Iran: Arrest and Suspicious Murder of Environmental Activists

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The mullahs regime toolkit to confront the uprising include terrorism, widespread arrests, fabricating cases and eliminating prisoners.  

Five environmental activists who were arrested nine months ago by the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence on charges of “corruption on earth” are now indicted by the clerical regime’s criminal prosecutor and their files are ready to be submitted to the court. This is despite the fact that the regime’s judiciary had previously charged them with spying.

In another development, Farshid Hakki, an attorney and environmental activist, was suspiciously killed on October 17 near his house in Tehran’s Faiz Garden and his body was set on fire. A few days after the widespread posting of this news on social networks, the regime’s media, including IRGC’s Tasnim news agency, quoting coroner’s office claimed that the cause of his death was self-immolation. The regime’s Attorney General in Tehran, Jafari Dowlatabadi, announced on October 23 that after the transfer of the corpse to the coroner and performing autopsy, no signs of beating or suspicious signs were found.

Subsequently, the coroner dismissed the claims and said that there was no comment on this case, and added that any kind of finding and the cause of death would be announced by the judge of the case.

On January 24, 2018, Dr. Kavous Seyed Emami, 64, a university professor and former director of the Wildlife Agency, and a number of other environmental activists and experts were arrested by the IRGC Intelligence. Dr. Emami died two weeks after the arrest under torture in Evin Prison, but the regime deceitfully claimed that he had committed suicide.

Earlier, at least 14 people who were arrested following the Iranian people’s uprising (December 2017 – January 2018) have been killed under torture in detention. But the regime ridiculously declared the cause of their death as “suicide” or “unavailability of drugs” or “extensive use of narcotics.”

Hassan Norouzi, a spokesman for the Legal and Judicial Committee of the Iranian regime’s parliament, said in a vulgar comment: “They were contemptuous of what they had done and died due to sorrow, or committed suicide after realizing the heinousness of their work.”

The head of the regime’s parliamentary environmental faction, Mohammad Reza Tabesh, questioned this scandalous claim in the parliament and said: “The arrest of a number of environmental activists… is suspicious and the death of Dr. Seyed Emami in prison is unfortunate and increases the ambiguity regarding the charges against the detainees.”

Unable to deal with the uprising and popular protests, the clerical regime has once again resorted to suspicious killings inside the country, as well as widespread arrests, fabricating cases and eliminating prisoners, along with intensifying terrorist plots abroad.

In a Statement on Thursday, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) warned against “the continuation and intensification of these crimes against humanity” and called on “all international human rights organizations to strongly condemn these crimes” urging them to “adopt binding measures, not to allow the clerical regime to continue such crimes.”

“Establishing an international delegation to investigate the status of prisons and prisoners, in particular political prisoners and suspected murders, is necessary more than ever,” the statement said.

 

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