Iranian intelligence police tortured a 35-year-old inmate to death in western Iran yesterday. According to Hengaw human rights website, the man identified as Bahman Oghabi was brutally beaten until he passed out in an Islamabad police station, and later passed away in the hospital.
Bahman Oghabi was detained on December 31, 2020. He was beaten at the police station on January 3 and was in intensive care under strict security after he passed out. According to the report, the police told the Oghabi family that their son went in a coma after taking tramadol (a painkiller). His family said Oghabi did not even smoke let alone take any drugs.
An informed source said Oghabi’s father filed a complaint, but that except a request by the Judiciary to see Bahman Oghabi’s medical files no other measures were carried out and the police were not investigated.
The young man was accused of killing three people. He was brutally tortured three days after his arrest.
According to an employee of Iran’s Police Criminal Investigation Department, “investigators” systematically torture suspects into giving confessions, later used as evidence in court.
Even though confessing under torture is not credible evidence even according to laws of the Islamic Republic, many people have been forced to confess to crimes they have not committed and are then given heavy prison terms or are executed based on those confessions.
According to a lawyer, due to the lack of workforce in Iran’s Police Investigation Departments, and a lack of training in actual scientific crime investigation, the police usually turn to confessions and testimonies.
Mousa Barzin Khaliflu said that if the suspect confesses, they announce the end of interrogations and hand over the case to the Judiciary.
According to the lawyer, since everyone that is brought to the Police Investigation Department is considered a criminal, beating, and torturing them is considered the norm.
Iran kills 4 prisoners under torture in 2020
According to the Human Rights Monitor Annual report, at least four prisoners were killed because of torture and ill-treatment in Iranian prisons in 2020.
On February 1, 2020, Mohammad Ameri, a non-political prisoner, died after he was brutally beaten by prison guards in Rajaie Shahr Prison in Karaj.
A death-row juvenile prisoner, Danial Zeinolabedini , was killed by prison guards in Mahabad Prison, in Iranian Kurdistan. His body was handed over to his family on April 2, 2020. “When we collected his body and took off his clothes, we saw that his whole body was bruised and there were stitches on his abdomen,” a person close to his family said.
A 27-year-old man was killed under torture in Khorramabad Central Prison, western Iran. Farhad Vosuqi, married and father to a three-month-old boy, was tortured and killed on November 10, 2020.
Farhad’s brother confirmed the report, saying he witnessed the torture marks on his brother’s body in forensics. Farhad lived in the city of Nourabad in Lorestan Province.
On November 19, 2020, a 19-year-old prisoner in Gorgan’s Amir Abad prison in northeastern Iran was tortured to death. The young man was identified as Mohammad Davaji, from Oudek Davaji village, and was detained for getting into a fight.
Source » irannewswire