Two protestors executed in Iran in January were subjected to prolonged torture, even enduring artificial executions staged multiple times, reported the Follow-up Committee of Iranian Detainees, an independent Iranian organisation dedicated to monitoring the welfare of arrested protestors.
The organisation has disclosed harrowing details about the extensive use of brutal methods against Mohammad-Mehdi Karami (22) and Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini (39). These inhumane methods include subjecting individuals to a torture technique known as “fried chicken” (Juje Kabab), involving hanging the individual with their hands and feet restrained behind them for a long time. The detainees were also mistreated before court hearings, enduring insults, beatings, and electric shocks.
In December last year, an Iranian court convicted the two men of killing a paramilitary Basij force member near Tehran during October’s nationwide uprisings. This week, the country’s Supreme Court has finalised the verdicts for detained protesters who were being tried in the same case. The sentences include harsh prison terms of up to 15 years in exile, which would mean incarceration in a remote region.
Karami, Hosseini and the other detainees sentenced in the case regarding the Basij member’s death did not have the right to choose their own lawyers for their trials, as Iran’s laws allow those on trial for crimes against national security to be represented in court only by lawyers that have the endorsement of the chief justice.
Previous accounts alluded to instances of torture and coerced confessions. A brother of one of the prisoners in the case had revealed to the media that his brother was subjected to severe beatings during his arrest, which resulted in a broken rib. Subsequently, during interrogations, five more of his ribs were broken. The lack of adequate medical care led to his lung being punctured. Yet this recent revelation starkly exposes the magnitude of the abuse inflicted.
An inside source told the Follow-up Committee that Karami and Hosseini suffered more torture than their co-defendants in the case and they endured the torture for more than one month.
“During this time, they have been artificially executed several times,” the source said. “The prisoners have been told that they would take them and execute them, they took them to the courtyard, blindfolded them. They said they should kneel down, and after a few minutes, they dragged them by their hair or beard on the ground and threw them back into their cells.”
The rights group further highlighted that merely one day prior to their execution, Karami and Hosseini were informed of their supposed pardon, underscoring the psychological turmoil inflicted upon them.
Almost all arrested protesters are on trial for national security reasons. The courts in Iran are using the death penalty to try to crush the ongoing protests in the country, according to the Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
