A Framework of Violence: Repression of the Arab Ethnic Minority in the "Islamic Republic of Iran"

[al-Hasani]

A Framework of Violence: Repression of the Arab Ethnic Minority in the Islamic Republic of Iran​

(Thursday, Sept. 25, 2014) –The Arab ethnic minority in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has been subjected to a long history of political, economic and cultural discrimination by successive Iranian governments.

The latest report from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), “A Framework of Violence: Repression of the Arab Ethnic Minority in the Islamic Republic of Iran”, examines these and other human rights violations such as the state surveillance, torture, denial of due process rights, execution and extraterritorial harassment of Arab activists and their families. The detailed testimony in this report demonstrates that the IRI’s violations of the fundamental rights of these citizens, who call themselves Ahwazi Arabs, have fostered an increasingly fraught relationship.

It's interesting how the indigenous Arabs in Iran are treated despite them inhabiting the most prosperous regions of Iran and most historical (Elam - that had nothing to do with any Farsis or Iranians). Interesting that this can happen in a regime that is apparently ruled by Iranian Arabs and which acts more Arab than the Arab themselves and which claims to champion Arab causes. Interesting when a world language like Arabic (4th most spoken language in the world and the language franca of the Islamic world and the Muslim world and one of the most influential languages ever) is obligatory too. Remember also that the vast majority of the Arabs in Iran are Shia. It is also strange that they oppress a people (Arabs) that have influenced them so much religiously, culturally, linguistically, militarily and even ethnically on almost all fronts.

Compare that too how MIGRANT Farsis (not even nationals) are treated in the GCC. Well, you tell me.

P.S: This is not only a problem that involves Arabs in Iran. This goes for all minorities who form 40% of Iran's population. Be they Baluch, Turkmen, Kurd, Turkic Azeri etc.

P.P.S: The link I have provided from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is very long so I will divide the very detailed reports in several posts in this thread. To be continued.


@Arabian Legend @JUBA @Mosamania @BLACKEAGLE @Yzd Khalifa @Full Moon @Frosty @Bubblegum Crisis @Altamimi @Awadd @burning_phoneix @Rakan.SA @fahd tamimi @Naifov @Malik Alashter @Tihamah @tyrant @Frogman @Mahmoud_EGY @agentny17 @Halimi @ebray @Belew_Kelew @Tunisian Marine Corps @Mootaz-khelifi @Algeria @FARSOLDIER @Ahmed Jo @1000 @Malik Alashter @SALMAN AL-FARSI @Andalusi Knight @Arabi @farag @Dino @Chai @thefreesyrian @Hechmi Seif @Amir_Pharaoh etc.

 

[al-Hasani]

Introduction

The widespread protests that followed the disputed June 2009 presidential election in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) have been referred to as critical precursors to the popular uprisings that spread through the Arab world in 2011. According to some commentators, many of the objectives and tactics of the later protest movements, whether street demonstrations in Egypt’s Tahrir Square and Tunisia’s Habib Bourguiba Avenue or the virtual Twitter activism throughout the region, were presaged in Tehran.

While the Iranian movement is seen by some as the inspiration for what later followed in the region, the popular uprisings that spread through the Arab world also, in turn, revitalized some stirrings of dissent in Iran. In a show of solidarity with the protests sweeping the Arab world, the leaders of Iran’s so-called “Green Movement”, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Zahra Rahnavard, called protesters to the street to rally in February 2011. For those actions, the three were placed under house arrest, where they remain to this day.

While the “Arab Spring” fell short of reinvigorating the Iranian street protest movement on a national level, in April 2011 the anti-government protests that spread through the predominantly ethnic Arab southwest regions of Iran were directly patterned after and inspired by the popular dissent in the surrounding Arab world at the time.

In the city of Ahvaz (pronounced “Ahwaz” in Arabic[1]), the provincial capital and largest city of the southwestern province of Khuzestan in Iran, Arab youth were called to the street on April 15, 2011 in what was termed a “Day of Rage” (“Yawm al-Ghazab” in Arabic). Exactly one month prior to this, on March 15, 2011, was the first national Day of Rage in Syria’s budding protest movement. Similarly named “Day of Rage” protests occurred months before against then-Presidents Ben-Ali and Mubarak in Tunisia and Egypt respectively. Like the protests in Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia, the April 15, 2011 Day of Rage against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was organized through social media and networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Word of mouth among internal activist networks, leaflet distribution at night and discussion on Arabic language satellite television networks also buoyed the organization of these protests.

The protests quickly spread from Ahvaz to other Arab-populated towns in Khuzestan such as Abadan, Khorramshahr, Hamidieh, Mahshahr and Shadegan. The “Day of Rage” stretched to four days of demonstrations.[2] Multiple sources allege that Iranian security forces used live ammunition to suppress the protests, and that security services began raids against suspected organizers the day before the protests began.[3] Reports indicated that as many as 15 protesters were killed by security services and police during protests, with “tens” injured and hundreds arrested.[4]

Just as in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia, a volatile combination of socio-economic and political factors formed the root of the protests that erupted in April 2011 in Khuzestan.

The Arab ethnic minority in Iran—or Ahwazi Arabs as they refer to themselves[5]—have a long history of political, economic and cultural discrimination by successive Iranian governments. This report will examine this political oppression, namely in the form of arbitrary arrests, imprisonment and even execution of Arab political activists and other members of civil society.

The introduction to this report is followed by a short methodology section. Then, the first section of this report will give a narrative timeline of events affecting the ethnic Arab population in Iran starting from early history, through the Iranian revolution of 1979 and up to the present day. The second section of the report will provide case studies demonstrating human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian state against Arab activists and other members of civil society. The third section of the report will examine and analyze the actions of the Iranian state against Arab activists and civil society members under international and Iranian laws, followed by a short conclusion.

Methodology

IHRDC gathered and analyzed information for this report from the following sources:

1. Testimony of victims and witnesses. This includes testimony taken from more than 40 separateviva voce interviews conducted by IHRDC lawyers with Arab civic, environmental, cultural and political activists, human rights defenders and journalists, as well as former political prisoners, and the former cell mates, lawyers, relatives and associates of Arab political prisoners who have been executed or are currently on death row in Iran. The majority of these viva voce interviews were conducted in person. Several interviews were conducted remotely via secure voice communication services.

2. Government documents. These include recorded public statements by government officials or institutions, and legal instruments including the Constitution of the IRI and additional statutes.

3. Documents issued by non-governmental organizations. These include interviews, reports and press releases written by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Human Rights House of Iran (RAHANA), and other NGOs.

4. Academic articles and books. These include the works of historians and political scientists who have written about Iran and the Arab population.

5. Media reporting. These include articles and reports by media outlets in English and Persian, including articles from official IRI press agencies, and Iranian and Arab activists and bloggers.

Where the report cites or relies on information provided by government actors or other involved parties, it specifies the source of such information and evaluates the information in light of the relative reliability of each source. The IHRDC has vetted all the sources of information used to compile this report to ensure their credibility and accuracy.

All names of places, people, organizations, etc. originally written in the Persian language have been transliterated using the system of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES), available at http://ijmes.chass.ncsu.edu/docs/TransChart.pdf. Under the IJMES system, names of places with an accepted English spelling and names of prominent cultural or political figures may be spelled according to the English norm.

 

[al-Hasani]

1. Timeline of Events from Early History to the Present Day

Since the inception of the modern Iranian state, ethnic minorities living within the borders of the nation—including Arabs, Kurds, Baluch, and Turkmen—have experienced adverse treatment by successive governments from the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi to the present-day IRI. The modern experience of the ethnic Arab community, who reside in the southwestern corner of Iran, primarily in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, is characterized by the severe hardships of modernization, including political marginalization, a lack of economic opportunity, and environmental degradation,[6] among others.

[7] brought an influx of wealth and foreigners and gradually transformed parts of Khuzestan. Since the early 20th century, over twenty oil fields have been discovered in the province, currently accounting for over 85% of Iran’s oil reserves, according to the United States government’s Energy Information Administration.[8] The increasing dependence[9] of the national economy of Iran on oil revenue also made Khuzestan a province of central importance to the central government in Tehran. This impulse created a tension with the local Bakhtiari, Lur and Arab tribes that had been accustomed to self-rule for generations.[10]

Over time the Bani Ka’b shaykhs (tribal chiefs) established a semi-independent status in southern Khuzestan, a situation that continued until the rise of Reza Shah Pahlavi as Iran’s monarch in 1925.[11] Reza Shah pursued a policy of centralization of the Iranian state, integral to which was the forced settlement of semi-nomadic tribes including the Ahwazi Arab.[12]

The centralizing impulses of the Pahlavi state in the twentieth century chafed with elements of the Ahwazi Arab population.[13] One particularly onerous policy was the temporary forced migration of several Ahwazi Arab families from Khuzestan to Mazandaran, in the north of Iran from 1934-41.[14] Many witnesses had relatives who reportedly traversed this distance of over 600km (380 miles) on foot.[15] According to some reports, thousands are believed to have died along the way.[16]

During the 1960s and 1970s, the first Arab separatist parties, most notably the Ahwaz Liberation Front, emerged.[17] Other forms of political activism in the region were also treated harshly, as was the case throughout Iran during this period. Many witnesses aroused the ire of SAVAK themselves, or had relatives imprisoned.[18]

[19] Having dissolved the Ahwaz Liberation Front, local activists dedicated their efforts to achieving Arab political aims within the framework of the Revolution,[20] as did similar ethnic movements in other provinces[21] and most non-Islamist political parties opposed to the Pahlavi regime.[22]

Ayatollah Mohammad Taher al-Shubayr Khaqani[23], who was a marja taqlid[24] based in Khorramshahr, had secured a significant amount of influence in Khuzestan as head of the local Revolutionary Committee.[25]

Ayatollah Mohammad Taher al-Shubayr Khaqani (1906 – 1986)​

Ayatollah Mohammad Taher al-Shubayr Khaqani was born in Khorramshahr. He moved to Najaf, Iraq in 1926 in order to study Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Following his studies in Najaf, he returned to Khorramshahr where he operated a religious seminary. Over the course of the Islamic revolution during 1978-1979, he was perceived as a moderate cleric and was selected by Ayatollah Khomeini to run committees to establish security in the Khuzestan region. Following a period of conflict in Khorramshahr, he lost favor with Ayatollah Khomeini and was dispatched to Qom in July 1979 as a punitive measure and placed under house arrest. He ultimately died in Qom and was buried in the shrine of Masoumeh, the sister of the eighth Shi’a Imam.


The support for the Revolution did not last long. Ayatollah Khaqani had substantial influence among the Arabs of his era, especially the relatively affluent ones of Khorramshahr.[26] As Khaqani’s suspicions towards Khomeini grew, so did those of many of his Arab followers. As the spring of 1979 progressed, Ayatollah Khaqani began to see the need to voice the grievances of Arabs to the Provisional Government.[27]

At the behest of the Provisional Government, he convened a 30-member “Expeditionary Committee of the Arab Muslim people of Iran”[28] which was sent to Tehran in April to voice twelve demands to the Provisional Government.[29] Similar to the efforts of other ethnic minorities, like the Kurds, to negotiate for greater autonomy and rights under post-Pahlavi rule[30], the negotiations between the Arab delegation and the Tehran leadership ultimately fell apart.

Cultural Center of the Arab People

The Cultural Center of the Arab People is an organization that was formed by certain individuals, including Taher Yassin Halmi (Abu-Jamal) and Nasser Abulfuz, who were leftists and had served as political prisoners under the Shah’s regime. The express purpose of the group was to support Arabic cultural activities in Khorramshahr in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The organization’s central office was located in the site of a former Women’s Organization in Sheikh Khaz’al’s property in Khorramshahr, which was located close to the [office of the Political Organization of the Arab People]. Although the organization’s main offices were shut down during the conflict that took place in Khorramshahr during June 1979, the organization’s members continued their activities. ​

Regardless, the political atmosphere fostered by the Revolution allowed a brief florescence of Arab civil society in Iran. Two major organizations, the Cultural Center of the Arab People of Iran and the Political Organization of the Arab People, were established.[31]The former kept its doors open to Arabs of all political stripes, but the latter had much less room for differences in political opinion outside of the Islamist line.[32] There are conflicting accounts within the Arab community itself as to whether the latter group armed its members.[33]

Around the same time, Admiral Ahmad Madani, a reinstated naval officer and Minister of Defense in the Provisional Government, resigned his post in the cabinet and was appointed as Governor of Khuzestan province by the Provisional Government with the approval of Khomeini. Madani’s statements at the time and in the following months, and those of his aides indicate that he believed that there was a threat of separatism, but most Arab witnesses interviewed dispute this.

As demonstrated in the accounts set out in this report, as the fledging Islamic Republic began to entrench its power and crack down on dissenting ethnic minorities militating for increased autonomy and expanded political rights, the ethnic Arab minority group began to be a target of the centralized government’s ire. In many cases, such repression led to the state perpetrating torture and other forms of ill-treatment, enforced disappearance and arbitrary arrest.

 

[al-Hasani]

1.3.Black Wednesday

As Arabs in Iran grew disillusioned with the course of the Revolution,[34] some took to the streets. In the early stages, these demonstrations were peaceful. Hadi Batili, a Khorramshahr[35] resident who would later be jailed for alleged political activism, recalls:

“…until Black Wednesday, I am a witness…no one in any marches broke a window or burned anything.”[36]
One of the centers of this opposition was Khorramshahr, where Ayatollah Khaqani was based. In the last week of May 1979, the appointed governor, Ahmad Madani met with Ayatollah Khaqani in an apparent attempt to defuse tensions. The two signed an agreement whereby Madani promised to evacuate government forces and the non-Arab members of the revolutionary militia from the area in return for the end of public demonstrations.[37]

Despite the agreement, events took a sharp turn on the evening of May 29, 1979 and for much of the following day, when the situation on the streets of Khorramshahr turned violent.[38] Accounts of the events vary widely.[39] One witness reports the shooting of eleven of his fellow demonstrators, all of whom were unarmed, on their way to a peaceful sit-in to protest the violence.

Political Organization of the Arab People​

The Political Organization of the Arab People was formed in 1978 by Arab activists in Khuzestan who supported Ayatollah Mohammad Taher al-Shubayr Khaqani. The organization held meetings in the Kut Sheikh neighborhood of Khorramshahr. On May 30, 1979, or “Black Wednesday”, heavy conflict broke out in Khorramshah between government officials and Arab activists including members of this group.


Additionally, some witnesses stated that in the early hours of May 30, boats docked outside the naval barracks fired artillery rounds at the headquarters of the Cultural Center of the Arab People of Iran[40] and the Arab People’s Political Organization.[41] One witness stated:

All of the homes near the [Khorramshahr] customs bureau and the port belonged to Arabs, and… 99% of them belonged to Arab activists. Shooting towards those homes began…in the first hours of the morning. A full-scale war broke out, but we only heard the sounds of it… in those early hours.[42]
Others, however, had no such recollection.[43]

Veiled armed men are pictured in the most well-known published photographic evidence of the unrest.[44] According to one witness:

"I saw them in Khorramshahr… maybe ten days before [Black Wednesday]…they had been deployed to the sensitive areas of Khorramshahr…when I asked where they were from, they said that they were commandos from Khorramabad.[45]"

Several claim to have seen demonstrators shot and killed in the early hours of Black Wednesday.[46] There are also allegations that similar, more limited operations were being carried out simultaneously in other towns in Khuzestan. One witness who was in nearby Ahvaz claims to have seen tanks stage an attack on the local headquarters of the Arab People’s Political Organization, and alleges that similar operations took place in Susangerd (in Arabic “Khafajieh”).[47]

While reports from Ahwazi Arab survivors and witnesses of the violence conflict substantially with the official narrative, it is readily apparent that the Iranian government failed to investigate potential human rights violations committed against Arab civilians in May 1979.

Masked gunmen in Khorramshahr during Black Wednesday. Witnesses who were present believe that these individuals were members of the local komiteh paramilitary group from the neighboring province of Lorestan. Photo credit: Tehran Mosavar magazine, 1979

A crowd in Khorramshahr during Black Wednesday. Photo credit: Tehran Mosavar magazine, 1979
​

 

[al-Hasani]

1.4.The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)

Following Black Wednesday, much of the Arab population was left behind by the political institutions of the IRI. The subsequent start of the Iran-Iraq war in September 1980 only served to exacerbate the violent repression of Iranian citizens of Arab ethnicity.

During the conflict, ethnic minorities along Iran’s border with Iraq were periodically caught between the warring nations. Several minorities and political dissident groups faced suspicion. The Arab minority in Iran arguably experienced the worst of this suspicion primarily due to their geographical position and their linguistic and cultural similarities to the very people over the border whose government was at war with the IRI.

Many apolitical residents of the border region between Iran and Iraq became refugees. While some Persian residents had family connections elsewhere in Iran allowing them relative comfort in their flight from the war front,[50] displaced Arabs ended up in refugee camps.[51] Others had to fend for themselves. Hadi Batili recounts the tale of his family’s flight from the war front and their settlement in Ahvaz: “We built a home with our own hands from mud on the outskirts of the city and lived there for over 25 years.”[52]

The repression of the Arab minority in Iran extended into the post-war period with arrests of those considered to have been collaborators during the hostilities.[53]

1.5.The Khatami Presidency (1997-2005)

As in the rest of Iran, the political atmosphere of Khuzestan shifted considerably during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005. Greater political, social and cultural freedoms were afforded to the population, which resulted in the foundation of new political organizations like the Islamic Wefagh Party, [54] cultural organizations like the al-Hiwar cultural institute,[55] and the development of an Arabic-language press—albeit a limited one—for the first time in the history of the IRI.[56] Though initially promising developments, these freedoms were short-lived and rarely formalized—neither the Islamic Wefagh Party[57] nor the al-Hiwar institute[58] ever received their official permits and both only functioned with provisional permission until both organizations were ultimately shuttered.

Arabic-language press, similarly, was curtailed by official action—Arabic-language papers such as Sawt ash-Sha’ab were limited in function and circulation, consigning most Arabic-language journalists wishing to publish within Iran to brief special sections in local Persian-language newspapers.[59] Journalists and members of civil society and political parties who emerged in the respite of the Khatami era were increasingly harassed towards the end of his presidency.[60]

​

At the time, however, the hope raised by the Khatami presidency was exemplified by the foundation of the Wefagh (Reconciliation) Association, which gradually gave way to the Islamic Reconciliation Party.[61]Some witnesses interviewed for this report believe that it represented the last concerted attempt on the part of Arabs to seek the improvement of their conditions through the institutions of the Islamic Republic.[62]
​

Islamic Wefagh Party
The Islamic Wefagh Party began informal activities in 1996 in Khuzestan. Official activities started with the formation of the first party congress in January 2003. Jasem Shadidzadeh, the representative for Ahvaz in the Sixth Majlis (2000-04), was appointed as the organization’s first Secretary General. While the party was perceived as moderate, they never obtained anything more than temporary permits from the Interior Ministry to conduct formal activities. In November 2006, the [Ahvaz Revolutionary Court announced that any connection with the party would be deemed illegal due to a view that the party fostered dissent between the country’s ethnic Arab and Iranian populations.​

 

[al-Hasani]

1.6.The April 2005 Intifazeh

On April 15, 2005, the Arab residents of Ahvaz took to the streets to protest a leaked memorandum ostensibly from the office of the President of the IRI that set forth a policy aimed at changing the ethnic makeup of the province.[63]

The memorandum outlined measures meant to encourage the migration of Iranian citizens of Persian and Turkish ethnicities to Khuzestan province as well as the emigration of Arabs and the systematic replacement of Arabic place names with Persian equivalents. This official document bore the name and signature of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former chief of staff and Vice President for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs in the government of then-President Mohammad Khatami.

The protests quickly expanded beyond the control of those who had originally organized them.[64]Kathem Mojaddam, an Islamic Wefagh Party activist and one of the organizers of the April 2005 protests, recalls that several banks in Ahvaz had their windows smashed. As the protests expanded to neighboring cities and counties other property was also subjected to sabotage.[65]During this escalation,[66] Abtahi quickly dismissed the document as a forgery.[67] Abtahi suggested that Khatami’s domestic political rivals had forged the document to diminish the high level of support for the reformist movement among Arabs, demonstrated by the results of previous local elections.[68]

While some endorse this theory,[69] many do not accept Abtahi’s denial. There is widespread sentiment that whether or not the document was genuine, and whether or not it was correctly attributed to Abtahi and officials from the IRI’s reformist movement, it outlined a policy that had already been in place for years—and that continues to function to this day.[70]

Over the course of the next two weeks, much of Khuzestan was rocked by what has since been dubbed by locals as the intifazeh.[71] IRI authorities—on instructions from Tehran—cracked down on the populace. According to multiple sources, “dozens” of protesters were killed[72] and an estimated 250-360 people were arrested[73]—including many Ahwazi Arabs who had not participated in any acts of sabotage or even in the peaceful protests that had taken place in the region.[74]

Kamil Alboshoka, who was arrested in an affinity protest outside of Ahvaz on the first day of the April 2005 protests relates:

"I was in the city bazaar of Khalafabad (Khalafieh) when I was arrested. I was taking part in a march…[agents] in uniforms came…but they weren’t police. Some were wearing black clothes, some were wearing uniforms with a specific pattern. They’re famous; in Iran they’re known as Special Forces. We call them the oppressive Special Forces, but they call themselves Special/anti-riot police…most of them are connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and they usually come out in such occasions…The police[75] don’t have the power to suppress protests, to a degree. But the IRGC has a much freer hand. They were not locals…we could tell from their accents, but also because our city has a [small] population and we all know each other. They’re not from the region. They’re not Arabs. These protests were peaceful…in the first week [of protests] there was absolutely no violence. There were just protests. After a week, the people were forced to engage in violence. There was no other choice…I was arrested on the first day [so] I never took part in any of the violent protests, because I was detained.[76]
Hadi Batili also took part in the April 2005 protests in Ahvaz. In the streets, he saw IRGC anti-riot forces and plainclothes Basij beating protesters and shooting into crowds with live bullets. He watched several Ahwazi Arab youths with whom he was acquainted die in the demonstrations—he names Ali Shamousi and Ali Batrani, both of whom were under the age of twenty. “They were unarmed…sometimes maybe they were throwing stones. That’s the truth. They answered stones with [Heckler and Koch] G3 bullets. They killed people…many people were killed….”[77]
​

Ahwazi Arab families have continued to suffer long after the deaths of protesters. The families of many who participated in the 2005 protests still endure routine harassment, arrests and violence at the hands of the IRI’s security services. Kathem Mojaddam’s wife returns to Iran annually and is regularly summoned by the local Intelligence Office for interrogation.[78]

The intifazeh has taken on a significant historical importance among Arabs from the region. The IRI also tightened security in the province and quickly expelled foreign journalists that reported on the April 2005 unrest.[79] The experiences of many witnesses indicate that for several years after the April 2005 protests, arrests, interrogations, and convictions of Arabs in Khuzestan and elsewhere in Iran referenced the protests and the unrest that followed.[80]

1.7.Ahvaz Bombings of 2005-06 and the ensuing reprisals

A few days before the June 2005 presidential election, at least four consecutive bombs exploded in Ahvaz in the space of three hours.[81] Government offices and the homes and headquarters of state employees were the apparent intended targets. There were at least 11 reported fatalities and scores injured. A couple of hours after the first bomb went off in Ahvaz, a bomb went off in Tehran as well, killing two persons.

Successive bombs went off in Ahvaz in October 2005, January 2006, February 2006 and March 2006. The security crackdown that had followed the April 2005 unrest intensified. The IRI authorities blamed a range of alleged perpetrators including the Mujahedin-e Khalq, separatist groups like the Ahwazi Arab Peoples Democratic Popular Front and even foreign elements including the governments and armed forces of the UK, the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the Shell Oil Company for the attacks.

Despite the IRI’s allegations of foreign involvement, most of the individuals detained on suspicion of the bombings were residents of Ahvaz. While some of those arrested were avowed separatists with links to militant groups, others blamed for the attacks were ethnic Arab citizens who played a prominent role in local politics and who had no history of militant activity or support for militant causes. Many detainees were arrested on the basis of very little evidence and reported being subjected to physical and mental torture while in detention and being denied contact with their family and access to counsel.

1.8.Continuing political marginalization: the April 2011 Protests

Following the unrest in Ahvaz in 2005-2006, the province of Khuzestan came under increasing security control. While the 2005 protest events were commemorated annually, the next major period of unrest occurred six years later.

On April 15, 2011, as the world watched the protests collectively dubbed the “Arab Spring”, Arab activists using Facebook organized a protest. The protest erupted against the backdrop of the arrests of 16 Arab cultural activists (three of whom are currently on death row, two of whom were executed at the end of January 2014).

Many Arabs in Ahvaz, Abadan, Khorramshahr, Hamidieh, Mahshahr and Shadegan took to the streets in what was dubbed a “Day of Rage” to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the 2005 protests.[82] Multiple sources allege the use of live ammunition to suppress the 2011 protests, and additionally that security services had begun raids against suspected organizers the day before the protests began.[83] Reports indicated that as many as 15 protesters were killed by security services and police during protests, with “tens” injured and “hundreds” arrested.[84]

One report indicated that as many as 150 protesters were arrested, including 30 women, and that one protester died not as a result of live ammunition fire but from suffocation after inhaling Russian-made tear gas that was fired into the crowds.[85]

Other reports indicated that nine protesters arrested in connection with the protests were executed within a month—three in public at Hamidieh junction and another six in prisons.[86]

Another protest took place on June 21, 2012 in Ahvaz. At least 15 protesters were arrested on the same day,[87] and protests following the death of Arab poet Sattar al-Siahi[88] also occasioned another province-wide crackdown by IRI security services, during which it is alleged that nearly thirty people were arrested.[89]

Five Arab cultural activists who founded and were leading members of al-Hiwar, the Arab cultural group established during Mohammad Khatami’s reformist presidency, were arrested in the April 2011 protests. They later received death sentences and were incarcerated in Karun prison. The five men—Mohammad Ali Amouri, Sayed Jaber Alboshoka, his brother Sayed Mokhtar Alboshoka, Hashem Sha’baninejad Amouri and Hadi Rashedi—were convicted of muharibih, or “warring against God” for allegedly killing a law enforcement official.

Their death sentences, as confirmed by Iran’s Supreme Court in January 2013, are the most recent manifestation of the negative trend in relations between the Iranian state and the Ahwazi Arab ethnic minority.[90] The men were nominated for the 2013 Civil Courage Prize.[91] At the end of January 2014, Hashem Sha’baninejad Amouri and Hadi Rashedi were executed in secret, without any prior notice to their families.[92]

 

[al-Hasani]

2. Violations against Ahwazi Arab Activists

2.1. Executions

In Iran, courts can impose the death penalty for, inter alia, crimes like murder, rape and drug trafficking, and moral offenses like adultery and sodomy. In cases where the death penalty is applied for non-violent offenses, Iran is in contravention of its treaty obligations under international law, including the stipulation in Article 6 of the ICCPR that the death penalty only be imposed to punish the “most serious crimes.”[93]

In the province of Khuzestan the death penalty is also used in a manner not in accordance with international law—most alarmingly in cases of individuals deemed to be threatening to “national security”.

2.1.1. Executions post-1979

In the early years of the IRI, the death penalty was first used as a means of exacting retribution on supporters of the Pahlavi regime. Record-keeping was notoriously poor during this era, making reliable statistics hard to obtain. However, testimony obtained for this report indicates that some Arab tribes and city-dwellers did work for or cooperate with Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s notorious intelligence service, the SAVAK, and that some of these individuals were executed in the first months of the Revolution.[94] Overall, however, it seems that since much of the Arab population initially supported the revolution, large numbers of executions of this group did not result, or at least, were not reported.

The first examples of executions of Arabs occurring at least partly because of their ethnic identity took place at the outset of the Iran-Iraq War. The testimony of Mahmoud Ahmad al-Ahwazi highlights this emerging pattern.

Two weeks after the Iraqi invasion in September 1980, al-Ahwazi, the current coordinator of the Ahwazi Democratic Front (ADF)[95] was arrested by members of a local komiteh militia. He was imprisoned for four months, first in Chaharshir detention center and then in Karun Prison[96] and beaten and subjected to severe psychological pressure including threats of execution during interrogations. Al-Ahwazi believes that the goal of his interrogators was to have him confess to cooperating with the Iraqi invasion, a charge he denies. Testimony and the tone of contemporary newspaper articles inside Iran at the time suggest that these suspicions were typical[97], and that they led to a number of executions, often after very brief trials. Ahmad Hamid, counsel to several defendants in one of the bombing cases, adds:

They were detained in the local Ministry of Intelligence and National Security (MOIS) detention center until the day of execution. That day they were moved to the execution ward at Karun Prison and they were executed at dawn in the presence of security officials. According to Iran’s Regulation on Execution Procedure, Article 14, 48 hours before the execution, a defendant’s attorney and family should be informed.[98] The attorney can ask for forgiveness from the Supreme Leader and the defendant must not be executed until a response comes from the Supreme Leader. But they executed [Afrawi and Nawaseri] without informing their families and lawyers.[99]​

Testimony and available documentary evidence indicates that with a few notable exceptions the death penalty was used more sparingly in the years following the Iran-Iraq War until after the April 2005 protests.
​

Several witnesses interviewed by IHRDC recounted the experience of their family members being summarily executed in the early years following the Iranian Revolution.

2.1.1.1. Jalel Sherhani

When the notorious head of the Revolutionary Courts, Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali[100], arrived in Susangerd in western Khuzestan following the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980[101], Jalel Sherhani was only 11 years old. In respect to a raid on his house during which his male relatives were arrested, Sherhani recounts:

Suddenly a group of plainclothes agents entered the house without ringing the bell or knocking on the door. We asked, “What do you want?” They said, “We are Revolutionary Guards and you are counter-revolutionaries and traitors, and you are waging war on God.
​

According to Sherhani, the group of 20 to 30 men—armed with AK-47s and handguns—surrounded the house and did not show a warrant or identification.[102]

My uncle asked for their documents because he had previously been arrested and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment during the Shah’s reign. He asked them to show a document or a warrant, but unfortunately they didn’t listen and took my father, uncle and brother. My father was a farmer who couldn’t read or write; my uncle could read Arabic but couldn’t read Persian. Both were farmers and had not engaged in any political activity.[103]​

The violence of the scene left an indelible mark on the young Sherhani. He adds,
​

From the moment they arrested my brother and uncle they beat them. They even beat up the women. My uncle’s wife threw herself on her husband and they beat her with their hands and the stocks of their guns… At that time we were very scared. We were just kids and this situation was very troubling.
​

According to Sherhani, his brother and uncle were executed just two hours after their arrest. Sherhani did not witness the executions himself, but testifies that others who did relayed back to the family that Sherhani’s brother, uncle and another 15 people (including some of Sherhani’s distant relatives according to him)[104] were executed in public in the garden of the former provincial governor’s office in Susangerd.[105]

Sherhani recounts that according to bystanders:

My brother, who knew Persian well and was politically active, said to Mr. Khalkhali, ‘Mr. Khalkhali, give us a chance to defend ourselves.’ Khalkhali, who was speaking publicly, replied, ‘If you are innocent you are martyrs, and if you are guilty, you get the punishment you deserve.’ They did not have a trial.[106]
​

Sherhani’s father, Aziz Sherhani, was not executed with the 17 others who were publicly hanged in Susangerd on the day of his arrest. According to Sherhani, the next spring, after attempting to ascertain his father’s whereabouts for months, Sherhani’s family finally learned from a member of the IRGC who had been present for the execution that his father had been executed at some point between October 1980 and May 1981.[107]

Sherhani and his remaining relatives fled Susangerd and lived a difficult life for much of the war, including a period during which he and his family were homeless—after their property was confiscated by IRGC forces.

2.1.1.2. Isa Yasin

Another witness from Susangerd, Isa Yasin, was too young to remember the execution of his father:

I was very young at that time and so I don’t know much about my father except that during 1980, he disappeared in the city of Khafajiyeh [Susangerd]. The schools had just started so it must have happened in September. We believe that government forces captured him and killed him without a trial. … Anyone who was arrested at that time was executed without a trial.[108]
​

As Yasin grew older, he believed his educational and professional opportunities were limited by his family identity, “[additional] injustice was imposed on my family compared to that imposed on others; it diminished our opportunities. Just for being an Arab, people of this region need to pass through many filters in the process of selection to prove their qualifications to the past and the present governments.”[109] Other Ahwazi Arabs also recall facing educational and professional obstacles due to family relations with political prisoners or executed persons.[110]

2.1.1.3. Seif Mohammadi

Political activist Seif Mohammadi’s early years were characterized by events similar to that experienced by Sherhani and Yasin. Mohammadi’s grandfather, Abdolhossein, was also executed without trial after being charged with cooperating with the Iraqi government prior to its attack on Khuzestan.

According to Soleymani:

The first two members of my family who were arrested were my grandfather, Sheikh Abdol Hussein, and his brother, Sheikh Abdol Zadeh… After the establishment of the Islamic Republic, they arrested my grandfather and sent him to Dezful, at which time his brother ran away. They arrested my grandfather in 1980, before the Iran-Iraq War, and executed him without trial. They said that he was working with Iraqi Intelligence…He was arrested by Iranian security forces, and was executed along with eight others in Dezful. He was accused of being a secessionist, but nothing was proven. My grandfather was in contact with other [separatists] in Ahvaz, and in fact was famous for this, but he was not part of any formal organization. After my grandfather's execution, his brother, Sheikh Abdul Hussein ran away. He was arrested after a while, but they could not prove their accusations and he was released from prison after a stay of 3 years, from 1980-1983.
​

 

[al-Hasani]

2.1.2. Executions in connection with 2005/2006 Ahvaz Bombings

Although some Ahwazi Arabs were sentenced to death in politically motivated cases in the intervening years[112], the next wave of executions only occurred after the series of bombings that followed the April 2005 protests.

Local elements of the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security (MOIS) arrested Ahwazi Arabs throughout the series of bombings[113], and many were kept in detention without being charged for months on end. Ten individuals were ultimately sentenced to death in connection with the bombings by the end of February 2006, and additional executions followed. Case studies of those executed or sentenced with execution in connection to the bombings in Ahvaz in 2005 and 2006 follow below.

2.1.2.1. Ali Afrawi and Mehdi Nawaseri

In February 2006, two individuals whose ethnicities, names and political affiliations were not officially reported were arrested and quickly sentenced to death for involvement in the bombings.[114] Later it was confirmed that these two individuals—17-year old Ali Afrawi and 20-year old Mehdi Nawaseri—were Ahwazi Arabs.

Afrawi and Nawaseri were hanged in public on March 2, 2006 after giving televised confessions widely believed to have been made under duress.[115]

Another prisoner charged with complicity in the bombings, Saeed Hamidan, was present for the executions:

In the early hours of morning that day, at about 7:00 or 8:00, two people, Ali Afrawi and Mehdi Nawaseri were executed. [They were hung] in public, on the Naderi bridge in Ahwaz, from a crane. We were underneath the bridge and watched them being executed. We were there until about 10:00. I knew Mehdi. His brother was my friend.[116]
​

IRI authorities blamed the UK, which had a significant military presence in nearby southern Iraq at the time, for complicity in the bombings.[117] By 2007, the number of people sentenced to death in connection with the bombings in Ahvaz bombings rose to 19.[118]
​

2.1.2.2. Hadi Batili

While former political prisoner Hadi Batili was not sentenced to death on allegations connected to the 2005/2006 bombings, he claims that nine of his co-defendants on the charges were, and later executed.

Batili was in close proximity of the October 2005 bombing and was later arrested by IRI forces on charges of alleged involvement with the incident. According to Batili, on the evening of October 15, 2005, he was leaving a photography store in a shopping center in Ahvaz where he worked for Saeed Hamidan, an Ahwazi Arab local politician who was mayor of Ramshir at the time,[119]when he felt heat against his face, and then was thrown to the ground by a large explosion.

Six people were reported to have died in this explosion, and another 100 people were wounded.[120] Over the next few days, state press in Iran reported that 20 people had been arrested in connection with the bombing[121]—Hadi Batili was one of them. He was arrested by MOIS agents and held in solitary confinement in the Ahvaz MOIS detention center and once again subjected to severe torture, like the kind he had endured in detention following an earlier arrest in 1992.

After four months, Branch 12 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz[122] formally charged Batili with membership in a “Nasserist”[123] terrorist group. After being charged, the court set Batili’s bail at 100,000,000 tomans (approx. 120,000 USD at the time). He was subsequently released on bail on February 9, 2006.[124] His case file was transferred to Branch 4 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz, but Batili fled Iran in 2009, and was never tried. According to Batili, nine of his co-defendants were ultimately executed.[125]

2.1.3. Abdulrahman, Jassem and Ali Heidari and Ali Na’ami

Following the “Day of Rage” in Ahvaz in April 2011, scores of Ahwazi Arab protesters were arrested, including three brothers who were executed in June 2012. Abdulrahman Heidari, 21, Jassem Heidari, 23, and Ali Heidari, 25, were arrested on April 20, 2011 and sentenced to death for the crimes of muharibih and acting against national security on charges related to the killing of a police officer by Branch 4 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz in March 2012.[126] The Heidari brothers, as well as Ali Na’ami Sharifi, a defendant in the same case, were executed in public at Hamidieh junction on June 18, 2012.[127]

Prior to their trial, the defendants had all been in detention in the MOIS detention center in Ahvaz and held in solitary confinement for months, with limited access to counsel.[128] According to their cellmates, they were coerced into giving confessions under torture.[129] The families of the defendants were threatened not to hold any funerals for the brothers or Na’ami, and a further six executions in Karun Prison were reported, but never confirmed.[130]

 

[al-Hasani]

2.1.4. Al-Hiwar Co-Founders

Among those sentenced to death, and some later executed, are five Ahwazi cultural activists from the town of Ramshir who founded and were leading members of the al-Hiwar (“Dialogue”) Cultural Institute. Al-Hiwar is an Ahwazi Arab organization established during Mohammad Khatami’s reformist presidency and dedicated to the revival of local Arab culture and language.

The five included: Mohammad Ali Amouri, a fisheries engineer and former editor of the Arabic-language student publication al-Toras (“Heritage”) at the Industrial University of Isfahan; Jaber Alboshoka, a stonemason; Jaber’s brother Mokhtar Alboshoka, a computer science graduate and mandatory service soldier with the IRGC who was arrested while on leave from his base; Hashem Sha’baninejad[131], a poet and master’s student in political science at Chamran University in Ahvaz, where he was the editor of the student publication al-Basira (“Awareness”); and Hadi Rashedi, a teacher and chemist.[132]

EDIT: I cannot post the photo of the hanging of Ali Afrawi in Ahwaz due to the rules on PDF but it can be found in the report under this section. So this is omitted from this post.

al-Hiwar Cultural Institute

The al-Hiwar (“Dialogue”) Cultural Institute was registered with the National Youth Organization in Ahvaz by five educated Ahwazi youths named Mohammadali Amouri, Rahman Asakereh, Hadi Rashedi, Hashem Shabani, and Saeed Alboghbaysh in Ramshir. The organization conducted cultural activities such as Arab-language poetry nights, lectures and classes. Following the period of political unrest in Khuzestan during the Spring of 2005, the organization was shut down by the Iranian authorities in May 2005 and its members were arrested in February 2011. Two of those arrested, Hadi Rashedi and Hashem Shabani were executed in secret on the charge of muharibih, or “warring against God” in January 2014. ​

The men were arrested in the weeks before the April 2011 protests. Several other co-founders of al-Hiwar were also arrested around the same time period—from roughly late February to early March 2011.[133]According to Saied Alboghbaysh, one of the individuals detained on February 26, 2011, it is most likely that they were taken to the MOIS detention center in the Chaharshir neighborhood of Ahvaz.[134]

In December 2011, the IRI’s UK-based English-language television news channel, Press TV, aired confessions from Hadi Rashedi and Hashem Sha’abaninejad[135], but later in a letter published on several opposition websites, Sha’abaninejad disavowed the confessions and contended that they were extracted under severe physical torture.[136] Reports have since emerged confirming Sha’abaninejad’s account.[137]

The men were tried before Judge Mohammad Bagher Mousavi of Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz, along with another co-founder Abdolrahman Asakereh and several other members of al-Hiwar. Amouri, the Alboshoka brothers, Sha’baninejad and Rashedi were convicted of muharibih, or “warring against God” for allegedly killing a law enforcement official and sentenced to death on July 7, 2012.[138] The death sentences were confirmed by Iran’s Supreme Court on January 9, 2013.[139]

Saied Alboghbaysh, a co-founder of the organization who was arrested during the same period as the five death row inmates, recalls hearing the voices of some of the death row inmates—whom he had known since childhood—in the MOIS detention center where he was briefly detained:

They asked me about my relationship with Mohammad Ali Amouri, Rahman Asakereh, Hadi Rashedi and others. Of course I already knew that Mr. Rashedi had been arrested the day before… I could clearly hear my friends’ voices as they were being tortured. It seemed like extremely harsh torture beyond what I personally experienced, but I could hear them and could recognize their voices clearly. I recognized Hadi Rashedi’s voice, and also that of Mohammad Ali Amouri. They sounded like something out of a horror movie, the horrible sound that spills out of the gut of a man being tortured.[140]
​

After their death sentences were issued, the co-founders of al-Hiwar were transferred to Karun Prison. In the months following, several of the prisoners were repeatedly transferred back to an MOIS facility and subjected to additional torture.[141]

At the end of January 2014, Sha’baninejad and Rashedi’s death sentences were implemented and they were executed in secret without advance notice to their families.[142] Amouri and the Alboshoka brothers remain incarcerated in Karun prison awaiting the implementation of their sentences. Asakereh, their codefendant who was sentenced to twenty years’ prison on the same charges, remains behind bars.[143]

Although al-Hiwar was officially registered with the local branch of the IRI’s National Youth Organization in 2000 and received a preliminary permit to begin its activities, several members of the organization faced pressure from the authorities towards the end of President Mohammad Khatami’s time in office.[144] This pressure increased after unrest in the province in 2005—after which the organization’s long wait for its official permit was extended indefinitely—and only intensified over the course of the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Co-founder Saied Alboghbaysh recounts being summoned to local MOIS offices no less than fourteen times between 2003 and 2011.[145]

J
Judge Khaki, an official of the Revolutionary Court system in Ahvaz, confirming the death sentences against the founders of the Al-Hiwar Cultural Institute.
​

The increasing scrutiny and ultimate arrests of members of al-Hiwar follow a pattern reminiscent of that faced by civil society throughout Iran over the last decade, but the imposition of death sentences on five of its co-founders—individuals who were reportedly engaged in peaceful activism within the framework of the IRI’s own laws and were nominees for the 2013 Civil Courage Prize[146]—is a particularly harsh example of the IRI’s increasing heavy-handedness towards civil society.[147]
​

2.1.5. Ghazi Abbasi, Abdul-Reza Amir-Khanafereh, Abdul-Amir Mojaddami, and Jasim Moghaddam Payam

On August 15, 2012, Ghazi Abbasi, Abdul-Reza Amir-Khanafereh, Abdul-Amir Mojaddami, and Jasim Moghaddam Payam—four Ahwazi Arabs from the town of Shadegan—were sentenced to death on charges muharibih, or “warring against God”, and ifsad fil-arz, or “sowing corruption on earth”. The death sentences were meted by Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz, and later confirmed on February 13, 2013.[148]

The charges were brought about due to the prisoners’ alleged formation of an ethnic separatist terrorist group called Kitaeb al-Ahrar (“Writers of Liberation”) and involvement in several armed actions against various government buildings in Khuzestan, which led to the deaths of two law enforcement officers on two separate occasions. Three other codefendants, Shahab Abbasi, Sami Jadmavinejad, and Hadi Albokhanfarnejad, were each sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in exile in Ardebil, in northwestern Iran, for complicity in the alleged attacks.

In a series of letters from prison, Ghazi Abbasi and the other prisoners denied the charges and alleged that their confessions were extracted under torture and other forms of duress including the arrests of their relatives.[149] These letters also indicate that their trial, which was completed in one session, only lasted for two and a half hours.[150] They add that their attorneys were not able to adequately defend them at court. In late September 2013, Ghazi Abbasi was briefly transferred to solitary confinement in the quarantine ward of Karun Prison, prompting concerns that the implementation of his death sentence was imminent.[151] Abbasi, Khanafereh, Mojaddami and Moghadam Payam remained on death row in Karun Prison until December 2013 when security officers informed a family member that all four individuals had been executed.[152]

2.1.6. Al-Shabab Co-Founders

Some of the co-founders of al-Shabab (“Youth”), another cultural organization with a mission similar to al-Hiwar and based in Khalaf Mosallam village near the town of Shush in northwestern Khuzestan Province, were also sentenced to death for the crime of muharibih.

On September 9, 2013, Judge Mohammad Bagher Mousavi[153] of Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz issued death sentences for Ali Chobayshat and Yasin Mousavi, along with a 25-year prison sentence for their co-defendant, Salman Chayan. Afterwards all three, who had been detained in the MOIS detention center in the Chaharshir neighborhood of Ahvaz since their arrests in November 2012[154], were transferred to Dezful Prison.

The three prisoners were originally detained along with several of their relatives who were released on bail in June 2012. Chobayshat and Mousavi, who were charged with planting a bomb that caused an explosion on the Chogh Zanbil pipeline near Shush, were also reportedly forced to give videotaped confessions after severe physical and psychological abuse.[155] Shortly after the pipeline explosion on October 23, 2012, a website affiliated with the IRGC declared the explosion an accident and rejected the suggestion that there had been terrorist involvement.[156] The prisoners were also charged with bombing a railroad track, but no media reports of such an event exist.

Reports have also emerged questioning the role of their court-appointed attorney, Abbas Torabi, a former judge in the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz.[157] After the announcement of the initial sentence in their case, Chobayshat and Mousavi had twenty days to appeal their case to the Supreme Court of Iran, as specified in Article 236 of the IRI’s Code of Criminal Procedure.[158]Unfortunately, that period passed without their attorney filing the appeal. As a result, the Revolutionary Court’s sentence in the case is final. On June 12, 2014, officials of the Ministry of Intelligence informed the families of Chobayshat and Mousavi that they had been executed and barred them from holding funerals. Only Ali Chobayshat’s family has been shown the location of his grave; to date Yasin Mousavi’s family has not been notified of the whereabouts of his remains.[159]

 

[al-Hasani]

2.2. Physical Violence and Psychological Abuse in Detention

According to Ahwazi Arab activists interviewed for this report, severe and prolonged physical violence and psychological abuse remains common practice for the authorities in Khuzestan. They maintain that physical violence and methods of psychological abuse are used as a means of extracting confessions from individuals in pre-trial detention, often during interrogations.

With few exceptions, most of the activists interviewed for this report were arrested by MOIS agents and then detained, interrogated and physically and psychologically brutalized in MOIS detention centers; the MOIS facility in the Chaharshir neighborhood of Ahvaz is commonly mentioned.[160] Detainees and former detainees held in the Chaharshir MOIS detention center from the 1980s to the present day detail systematic physical and psychological abuse in the presence of MOIS interrogators.

Physical and psychological abuse is also reportedly used as a punitive measure against political prisoners who have been convicted, sentenced, and sent to the IRI’s regular prisons but who are perceived by the authorities to be continuing their activism from prison.[161] In some cases simply describing prison conditions to the outside world placed a prisoner on the authorities’ radar.[162]

Judge Seyyed Mohammad Bagher Mousavi (Personal edit: Notice the Arab lineage of this Mullah)​

Judge Seyyed Mohammad Bagher Mousavi, a judge in Branch Two of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz has issued death sentences for numerous Ahwazi activists. Due to condemnation for sentencing Ahwazi Arabs to death following procedurally-flawed trials, the European Union placed Judge Mousavi, along with eight other Iranian officials, on its sanctions list on March 12, 2013 for human rights abuses.​

2.2.1. Physical Abuse

As set out below, witnesses described the systematic use of physical abuse, including the use of stress positions, flogging, and electrocution. Interviewees also described routine beatings that may occur at any stage of detention in the IRI. Their testimonies suggest that the primary form of physical abuse in Khuzestan’s prisons and detention centers is the use of plastic cables to beat prisoners, a practice that is often severely painful and which can cause deep scars that become infected if not treated—as is often the case.

2.2.1.1. Hadi Batili

Following his February 1994 arrest, Hadi Batili was subjected to severe physical abuse in his four-month-long detention.[163] During interrogations, he was blindfolded and subjected to slapping, beating, and flogging by two to three interrogators. He also received electric shocks, including to his genitals.

According to Batili, he was often made to strip and stand naked while being beaten. He recalls that on one occasion:

They had electric batons that they would use to strike me from behind. They made me take off all of my clothes except for my underwear and then bound my hands and feet and flogged me from head to toe with an electric cable. For four or five months afterwards [the scars this caused] would bleed, and I was unable to stand upright. My … ribs…are still [injured]... They would bind my hands to the ceiling and attach electricity [electrodes] to my testicles.[164]
​

His treatment at the hands of MOIS interrogators resulted in injuries requiring long-term treatment. His stomach lining was torn following interrogators “stomping” on his stomach—twenty years later, Batili says still suffers considerable pain as a result of this hernia. According to Batili, he suffered a cut blood vessel in his hand that rendered his hand immobile for months. He was physically abused again in connection with his 2006 arrest and says:

Of course when they arrested me in 2006 there was additional torture and my health problems increased…my eyes had ceased working, my ears kept whistling—and [the noise in my ears] still hasn’t stopped…. I have nightmares and other problems as well. The wounds healed, but the psychological issues remain.[165]
​

According to Batili, his interrogators employed this physical abuse as a means of securing a confession that would lead to a death sentence.

2.2.1.2. Abdolhamid Nazari

Abdolhamid Nazari, a convert from Shi’i to Sunni Islam[166], was arrested in the spring of 1994 or 1995 (according to Nazari, the trauma he was subjected to makes it difficult to recall exact dates)—and detained in an MOIS detention center in Ahvaz for four months.

Nazari claims that during his detention he was flogged on a routine basis for long periods of his detention. The floggings did not take place in the presence of interrogators, but rather Nazari was transported to a different facility that he—based on the duration of the trip—believes was in Abadan or Dezful.

In respect to these floggings, Nazari says:

When you are getting lashes, after a certain point your body becomes numb and you don’t feel the lashes anymore. One person would hold my legs, another person my head and two others would lash me from both sides. They would beat me with an electricity cable. They would give me lashes once a week or once every two weeks.[167]
​

Nazari was eventually charged with muharibih. He was physically abused and interrogated for six weeks in total. Nearly two decades after his detention, he still takes medication for the injuries he sustained in prison.

2.2.1.3. Saeed Hamidan

Saeed Hamidan was mayor of Ramshir and the owner of a business in Ahvaz when the October 15, 2005 bombing took place. He was arrested by plainclothes agents of the Ahvaz MOIS office in February 2006 and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for the bombing.[168] Hamidan was consequently forced to resign as mayor.

In the first month of his detention, Hamidan was not given access to a lawyer or informed of the charges against him. His wife and family were not informed of his whereabouts. During his detention in the Chaharshir MOIS detention center, Hamidan suffered physical abuse of escalating severity.

One day during his first month of detention, Hamidan was blindfolded and informed that he was being taken out for “fresh air”:

But [instead of going outside] they beat me with a cable. They beat me so hard that…I thought my heart was coming out of my chest. I felt like I could not breathe anymore… They kept beating me savagely. They hit me over the head, where I felt it immediately swell… I felt numb under the blows. Then they laid me down on the floor and beat me with all their might… and they asked me about others. What had so and so done? [I replied,] “How do I know what anyone else has done?”
​

Hamidan was beaten about the head and body, including on the soles of his feet. Covered in blood, he called out “Ya Allah” (oh, God). He heard the MOIS agents say, “Oh, he has a God too? These people are apostates, they have no God.”

In July 2006, Hamidan was charged and convicted of muharibih by Branch 3 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz for the possession of weapons. After a further six months in Karun Prison in Ahvaz, Hamidan was exiled to Gha’em Prison in Khorasan Province in northeastern Iran. On October 3, 2008, after over two and a half years of detention, Hamidan was granted furlough to deal with issues surrounding the unexpected death of his brother. One week later he fled Iran.[169] Like many other detained Ahwazi Arab activists, the effects of this physical abuse—a violation of both international and Iranian laws[170]—have endured long after his escape.

2.2.1.4. Saied Alboghbaysh

Saeed Alboghbaysh, one of the founders of the al-Hiwar cultural institute, was among the many members of the organization to be arrested in February 2011. Like many from al-Hiwar, including the five co-founders who were sentenced to death, Alboghbaysh was subjected to severe physical abuse while held between February and November 2011.[171] In his testimony, he details floggings with a cable, which he believes were aimed at extracting a confession from him.

2.2.1.5. Qader Rahimi (pseudonym)

Qader Rahimi, an Ahwazi Arab welder from the city of Ahvaz, was arrested on numerous occasions for his insistence on wearing traditional Ahwazi Arab garb, the deshdasha.[172] His “five or six” separate arrests were all accompanied by physical abuse. During his first arrest he was taken to a detention center in the Padadshahr neighborhood of Ahvaz run by the Counterintelligence Unit of the local arm of the IRI’s national police force.[173]

Once there, he was beaten with a cable:

They hung me from the ceiling by my heels. My deshdasha fell on my head and they tied it up so that it covered my head. They did not want to me to see their faces.[174]​

The use of blindfolds during interrogations is common. Many other witnesses, formerly detained in Khuzestan, reported that they did not see the faces of interrogators or other prison personnel. Their memories of these individuals’ identities are often linked to their accents.[175]

Rahimi continues:

In that period, I became ill, both mentally and physically. I can no longer hear with my left ear because it was damaged as the result of torture. [My hearing problems] started from my first arrest…They beat me. They burned me with hot water. They beat me with a cable or green pipe. They punched my face in a way so that my lips were torn and my tooth fell out. They used any means. I was there for 45 days.[176]
​

2.2.1.6. Seif Mohammadi

Independent political activist Seif Mohammadi was arrested by plainclothes agents in front of his high school in June 2010, when he was just 19. The agents took Mohammadi to the MOIS office in Shushtar, where they demanded that he “confess to doing things which I had not done”. Following his refusal, he was tied to an iron bed and beaten with a cable for almost two hours. He was then dragged to a cell by his hands and feet and placed in solitary confinement. He was not able to sleep on his back for a week due to the injuries sustained in the beating.[177]

2.2.1.7. Kamil Alboshoka

Kamil Alboshoka was a 22-year old university student when the April 2005 protests took place. On the morning of April 15, 2005, as the demonstrations began to gain in numbers, Alboshoka was arrested along with several other protesters. He was taken to an unknown location where he was held in solitary confinement for four weeks:

After an hour in the small car, I was delivered into the hands of a man called Mr. Shavoodi. Mr. Shavoodi first slapped me twice in the face and then kicked me in the stomach, which caused me to fall.

Alboshoka was subjected to daily beatings, including with cables, sticks and hoses, which took place during questioning aimed at extracting information about the protests. More than eight years after his release, he claims that the effects of the beatings—chronic back, neck, and leg pain as well as nausea and light-headedness—linger. Alboshoka was never charged with a crime.

2.2.1.8. Isa Savari

Isa Savari, a political activist from Susangerd, was arrested in 2007 on charges related to his involvement in the April 2005 protests. He was held at the MOIS detention center in the Chaharshir neighborhood of Ahvaz for 57 days. According to him, he was tied to a bed and to a chair and beaten with a cable and pipe in multiple attempts to extract a confession from him.

Savari stated:

When I was being tortured, my undershirt stuck to my back. The room was filled with the smell of blood and putrefaction. When I left detention, I had blood clots in my feet... My legs recovered two or three months after I was sent to regular prison.[178]

Nasser Alboshoka, the cousin of Kamil Alboshoka, three days before his arrest in January of 2012. Available evidence indicates that Nasser Alboshoka died as a result of torture in custody shortly after his arrest. ​

 

[al-Hasani]

2.2.1.9. Qasem Dinarvandi

Qasem Dinarvandi, a high school English teacher whose arrest for giving guidance to his pupils in the Arabic language is detailed in section 2.3.2.2.3 supra, was subjected to brutal physical abuse while held at the MOIS detention center in Chaharshir.

Although Dinarvandi lived in the town of Hamidieh, where he was arrested on August 25, 2010, his arresting officers stated that they were from the provincial headquarters in Ahvaz. He was transported to the MOIS detention center in Chaharshir and placed in solitary confinement. During questioning, Dinarvandi was beaten and kicked.

According to Dinarvandi, when he failed to provide responses satisfactory to his captors, these beatings became harsher and were administered by a man named Seyyed Mohsen in the detention center itself—although this was likely a pseudonym. Dinarvandi stated:

[W]ith my blindfold on, I received blows to my face, back, and sides that caught me off guard and threw me on the floor….. [There] was a bed or a bench where they lay you on your stomach and tie your hands and feet to poles at the ends of the bed… Then they beat you on the soles of your feet or on your lower or middle back with a cable… The more serious your charge, the more they beat you. And sometimes, to scare you, they would have you hold the torture cable in your hand while they question you. This is psychologically very difficult for the captive and sometimes forces him to confess to doing things that he has not done.[179]​

In recounting his experiences in MOIS custody, Dinarvandi highlights an important fact that many Ahwazi Arab activists reiterate—that much of the abuse they endure at the hands of the security services is not only physical, but psychological as well.

2.2.2. Psychological Abuse

Much of the treatment described by formerly detained Ahwazi Arab civic, political and cultural activists constitutes psychological abuse.[180] Those interviewed for this report detailed mock executions, long periods of isolation, poor sanitation in detention, threats of harm against a detainee’s relatives, and limitations on sleep.

2.2.2.1. Huda Hawashimi

When Iranian authorities arrested Huda Hawashimi in 2006, they told her she was arrested as a replacement for her husband, who had fled Iran by that time.[181] While interrogated in an MOIS facility in Ahvaz[182], Hawashimi stated that she was blindfolded, beaten and humiliated:

I was insulted regularly. This was the worst torture for me. If they hit me it wouldn’t have made a difference. But when they trample your character under foot and show a lack of respect, you lose your normal sense of self… It was as if they didn’t even realize that there was a woman in front of them. They didn’t feel any [sympathy]. On the contrary, they treated me violently. I don’t remember how many times… I was interrogated. It happened many times… I endured almost a year of it.[183]
​

Hawashimi, whose infant son was also imprisoned with her, often feared for her son’s health. This fact was also used to exert pressure on her during interrogations.[184]

2.2.2.2. Masumeh Ka’abi

Like Hawashimi, Masumeh Ka’abi was arrested in a late-night raid on her house in late March 2006 in the place of her husband, an Ahwazi Arab schoolteacher and separatist political activist who was suspected of involvement in the same bombings as Saeed Hamidan and Hadi Batili. Her husband fled Iran two months prior to Ka’abi’s arrest. Uniformed regular police accompanied the plainclothes agents who raided her house.[185]

The agents struck Ka’abi and separated her from her five young children, the youngest of whom was one year old at the time. After a struggle, her youngest child was placed in her arms and all her children were brought along with Ka’abi to the MOIS information bureau in the Amaniyeh neighborhood of Ahvaz, where Ka’abi was interrogated. She reports feeling enormous psychological pressure due to her panic at having her children in the custody of the security services. Eventually her older children were taken home, but Ka’abi was transferred to the MOIS detention center in Chaharshir where she was detained for one month in solitary confinement with her youngest son before being able to entrust him to her parents.

Ka’abi describes her distress at having her son imprisoned with her:

After the interrogation, they brought my baby [back to me]. [He] was very scared, as if they had frightened [him]… In prison, I fed him cookies or milk and similar things. He got very weak and was very ill. I thought he was going to die. They said, ‘Give him to us and we will give him to your family members.’ And I said, ‘Even if my son dies, my son and I will stay here and I will not give him up to you.’ I was very afraid of giving my child to them.[186]
​

After a month in Chaharshir, she was transferred to Sepidar prison in Ahvaz. She does not recall being charged with a crime or entering a courtroom. When it became clear that her husband would not return to Iran, she was released after a total of 11 months’ detention.[187] A year after her release, Ka’abi tried to flee Iran with her five children by taking a commercial flight to Syria.

However authorities in Syria informed representatives of the IRI, and she and her children were all forced to return to Iran. Upon their return, further psychological pressure was exerted on Ka’abi and her children:

They took us to an MOIS office in Tehran and blindfolded us all, even my little boy and my daughter who wears glasses. They took her glasses away. She cannot see anything without her glasses and unfortunately, they never gave them back. They interrogated my children and me for about a week. They interrogated my children in front of me. Later when they separated us, they interrogated them again. For the first time, they put me in an interrogation room, separate from my children, and interrogated me. They put my elder daughters in separate rooms. When we saw each other again, they told me, “Mom, they put us in a room and interrogated us.” They asked my children “How did you go from Ahvaz to Syria? Who helped you? Who were you in contact with? Do you have any news of your father?” … My children were young at the time. My oldest daughter was under fourteen.[188]​

After these interrogations, all six were returned to Ahvaz onboard a commercial Iran Air flight. When they got to Ahvaz they were returned to the MOIS information bureau, where Ka’abi reports that she was beaten savagely in front of her children and then separated from them. This separation had a profound effect:

No matter how many times I asked, ‘What did you do to my kids?’ they said, ‘Your children are fine. They were taken to your father.’ When I saw my children again I found out that they interrogated my daughters after they took me away. They were frightened. They threatened them a lot… But they did not really torture my children. They wanted to scare me. I heard awful noises. While I was in the cell [I thought] I was hearing the sound of my children being tortured. I heard these noises so much that it drove me crazy. I thought they had my kids and that they were torturing them. I was so scared. I can’t forget it. I will remember it forever.[189]
​

2.2.2.3. Abdolhamid Nazari

Abdolhamid Nazari, a convert to Sunni Islam, describes the use of recorded sound to exert psychological pressure during his arrest and imprisonment in the 1990s:

The psychological torture that they subjected me to was so bad that after so many years I still cannot sleep comfortably. Because of the torture, when I was released after six months, I could not see more than 3 meters ahead of me… I wasn’t of sound mind and I had lost my senses…Another [problem I had] for about three months I heard noises similar to trees being cut in the forest or animal sounds like goats, sheep, or dogs. These noises were always with me and I couldn’t sleep. The [prison authorities] played these noises from a small cassette player. Or they would come, at night, and knock loudly on the cell door, and then you would hear guns being fired. During that year, every minute I felt like I was going to die.[190]

Many recent former detainees have reported hearing sounds of torture that they believe may have been recordings that were played over and over.[191]

2.2.2.4. Hadi Batili

In his account of his 1994 arrest and subsequent detention, Hadi Batili recounts one method of sleep deprivation inflicted by prison authorities. According to him, prison guards would insert keys into his cell door’s lock as if to unlock the door. Given that his door was usually only opened when prison guards wanted to give him his meals at specified times, or take him away for interrogation, which could happen at any time, Batili relates that this conditioned him to believe that he was going to be taken for interrogation every time he heard the clattering of keys.[192]

2.2.2.5. Qasem Dinarvandi

The profound psychological effects of solitary confinement, similarly, are mentioned by many witnesses.[193] Qasem Dinarvandi remembers that physical abuse caused him less distress than the combination of solitary confinement and threats against his wife did:

[In the detention center], someone came up to me and asked, “Why are you doing this to yourself? Your friends are all free, out there. Why are you here?” This type of questioning may sound ridiculous and trivial to an ordinary person, but to a detainee in solitary confinement who has suffered all kinds of mental torture, these questions are sometimes enough to make you want to confess and free yourself. Some, of course, are very resistant and will say nothing. They told me that they would execute me the next day if I don’t didn’t sign and confess. They said, “No one knows you are here, because there is no record of you being detained at all. We can kill you and bury you right here and no one would know.” I told them that they could kill me anytime, since I was not going to sign anything. I was fine with that. But when they spoke about my wife, that is was when I could not take it anymore. I was emotionally crushed, and did as they instructed.[194]​

2.2.2.6. Salim Karimi (pseudonym)

Journalist Salim Karimi, who was detained in wards 240 and 350 of Evin Prison for several months in 2005-06, stated:

If they didn’t get the answers they wanted, they would put you in such circumstances, including solitary confinement, that ultimately a prisoner would say, ‘Whatever you want [me to confess], tell me and I will confess to it! I’ll even sign my own death warrant.’ Solitary confinement and the psychological warfare they waged were very difficult to endure.[195]
​

2.2.2.7. Saeed Hamidan

Saeed Hamidan, the former mayor of Ramshir, recounted that the sounds of abuse of other prisoners had a profound psychological effect on him:

Most of the time at the Intelligence [Unit] we could hear sounds of moaning and groaning, of those who were being tortured… This was very difficult to hear; as were the cries of babies and children.​

The emotional strain of hearing the voices of others being abused is described by several Ahwazi Arab former detainees.[196]

2.2.2.8. Isa Savari

Mock executions have also been reported in recent years. Political activist Isa Savari remembers that, “[d]uring my second arrest in 2011, they hung a rope around my neck and told me they were going to execute me. Then they would kick the table from under me for a second or two.”[197]One non-Arab former prisoner subjected to a mock execution during the course of interrogations in another region of the country has indicated that the trauma of the experience left him “completely broken”, and compelled him to cooperate with his torturers.[198]

2.2.3. Use of Drugs on Detainees during Interrogation

Former prisoners, and an attorney who was periodically allowed to visit clients, report that illegal narcotics, including opium and heroin, are widely available in Khuzestan prisons and that the illicit narcotics markets in those prisons are controlled by prison authorities.[199] Ahmad Ahwazi (pseudonym), a former bookstore owner imprisoned from 2002-2004, stated that his interrogators routinely used opium before their interrogations.[200]

Some Ahwazi Arab former detainees further allege the misuse of prescription drugs either openly or surreptitiously as an aid during interrogations. The accounts these witnesses share indicate that the substances used in this fashion have profound psychological effects.

2.2.3.1. Huda Hawashimi

In detention, Huda Hawashimi was injected with what she initially assumed was a pain medication, but which made her experience severe drowsiness and even rendered her unconscious. In response to a question of whether she had experienced any sexual abuse while incarcerated, she recalled:

I can’t answer the question of whether I was ever sexually abused [during my detention] because most of the time when [MOIS or prison authorities] would come to ask how I was doing…they would inject me with some form of pain medication, and when they did, I would only wake up two days later. During those two days of sleep I couldn’t sense anything… I am 100% certain that I was sexually abused when I was asleep. I am certain that it occurred, because…I became aware of certain changes afterwards. I was constantly dizzy. My behavior towards them changed significantly. I had become much more nervous. I would get angry. I changed a lot after that injection. I don’t know what it was, or why it lasted two days. Only God knows.[201]
​

Although Hawashimi attempted to learn what she had been given, the authorities at the detention center only repeated that it was a painkiller.[202]

 

[al-Hasani]

2.3. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, and Prosecution

According to some of the Ahwazi Arab activists and citizens interviewed for this report, they were subject to arbitrary arrests, sometimes enacted by security forces of the IRI during public gatherings or in night raids on their homes.

Without exception, those interviewed state that they were not formally informed of the charges against them within 24 hours, and that their detention and interrogation continued for weeks before charges were brought. This is in contravention of Article 32 of the Constitution of the IRI, which states unequivocally that detainees must be informed of the charges against them “immediately.”[203] Most witnesses were detained for days, weeks, or months under color of law before being charged with a crime.

The Revolutionary Courts, where many Ahwazi Arab activists are prosecuted, systematically deprive these defendants of due process rights during the course of trial and sentencing. The denial of the right to counsel, limitations on the meetings between counsel and accused, limitations on defense counsel’s access to evidence, the use of torture to extract confessions[204]and singular reliance on reports from the security services as evidence at trial have all occurred with disturbing regularity in Khuzestan, particularly over the past decade.

Legal proceedings are conducted exclusively in Persian, a second language to most Ahwazi Arabs. When they cannot understand the language, many recalled that no translators were provided. Consequently those individuals have no understanding of the proceedings and no ability to defend themselves.

2.3.1. Arbitrary Arrest in Connection with Protests or Other Public Gatherings

Since April 2005, demonstrations have been a regular feature of political life in Khuzestan. While most reports indicate that these demonstrations are largely peaceful, interviewees have acknowledged that some demonstrators may have engaged in violence in the April 2005 protests. Regardless, reports that IRI authorities have used live ammunition against Ahwazi Arab protesters as recently as April 2011 suggest a pattern whereby freedom of assembly is violated and the peaceful expression of dissent by Ahwazi Arabs is silenced with a disproportionate use of force.[205] Furthermore, these demonstrations and other peaceful public gatherings are often followed by the large-scale arrests of peaceful demonstrators in stark violation of the free assembly rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the IRI.[206]

An early example of this took place in May 1985, when several Ahwazi Arabs engaged in protests when an official IRI newspaper published a claim that the Ahwazi Arabs were not in fact Arabs who had been settled there for several generations, but rather that they were itinerant Gypsies.[207] The May 1985 protests were the first major public manifestation of Ahwazi Arab dissatisfaction with the IRI since Black Wednesday. Several arrests took place during the demonstrations themselves, and participation in the protests became a focus of interrogations of Ahwazi Arab activists who were arrested in the following years.[208]

2.3.1.2. Kamil Alboshoka

Kamil Alboshoka was arrested by the IRGC in a march in the city bazaar of Khalafabad (Khalafieh) on the first day of the April 2005 protests.[209] In respect to the scale of arrests, he recounted:

Since it was still morning [when I was arrested] the protests hadn’t gotten very large. There were maybe 200 protesters…in the center of town…when [the anti-riot forces] suddenly initiated the crackdown. There were at least twenty cars [carrying them], so if we figure that there were five [anti-riot police or agents] in each car, at least one hundred armed men were unleashed [on the protest].​

In regards to the agents who arrested him and the others, Alboshoka recalled:

The agents spoke with Persian accents. They weren’t Persian-speakers from the region, either, who speak with Bakhtiari and Luri accents…and as soon as they got to us, they hit us with the butts of their guns, and when we were on the ground they began kicking us…then they blindfolded us, handcuffed us and put us in minibuses.[210]​

Alboshoka was interrogated in the detention centers of the IRGC and the MOIS in Ahvaz for four weeks and released on bail without being charged. He was never tried. One year later, in 2006, agents from the MOIS raided Alboshoka’s family home to arrest him once again, but he was not present. During the raid, one of Alboshoka’s uncles, Soltan Alboshoka, attempted to defend against the agents present but the agents shot him in the neck, killing him instantly. Following the raid, Kamil Alboshoka’s father, mother, grandfather, uncles, brothers and cousins were all temporarily detained and released without charge. Since then, all have reportedly been subjected to similar treatment on at least three occasions.[211]

Alboshoka’s family has been subjected to a sustained campaign of physical and psychological intimidation since his arrest on April 15, 2005.[212] In addition to the violent death of his uncle in 2006, and the arrests of his father and grandfather, Alboshoka’s cousin Nasser Alboshoka was arrested on January 26, 2012. His body was made available to the family on January 30, 2012. It bore marks of torture.[213]

Two paternal cousins of Kamil Alboshoka—Mokhtar and Jaber Alboshoka—were detained for roughly seven months in the local MOIS detention center. They were repeatedly tortured until they confessed to crimes that all informed parties confirm they did not commit. Isa Savari, who was detained with Mokhtar and Jaber Alboshoka, confirms that they were subjected to torture on a daily basis.[214] Kamil Alboshoka believes that his activism and his brief 2005 arrest are the only reasons that the rest of his family members have been targeted. Mokhtar and Jaber Alboshoka are currently on death row.[215]

2.3.1.3. Kathem Mojaddam

Kathem Mojaddam, an activist with the Islamic Wefagh Party, was arrested three times for his peaceful political activity, sanctioned by the constitution. During his last arrest on April 16, 2005, the second day of the April 2005 protests, Mojaddam was in his print and copy store on the morning of April 16 when two cars—one an unmarked Peugeot reminiscent of those driven by plainclothes officers of the MOIS and one a white Toyota SUV traditionally identified with the IRGC—arrived. Mojaddam attempted to flee but was apprehended and taken to an IRGC detention center in the Chaharshir neighborhood “adjacent to the [MOIS] detention center”. He was detained for two weeks before being informed of the charges against him and subsequently transferred to Sepidar Prison in Ahvaz.[216]

He was charged with having taken actions endangering national security and imprisoned for an estimated 45 days in Sepidar Prison. Charges from a 2003 arrest were also renewed. Mojaddam argued that he had already been acquitted on those charges, and he was freed—though he believes that this was a political decision. During Mojaddam’s detention, he lost his shop and expected further pressure from the authorities, so he fled Iran shortly thereafter.

2.3.2. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, Interrogation and Subsequent Prosecution in Connection with Expressions of Political Opinion or Cultural Identity

The relations between Persians and Arabs in Iran and in the broader Middle East have been fraught for centuries.[217] The formulation of a Persian-focused Iranian nationalism in the early 20th century, especially by the Pahlavi state, pushed Ahwazi Arabs further out of the Iranian political and cultural milieu, as Arabs were blamed for modern Iran’s ills.[218] Not only were Arabs marginalized; they were the very element against which the modern Iranian state defined itself. For the Arabs living in Iran—the Ahwazi Arab community—this culminated in an attempt to negate their very culture.

This process did not abate with the Islamic Revolution. In the years following the end of the Reform era during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), there was an increase in arrests and harassment of Ahwazi Arab journalists, civic, political, and cultural activists, and other vulnerable groups. The post-Khatami era crackdown in Khuzestan also occurred in the context of a restive province still simmering after the April 2005 protests.

Expressions of Ahwazi Arab culture have been targeted by the IRI with increasing severity in recent years. The very existence of an Ahwazi Arab cultural identity has given rise to the use of charges that are not defined in the IRI’s Islamic Penal Code in the arrests, trials and sentencing of Ahwazi Arab activists.

Those arrested tend to be charged with crimes involving national security. Most individuals charged with these crimes insist that their activities before arrest had been peaceful.[219] An Ahwazi Arab attorney who defended clients in several national security cases points out that, “In national security cases human rights are violated all the time. From the moment a defendant is arrested—without any warrant—until interrogation in the MOIS detention centers, they are blindfolded and [deprived of] the presence of an attorney.”[220]

Arab Front for Liberation of al-Ahwaz

According to the organization’s official website, the Arab Front for the Liberation of Al-Ahwaz was established on April 20, 1980 in Iraq. The stated purpose of the organization is to support the rights of Ahwazi Arabs. Following the occupation of Iraq by US forces in 2003, the group moved operations out of the region to Europe General abu-Meitham was appointed as Secretary-General of the organization on June 16, 2012.
​

2.3.2.1. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, Interrogation and Prosecution of Journalists

Ahwazi Arab journalists, who are discouraged or barred from writing in Arabic, work under the threat of arrest and imprisonment. One Ahwazi Arab journalist and political activist stated that he never wrote about political affairs under his own name in Iran even during the Reform era for fears of eventual reprisals if the security situation changed. He did, however, write for the three bilingual Persian-Arabic periodicals that were printed in the reformist era: Haftehnameh Ahvaz (Persian for “Ahvaz Weekly”), Sawt al-Sha’ab(“Sound of the People”, in Arabic), and al-Shawra (“The Council”, in both languages).[221]

Although the IRI’s Ministry of Islamic Guidance officially recognized these publications, the act of writing in Arabic was sufficient for the Ahwazi Arab journalists interviewed for this report to be summoned and interrogated for several hours by the MOIS. According to one journalist, the IRI authorities launched a crackdown in 2004-05 against Ahwazi Arab journalists that resulted in the closure of the few periodicals that carried Arabic-language sections, and the detention of several Ahwazi Arab journalists and editors.[222]

2.3.2.1.1. Yousef Azizi

Although journalist Yousef Azizi resided in Tehran during the April 2005 protests, he was arrested on Monday, April 25, 2005 as unrest continued in Ahvaz. Mere hours before, Azizi had given a speech at an event organized by the Center for Human Rights Defenders, a civil society organization chaired by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.[223] Azizi had previously written articles in domestic newspapers as well as several foreign Arabic-language newspapers and had been a commentator on Arabic- and Persian-language international television networks. MOIS agents had previously summoned him for interrogation in 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, and admonished him to moderate the tone of his political commentary.

During the early days of the April 2005 protests, Azizi had criticized the IRI’s crackdown against peaceful dissent. This was not, however, the stated reason for his arrest. Instead, Azizi was accused of being responsible for the leak of the Abtahi memo that led to the April 2005 protests in Ahvaz.[224] Azizi was subjected to physical and mental abuse repeatedly during his detention. The case against him was opened in 2005 but was not closed until 2008. Over the intervening three years all members of his family were treated harshly by various government agencies, most likely due to their connections with Azizi.[225]

2.3.2.1.2. Salim Karimi

Salim Karimi, another Ahwazi Arab journalist residing in Tehran but working for foreign-based Arabic language media with official recognition from the IRI, was summoned to the MOIS in November 2006. He was accused of leaking video footage to Dubai-based media showing government agents beating protesters during the April 2005 protests.

Of his arrest and the early days of his detention in Evin prison, Karimi relates:

It was dawn on a Wednesday in November. Plainclothes officers [of the MOIS] raided my house and showed me a warrant for my arrest and the search of my house that had been issued by a Revolutionary Court…three of them entered the house. One of them was taking video footage, one of them was searching the house…and several were standing outside… They searched the whole house. When they put me in the car, they blindfolded and handcuffed me. They took me straight to Ward 209 of Evin… My interrogations began at 2 AM that first night and extended to the next morning… They would strike and kick me.[226]​

The authorities arrested many Ahwazi Arab activists in late-night or pre-dawn raids on their homes like the one in which Salim Karimi was arrested. One common element of arrests made in this manner is the absence of arrest warrants, required by Article 119 of the IRI’s Code of Criminal Procedure.[227] Typically armed plainclothes agents from the local MOIS offices in Ahvaz, Susangerd, and other cities conduct these raids, often with help from uniformed regular police. The vast majority of witnesses arrested in house raids report that violence, threats, and disrespectful comments towards family members, including women, characterize the conduct of the security services.[228]

Karimi was informed of the charges against him after three days’ detention and interrogation. Ultimately, Karimi was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for taking actions against national security and was released in 2009 after serving his full term. He claims he was denied due process:

They did not even give me a chance to defend myself, considering that I had rejected all the allegations in court. The fact that I rejected the allegations is even reflected in my court order. However, accepting or rejecting the allegations, having a lawyer, etc. apparently have no (particular) impact at all. On many occasions during the interrogations, the Intelligence authorities told me that they will tell the judge what his judgment should be, i.e., three years, four years, etc. In fact, the judge has no say! Unfortunately, I figured this out much later. For a long time I thought there was such thing as the law. The interrogators used to say, “Do you think the trial judge acquit you of the charges, without our consent?! We will let the judge know how many years to give you, and he will sentence you accordingly.”[229]
​

 

[al-Hasani]

2.3.2.2. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, Interrogation and Prosecution of Cultural Activists

The use of the Arabic language, holiday celebrations, clothing, and religious identity are especially sensitive for the IRI. Consequently, the IRI conflates mere cultural activity with political activism and views expressions of Ahwazi Arab cultural activism as threats to national security. At its most extreme, this can result in violent reprisals and death sentences for Ahwazi Arabs attempting to promote their literature and customs. Most commonly, however, the suspicions aroused by the simple expression of Ahwazi Arab cultural difference lead to arbitrary arrest and detention.

2.3.2.2.1. Saleh Hamid

Like other Ahwazi Arab youths in the 1990s and 2000s, Saleh Hamid, a cultural and political activist, traveled to Syria for his university education. After enrolling in the University of Damascus, he joined the university’s Ahwazi Arab Students’ Association. According to Hamid, this organization primarily promoted Ahwazi Arab local poetry and culture and also addressed student affairs. Hamid believes that he was identified as a subversive by Syrian intelligence, because he was detained at Imam Khomeini airport immediately upon arriving back in Iran for a vacation:

I was detained in Tehran for four days. The authorities confiscated my passport and other documents. After four days of detention in an unknown location in Tehran due to my student activities, I was released. The authorities said I could go see my family and then return to Tehran to get my documents from the MOIS after further interrogations. They said that after that my passport would be returned and that I would be allowed to leave again to continue my education. I left Tehran for Ahvaz.[230]
​

Although he was detained in solitary confinement for four days, Hamid was not charged with any crime at the time. Before being able to return to Tehran to secure his passport, Hamid was arrested in Ahvaz:

It was two or three weeks later that a number of plainclothes Intelligence officers came to my father’s home in Ahvaz and arrested me. For two months I was detained at one of the secret facilities of the local office of the MOIS in Ahvaz. The authorities wanted to make me confess about my activities under torture since they didn’t have any evidence against me. My activities were focused on the culture of Ahwazi Arabs and other Arabs in Iran. I wasn’t particularly politically active.[231]
​

After two months’ detention in the IRGC Intelligence Division’s detention center in Chaharshir—also locally known as the IRGC 6th—Hamid was charged with distributing propaganda against the IRI and released on 250 million Rials’ bail (roughly 27,000 USD).

As Hamid fled Iran before his trial, it is unknown if the authorities had any other evidence against him. During Hamid’s two-month detention, he was held in solitary confinement, and reports that his interrogator made several threatening remarks. Hamid recounts, “It was mostly mental and emotional torture. For instance, they would make threats against my family, or tell me that my mother was emotionally distraught. They threatened that if I didn’t confess, they were in contact with certain people who would do bad things to my family.”[232]

2.3.2.2.2. Saied Alboghbaysh

Saied Alboghbaysh[233] endured some ten months of pre-trial detention and torture, but he was not charged with a crime in the case against his fellow co-founders of the al-Hiwar Cultural Institute in Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz.[234] Three of his colleagues are currently on death row, while another two were executed at the end of January 2014. Alboghbaysh is unequivocal as to the group’s aims:

Our main concern was to revive the local Arab culture, because as you know, the instruction of Arabic is banned in those regions.[235] The language is only taught in university as a foreign language. Our aim was to bring people closer to their ancestral roots and culture. Our emphasis was to keep and revive the local culture and we were not concerned with the Arab culture outside of Iran. Our objectives had no political element whatsoever, let alone the Nasserist[236] goals we were later accused of pursuing. We had no non-Iranian goals. Our goal at the time was only to help people safeguard their local culture. We were in no way influenced by any foreign [political] movements, be they Nasserist or Ba’athist.[237]
​

Other sources establish that cultural activism was the group’s only function.[238] However the IRI found Alboghbaysh’s co-founders guilty of muharibih. They spent over a year and three months in pretrial detention before their sentence was issued.[239]

2.3.2.2.3. Qasem Dinarvandi

Although Qasem Dinarvandi[240] was not an activist, the fact that he taught his class in Arabic placed him on the radar of the Iranian authorities. Arrested in a house raid on his father’s house on August 25, 2010, he recalls that, “they raid your house with no prior notice…”[241] The plainclothes agents did not show him a warrant.

By the time I had changed and headed for the courtyard, I realized that it was filled with security agents. Some 12 to 15 of them… Some carried Kalashnikov rifles… They treated my family with disrespect. They told them to keep their mouths shut. They created an atmosphere of fear, for my mother, sister, and the rest of my family. My wife was in complete shock. She became mute and confused. Later I was told that after they had taken me away, my mother and my wife fainted.[242]​

Dinarvandi was transported to the Chaharshir MOIS detention center. As a result of his interrogation and torture over his two weeks of pre-trial detention, Dinarvandi went on a hunger strike to protest his treatment.”[243]

Under duress, Dinarvandi confessed to crimes including the propagation of Wahhabism. After two weeks’ detention in the MOIS detention center, he was taken to Branch 13 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz, a branch presided over by a procurator compiled the evidence to be used in a later case. There, he insisted that his confession was invalid as a result of the torture used to obtain it. In response, the procurator retorted, “I know you Arabs! When Saddam came to power you all rejoiced. You are all Saddam Hussein supporters. And now, you want to get rid of this regime. Come and sign these confessions. It will do you a lot of good.”[244] The authorities did not give him an opportunity to obtain legal counsel until after his arraignment at Branch 13, but Dinarvandi did not sign any further confessions. He was finally charged with insulting the Supreme Leader and other sacred personages[245] and transferred to Karun Prison, where he remained for 45 days before bail was set and he was able to secure his release.[246] “One or two weeks” after his release, Dinarvandi was summoned to Branch 3 of the Revolutionary Court, which was presided over by a Judge Shirzad Barani, who sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment.[247]

2.3.2.3. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, Interrogation and Prosecution of Political Activists

The Ahwazi Arabs have been among Iran’s most neglected ethnic minorities even before the Revolution of 1978-79. That marginalization has gradually worsened since Black Wednesday and the definitive rupture of the Ahwazi Arab population from the IRI that occurred on that day.

Since Black Wednesday, much of the Ahwazi Arab population has been left behind by the political institutions of the IRI. Twenty-five years after the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War and the crackdowns on Ahwazi Arab activism it incurred, the political marginalization of Ahwazi Arabs continues apace. According to many Ahwazi Arab political activists, the reformist era of 1997-2005 allowed for a temporary renaissance of Ahwazi Arab civil society, exemplified by the foundation of the moderate regional Islamic Wefagh Party in the 1990s and 2000s, but the party was ultimately proscribed.[248] The pattern of dismissals and political marginalization of mainstream Ahwazi Arab politicians, political figures and civil servants has been a largely uninterrupted pattern since the institution of the IRI.

As with the treatment of those primarily concerned with preserving and promoting Ahwazi Arab cultural heritage, the treatment of Ahwazi Arab political activists has grown especially harsh since April 2005—again, the most common manifestation is the arrest and detention of Ahwazi Arab political activists for long periods before charges are brought. Some are released without ever being charged.

2.3.2.3.1. Saeed Hamidan

Saeed Hamidan was in the middle of his four-year term as the elected mayor of the town of Ramshir—the town where the al-Hiwar Cultural Institute was founded—when he was arrested in early March 2006.[249] Five months after his arrest, Hamidan was finally brought to trial. The dossier was titled ‘Organs of Muhibban al-Nasser.’[250]”[251]

During his interrogations, Hamidan was asked “to explain about the Muhibban al-Nasser. Up to that point I had not heard about [the group], and had no idea why I was arrested. I had tried not to do anything against the law. That is to say, I always respected the law and worked within its framework. But they were just arresting everyone.” The group was alleged to be a terrorist organization involved in the 2005-06 Ahvaz bombings. In contrast, Hamidan details his political views:

What we wanted was respect for Articles 15 and 19 of the Constitution concerning rights of ethnic minorities with regards to being able to learn and teach their language and have freedom in establishing cultural organizations or political parties. We had issued a manifesto. In that manifesto we stated our objections to change the names of villages from their original Arab names to Persian names.[252]​

But, according to Hamidan, “In order for the [local MOIS] offices to show their superiors, the Ministry of Intelligence in Tehran, that they are working hard, they burned wet and dry together.”—a Persian idiom meaning “innocent and guilty alike”.[253]

2.3.2.3.2. Kathem Mojaddam

Kathem Mojaddam, who was arrested twice during the Reform era—having been arrested once as a youth in 1988—was an activist with the moderate Wefagh Party in Ahvaz, which was aligned with the presidential administration at the time.[254] During his 2003 arrest, his first during the Reform era, “they wanted to force me to confess that I was a separatist. The truth was, however, that by then I had passed those phases, and my aim was to establish a cultural system to study our ethnic history and demand our rights within the framework of the law. Perhaps in their view this was illegal.”[255]

After two months in solitary confinement, during which time he was beaten during interrogations, he was charged and released on bail. Although the party that Mojaddam supported was allied with the government of the time, he was charged with espionage.[256] He states that this was his interrogators’ goal from the beginning of his detention:

[The interrogators] asked about [the Wefagh Party’s] relations with the Saudi Embassy…We had gone to the Embassy a few times, but we did not have a special relationship with them. They [the Embassy] had asked for a report about the relations between the Ahwazi Arabs and other Iranians. We prepared a report and gave it to them, but then they said no, we have good relations with Iran and don’t agree with your position. I asked if they [the Embassy] would help us with cultural activities, for instance, to print books or literature, or provide scholarships for friends to go there to study, etc. But they did not accept, and thus our relationship was cut off. The authorities, however, claimed that we provided classified information to them [the Embassy].[257]​

Mojaddam was never convicted. He believes that the severity of the charges leveled against him in 2003 were indicative of the security services’ general dissatisfaction with the growing strength of the Wefagh Party: “my arrest was not as a result of these activities, rather for [my involvement in] Wefagh party. After my release, the party branched off and eventually dissolved. This [dissolution] naturally reduced the authorities’ sensitivity to the Wefagh.”[258]

 

[Fukuoka]

Yes we know, Iran and the shias make secret death squads

Only Israel, zionist Al Qaeda and JEW USA declare their genocides like honest people do

 

[al-Hasani]

2.3.2.4 Converts to Sunni Islam from Shi’a Islam

The authorities have treated suspected converts from the official religion of Twelver Shi’a Islam[259], the majority religion in Iran[260] to Sunni Islam, the religion of the majority of the Arab world, with notable brutality. Traditionalist schools of Sunni Islam are sanctioned by the IRI Constitution, so it should be noted that many of the Ahwazi Arabs arrested on suspicions of conversion are ultimately charged with adhering to Wahhabism.[261] Although the charge is religious, much of the discourse on the topic within Iran highlights that the state’s fear is primarily political in nature.[262] As with arrests of cultural and political activists, the IRI appears to rely heavily on forced confessions in these matters.

2.3.2.4.1. Hamid Nasseri

Hamid Nasseri, a convert to Sunni Islam who was arrested in May 2006, states that he did not convert for ethnic or political reasons.[263] After his arrest at his home in Ahvaz, Nasseri was detained in an unknown MOIS detention center for four months. His interrogations focused on his beliefs and accused him of Wahhabism. During these interrogations, Nasseri was struck several times by his interrogators. Reiterating that he was a traditional Sunni, Nasseri appealed to the Constitution of the IRI, which gave Sunnis of the Hanafi, Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanbali, and Zaydi schools the right to hold religious gatherings in accordance with the tenets of their faith.[264]

Finally, after four months’ detention Nasseri was charged with convening a group to disturb national security, taking actions against national security and distributing propaganda against the IRI by the Branch 5 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz. Upon being arraigned Nasseri was released on bail. He was given the opportunity to employ an attorney, but believes that the attorney his family hired while he was in detention took advantage of his situation and did not adequately defend him. His trial took nearly three years—during the interim he was arrested again in front of the Revolutionary Court in 2007. Eventually, he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in exile in the town of Masjed-e Soleiman in the northeast of Khuzestan province.[265]

2.3.2.4.2. Abdolhamid Nazari

Abdolhamid Nazari[266] was a steelworker and professional singer of Islamic prayers[267] who converted to Sunni Islam in 1985. When he was summoned to the information bureau of the MOIS office in the Amaniyeh neighborhood in Ahvaz, Nazari went with his wife and children—they were sent home and were not informed of his whereabouts for “four or five months.”[268]

Whereas other witnesses interviewed for this report who faced legal sanction were tried in the Revolutionary Court system, Nazari was tried in a branch of the Special Clerical Courts[269] in the Kianpars neighborhood of Ahvaz, presided over by Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, Minister of Intelligence from 2005-2009 and incumbent Prosecutor-General of the IRI.[270] He was detained for one week before being informed of charges:

One week after I was arrested and interrogated numerous times by the Revolutionary Guards [or MOIS agents], I was taken to the court for the first time. The only time they would take my blindfold off was when they took me to the Special Clerical Court. Because I was a Seyyed and had previously been a prayer chanter in religious ceremonies, they sent my case to the Special Clerical Court… Moseni-Ejei was the judge. When I was in court they treated me so badly that when I was sent back to my small cell, with everything that I’ve said about it before, the cell felt like heaven, like a five-star hotel. In court they would beat me and really insult me…I was accused of changing my faith from Shia to Sunni. My trial was horrible. …They alleged that I was the founder of [the movement towards] the Sunni religion in the region.[271]​

Nazari was not given the opportunity to hire an attorney, nor was one provided for him. When he attempted to respond to his charges in court, he claims that, “As soon as I spoke they would insult me, using filthy words. They wouldn’t let me talk and defend myself.”[272] His trial continued for a year, during which he had “25 to 30” court sessions. The Special Clerical Court sentenced Nazari to death. Eventually, upon appeal, his sentence was reduced to ten years’ imprisonment.[273]

2.4. Conditions of Detention

The individuals interviewed for this report testified to inhumane conditions of detention in MOIS and IRGC Intelligence Division detention centers in Khuzestan and/or Karun and Sepidar Prisons.[274]

Kamil Alboshoka’s time in an unknown detention center in the spring of 2005 echoes these experiences:

The cell in the detention center was just big enough for me to sleep in. I could only lie down on the floor. They gave me two blankets and a pillow. It was pitch dark, as there was no light. The door to the cell had a tiny opening through which they passed me my food. I never saw the prison guard, because around them, we always had to have our blindfolds on…

The weather was quite hot. April weather in Ahwaz is in the mid 30’s (Celsius). We had no fans. Because of the heat, I could not use the two blankets they gave me to cover myself. I used them as a mattress. They were military blankets. They were grey and smelled awful, like the smell of something very old that has never been washed or cleaned. This is how it was. Was it deliberate? I don’t know.[275]
​

Case studies of specific detention centers and prisons follow below.

2.4.1. Chaharshir MOIS Detention Center

The detention center in the Chaharshir intersection in Ahvaz has facilities occupied by both the MOIS and the IRGC Intelligence Division. It is typically used for pre-trial detention for individuals facing national security or smuggling charges. Although pre-trial detention is technically not supposed to last for long periods of time, in practice it may go on for months. As in most detention centers in Iran, detainees are kept in solitary confinement; some cells are described to be roughly two meters by one-and-a-half meters[276] and others closer to one meter by one meter in area.[277] According to at least one former detainee, the cramped nature of the cells in Chaharshir makes sleep difficult.[278]

During Kathem Mojaddam’s first arrest in 1988, he was held in the Chaharshir detention center for twenty days. He recalls that, “olitary cells are horrific and dirty. I recall [one time] from the window that was high up, a snake crawled into my solitary cell. At that time one side of Ahwaz was desert, and we were outside the city. The snake was about to crawl in and I managed to hit it with a broom that was there. There was nothing there. My cell was a 2x3, the same size as other cells. There was nothing particular in the cell; a piece of mat and two blankets, which were dirtier than the mat on the ground.”[279]

Witnesses also report having no interaction with other inmates in the Chaharshir detention center, aside from writings on the walls of solitary cells and bathrooms.[280]

Regarding the food served to detainees, Saeed Hamidan says, “For three and a half months there…I ate just a few bites and only in the evenings. If you can imagine, my original weight was 240 pounds and by the time I was transferred from the detention center to Karun Prison I weighed 145-150 pounds.”[281]

Abdolhamid Nazari had a similar experience. “They served us particularly bad food. God knows in prison I was never able to eat [until my] stomach [was full]. For example, one day they would give us an egg. Another day they would give us a potato or a few beans.”[282]

2.4.2. Karun Prison

In April 2011, Zia Nabavi, an ethnic Persian student activist arrested during the 2009 post-election protests and sentenced to fifteen years in exile in Karun Prison wrote an open letter to Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head of the Judiciary’s Human Rights Commission. In it, he wrote:

The most significant challenge facing Karun prison in Ahvaz is the intense overcrowding and population density in for example ward 6, where I am currently incarcerated. Based on the number of beds available, this ward has a maximum capacity of 110 prisoners, but on average more than 300 prisoners are held in this ward at all times; in other words three times the maximum capacity allowed! Obviously, such a large population has a hard time fitting in the rooms even when standing, and as a result of the overcrowding, many sleep on the floors (I myself slept without a bed for six months) and a third of the prisoners sleep outside in the courtyard.[283]
​

Kathem Mojaddam had similar memories from his arrest during the April 2005 protests: “Space was scarce. I saw with my own eyes, both in Karoon and Sepidar prisons, how hundreds of people slept in hallways. The inmates told me, regardless of it being winter or summer, even if it was 50 degrees [Celsius], they held on to their spot. When it was raining, these people would take their blankets and go into the washrooms, and return after the rain had stopped.”[284]

Mojaddam recalls from his detentions in Karun Prison in 2003 and 2005 that, “Political prisoners were kept among other prisoners. The regime claimed there were no political prisoners, and that these people were all anti-revolutionary and considered common criminals, such as robbers and murderers… They even stole my ulcer medication. They also stole my shoes and food.”[285]

In addition to the well-documented problems of overcrowding, hygiene, and poor nutrition, in July 2013, the prison’s air conditioning system broke down.[286] Fears were raised that prisoners would suffer from exposure to the extreme heat of the Ahvaz summer where temperatures can reach up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit in July.[287]

2.4.3. Sepidar Prison

Sepidar Prison is located in a neighborhood of the same name near Karun Prison in Ahvaz. Huda Hawashimi was transferred to Sepidar Prison after being sentenced in 2006. When she first arrived at the prison, she recalls,

I was put in quarantine first. There is a private yard behind Sepidar Prison where other prisoners cannot see you. There was a room with a restroom…it had a toilet and little yard. The prisoners in the prison ward could not see or visit you because I was denied visitation or conversation. I could not talk to them, I could not see them, and they could not see me either. They wanted to show other prisoners that I was different from the rest of them, and that I was a terrible person. That is how I felt.[288]
​

Masumeh Ka’abi, whose imprisonment in Sepidar Prison was roughly contemporaneous, stated: “My son and I were in a small cell. I begged them to let me make a phone call to inform my family [so that they could bring things like] clothing for my son and me. They said, ‘We are not allowed. We have an order saying that you are forbidden from having visitors or phone calls.’”[289]

2.5. Harassment

The human rights situation in Khuzestan province has continued to deteriorate in the years since 2005. Pre-existing trends regarding the IRI’s far-reaching surveillance, harassment, arbitrary arrests and use of torture to extract confessions—which has allegedly led to custodial deaths[290]—have worsened. The implementation of long terms of detention prior to the registration of formal charges, and widespread neglect of due process, have also ebbed and flowed according to the political situation in Khuzestan.

2.5.1. Surveillance

Multiple witnesses indicate that in the course of interrogations their interrogators played recordings or showed transcripts of the detainees’ previous telephone conversations, suggesting state surveillance of their communications, not pursuant to any warrant or legal order.

2.5.1.1. Saleh Hamid

Former student activist Saleh Hamid stated that telephone conversation transcripts that he was shown during one detention at the MOIS office in Ahvaz in 2007 indicated that his mobile phone, which was on the IranCell network, had also been tapped.[291] During interrogations, he says that:

[Interrogators] told me directly that they were monitoring my family’s phone line…I even heard a few of the conversations. They said that on a specific day I spoke to a specific person and that there was a recording of it, on such and such day, you spoke with so and so, and here is the recording of it.[292]
​

2.5.1.2. Isa Savari

Political activist Isa Savari stated, during his interrogation, it was evident that he was under surveillance:

They had my emails. Since I used Internet cafes, they had [access to] all of my emails, including messages that I had sent abroad detailing [ongoing] human rights activism and listing the names of prisoners…everything was under surveillance. Because of things that they said about telephone conversations that I had had, I realized that they had been observing me for about three months. They had even tapped my mobile phone.[293]
​

2.5.1.3. Salim Karimi

Interrogations during Salim Karimi’s 2006 arrest suggest that this surveillance was not total—at least at the time:

They [the interrogators] asked me about activities I engaged in, places I visited, things I had bought in Tehran, and… conversations I had. They had all of this information on tape. It was then that I realized that not only had they put my phones—both home and cell—under surveillance, but they had me under surveillance every time I travelled inside or outside the country as well. They asked a lot of questions about my previous mobile phones and wanted those SIM cards, which I no longer had. Their questions were not always accurate, and they bluffed a lot as well, which indicated that (despite the intercepts and surveillance) they did not have complete knowledge.[294]
​

One human rights activist avers that a switch in SIM card formats in 2007 made cell phone communications much easier to monitor.[295]