Shahin Naseri in Final Message from Prison: I Witnessed Medieval Torture on Navid Afkari’s Body

Shahin Naseri, whose suspicious death in Tehran’s main prison has become headline news, says in his latest audio message from inside the prison, exclusively obtained by Radio Farda, that he was “an eyewitness to medieval torture” inflicted on the body of Navid Afkari, Iran’s executed wrestling champion.

In this message, while “expressing solidarity” with Vahid and Habib Afkari who are imprisoned, he says that due to “hate-mongering and baseless accusations against Iranian citizens and violation of the most basic civil rights” by the Islamic Republic, he “declares his disgust” with this regime and “requests the revocation of his citizenship from this regime.”

At the end of his message, Shahin Naseri accuses government officials of “grand theft” and calls on the Iranian people not to leave the protests of citizens in Khuzestan, Sistan, and Kurdistan “unanswered” and to “rise to aid them.”

Shahin Naseri, a business consultant and non-political prisoner, testified on November 30, 2019, by writing an official and registered letter from prison that he personally witnessed the torture of Navid Afkari, Iran’s executed wrestling champion, at the Shiraz Intelligence Office.

The Iran Human Rights Organization reported on September 21 about Shahin Naseri’s suspicious death in solitary confinement in Tehran’s main prison, and Shahin Naseri’s brother said: “His friends told us he was killed in solitary confinement.”

One day after this news was published, the Iran Human Rights Organization called for the suspicious death of Shahin Naseri in Tehran’s main prison to be investigated by international and human rights bodies and demanded the formation of a fact-finding committee in this regard.

The Iran Human Rights Organization writes that after 24 hours of Shahin Naseri’s suspicious death, officials contacted his family and asked them to go to the Kahrizak legal medicine office to receive the body.

Mahmoud Amiri-Moghaddam, director of the Iran Human Rights Organization, said on Wednesday that “the responsibility for Shahin Naseri’s death, whatever reason the authorities claim, lies with the Prison Organization, the Judiciary, and the leader of the Islamic Republic, and they must be accountable for it.”

Zobeidollah Khodayan, spokesman for the Judiciary, gave no explanation about Shahin Naseri’s situation at a press conference on Wednesday, and Islamic Republic officials have so far provided no explanation regarding the news of his death.

In September 2020, coinciding with the execution of Navid Afkari, a former member of Iran’s wrestling team, various reports of his torture to extract forced confessions were published, and despite the denial of this by Iran’s Judiciary, according to the Iran Human Rights Organization, at that time Shahin Naseri’s voice was broadcast while he was serving his sentence for non-political crimes in Shiraz, who, as a witness to Navid Afkari’s torture, refuted this claim.

Shahin Naseri in the document “Witness Interrogation” described the details of the day he saw Navid Afkari being tortured in Shiraz, and based on this four-page testimony, Shahin Naseri says that when he was at the Shiraz Intelligence Office, he heard Navid Afkari’s screams and witnessed the scene of him being beaten by two plainclothes officers.

An informed source recently told the Iran Human Rights Organization that “Shahin Naseri had written a letter on the occasion of the anniversary of Navid Afkari’s execution and intended to read this letter over the phone, but the guard understood this and transferred him to solitary confinement before he could read the letter.”

Vahid and Habib Afkari, along with their brother Navid Afkari, were arrested during the August 2018 protests in Shiraz and were charged with “armed rebellion” and the murder of an employee of a security institution.

Navid Afkari, a 27-year-old wrestler, despite numerous ambiguities raised by his lawyers and despite an international campaign against his execution, was executed on September 12 last year and buried at night.

Source: Radio Farda