Appeal To Save The Lives of Iranian Prisoners

An International Appeal To Save The Lives of Iranian Political Prisoners From Deadly Liquidation

SMCCDI Political Committee June 6, 2001

To His Excellency Mr. Maurice Copithorne: The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights:

We wish to inform you that the danger of death threatens the life of Mr. Ezzatollah Sahabi, the managing editor of the "Iran-e-Farda" (Tomorrow’s Iran) monthly, and a well known and tireless freedom fighter.

He has spent the last six months in solitary confinement at the Revolutionary Guard’s Prison 59 without any evidence or legal explanation as to the reason(s) for his detention by the Revolutionary Court. Sahabi was sentenced to four years in jail in January, for attending a controversial conference in Berlin and merely, because he is a free thinker. This 75-year-old man does not even have the right to see his wife and children.

Unfortunately, he has been subjected to severe physical and psychological torture by the gang of Saeed Emami torturers. The use of mind-altering neuroleptic drugs, frequently used by the regime’s ruling Mafia to extort confessions, have seriously affected his health condition.

Recent contradictory news about Sahabi’s heart attack and death from both governmental and non-governmental sources have caused great concern among students and the general public.

The Student Movement Coordination Committee For Democracy in Iran strongly condemns such inhumane acts.

SMCCDI also informs the world community that death threatens the lives of political prisoners for the ruling monopolists plan a mass assassination of all political prisoners in Iran. A similar event took place in 1988, when a bloody liquidation of political prisoners resulted in the total annihilation of opposition figures in the country.

The SMCCDI sincerely asks you and the international community to intervene immediately, by sending investigators to Iran to prevent the reoccurrence of a humanitarian catastrophe. We ask the world community to increase its pressure on the government of the Islamic Republic, and force its officials to respect human rights and liberate all political prisoners.

These prisoners are innocent. Their only crime is that they long for freedom and democracy.

Tehran, 16 Khordad 1380 (6 June 2001)

The "Student Movement Coordination Committee For Democracy In Iran" www.iran-daneshjoo.org

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