a meeting. They interrogated this person in two sessions. After the second session, this person told me, "These people are after something else."
The prosecutor had asked this person to go to the medical examiner's office. I told him to do it. They continued interrogating this person and told him he should have remained silent for his own and his family's sake and he should have not allowed some politician to use him. A few days later this young man came to me and said they have gone to his parents and neighbours questioning them. He said his parents didn't know about the rape and his father has been crying since. The boy left and I didn't hear from him anymore.
Last Tuesday his father came to visit me saying he is worried for his son. He said, "We are good Muslims, why are they doing this to us?" He said, "They have talked to all our neighbors and shopkeepers around us." He said that they ring his doorbell constantly and then disappear. He said he has seen a big guy on a motorcycle filming his house.
What they did to this witness became a lesson for me not to introduce any more witnesses to the prosecution.
The second case I brought to their attention with documents was a young girl who had been arrested during a demonstration. She says they played with and touched her breasts in the car on the way to the detention centre. At the centre the interrogators had asked her to remove her pants. She refused. While she was on the floor, the pants were removed. As she was screaming for help, the higher-rank officer came in to enquire. The agents said to him, "This girl has taken her own pants off and is trying to dishonor us."
The third case was a young person who was a member of a legal political party The parents contacted me. They already had a CD made & had the medical examiner's report. This person did not claim he was raped. He said he had passed out during the hard beating he received and does not know what they did to him. He had swelling and redness of the rectum area. The medical examiner confirmed the redness and swelling of the rectum area and suggested the Justice Department should do further investigation on this matter. This person spent five days in detention and was beaten badly. This person was told they were moving him to Evin [Prison], but released him handcuffed and blindfolded outside the city limits.
I had documents for these three cases that I presented to the judicial panel. I verbally informed them of two others. The first was Taraneh Mousavi. I told them her family would not talk to me and asked them to do further investigation to find the truth. The witness to Taraneh's case has also said her family would not talk to him/her. We witnessed the interview of the fake parents of the fake Taraneh on TV. They had told the fake family not to be concerned with anything and they will take care of everything
Apparently Mehdi Karroubi's crime was that he had revealed Taraneh's case, which is similar to the chain murders case. This caused the closing of my newspaper Etemade Melli.
I told them Taraneh's case as I had heard it. Taraneh and friends were arrested in front of Qoba mosque [probably on 28 June]. The girls decided to pass phone numbers to each other so whoever was released earlier could inform families. During the transfers between places, one girl realized Taraneh was not among them. This girl, after her release, contacted Taraneh's family and the authorities to inform them that Taraneh was missing. Apparently Taraneh's mother was quite scared and told this girl not to contact her anymore. I asked the three-member panel to investigate this case and find the truth behind all of this.
[Then Karroubi goes thru a lot of discussion of Saeedeh Pouraghai, saying he realized she was not the daughter of a martyr and explains his conversations with Saeedeh's stepsister. He also talks about finding out that this girl has been a runaway. He than talked about giving all information on Saeedeh and asks the panel to investigate further.
He then talks of an incident about a girl that had been arrested during a demonstration. The girl told him she and another girl had been raped in a van on the way to the detention centre. The girl asked Karoubi not to reveal her identity for if her parents find out she will commit suicide.
Karroubi also talks about the case of a nurse with similar stories whose information and picture he did not release. He says the nurse had been raped and she still had bruises on her body.
Karroubi than talks about how well the meeting went with the three-member panel and how they parted happily....]
The very next day, instead of investigating all of these matters I brought to their attention, they arrested [Alireza] Beheshti and [Morteza] Alviri, seized documents from my office and the Etemade Melli party office.
Now that I am quickly preparing this report, I know they just tried to close the mater somehow and fast. They claim I had no evidence and my charges were baseless. The three-member panel has asked the Justice Department to file charges against me. Do they not know that at the end people will do their own judgement and will decide who is telling the truth?
The Latest from Iran (14 September): Countdown to Friday
Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis
UPDATE 15 September: We're now posting the translation provided by Evan Siegel on his site "Iran Rises". The original summary translation by an Iranian activist via Twitter follows below that:
23 Shahrivar 1388/September 14, 2009In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
To the Noble and History-Making Nation of Iran.
As you know, Your Servant during the days following the elections stormy events have passed these last three months for this country and this system. Letters of admonition and information were written one after the other to the officials in the hope that there would be an opening and lest rights be trampled and there be oppression and the suffering and sighs of the oppressed would seize our skirts and not release them. For as we know from religion’s counsel and history’s experience, “The realm survives in unbelief but does not survive in oppression.” [In Arabic.]
Three months have passed for our country, but what three months! In our ninth presidential elections we slept for an hour and woke up, it was as if we had fallen into the sleep of those of the Seven Sleepers2 everything was changed. But in the recent presidential elections, as I have said before, staying awake until dawn would not have done any good, since the ugliness had passe from stealing by night to the point of highway robbery. But this was not the beginning of the matter. I could never have foreseen the day that in the Islamic Republic the people’s calm and peaceful demonstrations would be answered as they were. The people’s questions and confusion about the fate of the votes they had cast were answered, but not with proof and logic, but with bullets and batons and clubs and beating. I saw everything which was far from the expected, scenes which re-awoke memories of my youth. As time passed and events unfolded, though, other news came, of torture and astonishing deeds from within nameless detention centers, news which increased the astonishment of myself and every other observer. People came and reported or presented documents and offered witness about what they had undergone during their days in prison.
My God, what did Mehdi Karoubi see and hear? Amazing! If only I was not alive and had not seen the day that in the Islamic Republic, a citizen would come to me and complain that every variety of appalling and unnatural act would be done in unknown buildings and by less known people: Stripping people and making them face each other and subjecting them to vile insults and urinating in their faces and releasing boys and girls with their hands and eyes bound into the wilderness. It was not long after that reports also arrived of the rape of girls and boys in the detention sites. I said to myself, “Where indeed have we arrived three years after the revolution and two months after the Imam’s death?”
It was natural that our zeal would be aroused. I wrote that reports of rape and torture and the practice of unnatural acts were arriving and I ask you, without my prejudging the matter, to investigate and learn if these disasters have occurred or not. This letter was published. But the reply was a hue and cry and insults and threats rained down on me. Friday preachers used their Friday prayer tribunes to say whatever they could against me and attribute things to me in a coordinated effort originating from the administration’s orders. As this happened, my doubts became more grave. I said to myself, “If such disasters had not occurred, they would have said so. But such unnatural attacks from the tribunes, large and small, of Friday prayers and such unnatural insults from some of the press show that some fire had landed on a number of people’s crops. I saw myself as duty-bound to stand up and not abandon the field.
Read rest of translation....
The summary translation of "PersianBanoo" (14 September)
As you know, I as your servant have written several letters to the authorities about the post-election events. I could have never predicted that in the Islamic Republic, they would answer people's peaceful demonstrations with batons and bullets. I witnessed the unthinkable on the streets and alleyways. I saw scenes that reminded me of my younger years.
As time passed, I heard the news of torture in the prisons and unthinkable acts in unnamed and unknown detention centres and unknown buildings and by unknown people. Detainees were treated with shameful and indecent acts, from making prisoners sit naked across each other, urinating on their faces, to releasing young girls and boys handcufffed in outskirts of the city. As though these were not enough, I started hearing reports of rapes. Three decades after the Revolution and two decades after Imam [Khomeini]'s passing, what have we become?
So I wrote a letter to the authorities asking for an investigation into these matters. Their answer was bombarding me with slanders and threats. The Friday Prayer Imams, by order, across the country slandered me. I told myself, if such atrocities had not happened they should just deny them, but instead from Friday Prayer tribunes and their media they attacked me, so I decided to stand firm.
For example I told them about a person who had been raped. Judicial authorities arranged a meeting. They interrogated this person in two sessions. After the second session, this person told me, "These people are after something else."
The prosecutor had asked this person to go to the medical examiner's office. I told him to do it. They continued interrogating this person and told him he should have remained silent for his own and his family's sake and he should have not allowed some politician to use him. A few days later this young man came to me and said they have gone to his parents and neighbours questioning them. He said his parents didn't know about the rape and his father has been crying since. The boy left and I didn't hear from him anymore.
Last Tuesday his father came to visit me saying he is worried for his son. He said, "We are good Muslims, why are they doing this to us?" He said, "They have talked to all our neighbors and shopkeepers around us." He said that they ring his doorbell constantly and then disappear. He said he has seen a big guy on a motorcycle filming his house.
What they did to this witness became a lesson for me not to introduce any more witnesses to the prosecution.
The second case I brought to their attention with documents was a young girl who had been arrested during a demonstration. She says they played with and touched her breasts in the car on the way to the detention centre. At the centre the interrogators had asked her to remove her pants. She refused. While she was on the floor, the pants were removed. As she was screaming for help, the higher-rank officer came in to enquire. The agents said to him, "This girl has taken her own pants off and is trying to dishonor us."
The third case was a young person who was a member of a legal political party The parents contacted me. They already had a CD made & had the medical examiner's report. This person did not claim he was raped. He said he had passed out during the hard beating he received and does not know what they did to him. He had swelling and redness of the rectum area. The medical examiner confirmed the redness and swelling of the rectum area and suggested the Justice Department should do further investigation on this matter. This person spent five days in detention and was beaten badly. This person was told they were moving him to Evin [Prison], but released him handcuffed and blindfolded outside the city limits.
I had documents for these three cases that I presented to the judicial panel. I verbally informed them of two others. The first was Taraneh Mousavi. I told them her family would not talk to me and asked them to do further investigation to find the truth. The witness to Taraneh's case has also said her family would not talk to him/her. We witnessed the interview of the fake parents of the fake Taraneh on TV. They had told the fake family not to be concerned with anything and they will take care of everything
Apparently Mehdi Karroubi's crime was that he had revealed Taraneh's case, which is similar to the chain murders case. This caused the closing of my newspaper Etemade Melli.
I told them Taraneh's case as I had heard it. Taraneh and friends were arrested in front of Qoba mosque [probably on 28 June]. The girls decided to pass phone numbers to each other so whoever was released earlier could inform families. During the transfers between places, one girl realized Taraneh was not among them. This girl, after her release, contacted Taraneh's family and the authorities to inform them that Taraneh was missing. Apparently Taraneh's mother was quite scared and told this girl not to contact her anymore. I asked the three-member panel to investigate this case and find the truth behind all of this.
[Then Karroubi goes thru a lot of discussion of Saeedeh Pouraghai, saying he realized she was not the daughter of a martyr and explains his conversations with Saeedeh's stepsister. He also talks about finding out that this girl has been a runaway. He than talked about giving all information on Saeedeh and asks the panel to investigate further.
He then talks of an incident about a girl that had been arrested during a demonstration. The girl told him she and another girl had been raped in a van on the way to the detention centre. The girl asked Karoubi not to reveal her identity for if her parents find out she will commit suicide.
Karroubi also talks about the case of a nurse with similar stories whose information and picture he did not release. He says the nurse had been raped and she still had bruises on her body.
Karroubi than talks about how well the meeting went with the three-member panel and how they parted happily....]
The very next day, instead of investigating all of these matters I brought to their attention, they arrested [Alireza] Beheshti and [Morteza] Alviri, seized documents from my office and the Etemade Melli party office.
Now that I am quickly preparing this report, I know they just tried to close the mater somehow and fast. They claim I had no evidence and my charges were baseless. The three-member panel has asked the Justice Department to file charges against me. Do they not know that at the end people will do their own judgement and will decide who is telling the truth?
2110 GMT: On the day after Grand Ayatollah Montazeri denounced Iran's "military state", his three grandsons --- Mohammad Mehdi, Mohammad Ali Montazeri, and Mohammad Sadegh --- 
It has been 30 years since Free Thinkers and Enlightened Seekers of Justice followed the call of Imam Khomeini and went on the streets to protest the occupation of Jerusalem, which has become a symbol for the oppression and assault of oppressed people by an absolutely illegitimate, fraudulent, and usurping Government. They made their displeasure known in the face of the horrendous crimes and injustice of a certain minority wanting an international totality [of power]. We witness how the shouts of protest and this meaningful participation is like an earthquake shaking the web-like foundations of tyranny & oppression, healing the wounded body of noble Islam.
UPDATE 13 September 2130 GMT: The Supreme Leader's represenative to the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps