Disclosure of Legal File with 1.7 Million Names

Reporters Without Borders has obtained a confidential document that records the statistics of political persecution, arrests, and detention of at least 860 journalists and citizen reporters between the years 1979 and 2009. This document has been verified over several months.

Reporters Without Borders revealed information recorded in a confidential file of Iran’s judicial apparatus at a press conference. At this conference held on Wednesday, February 7, 2024, Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, along with Manirah Badraan, Iraj Mesdaghi, Taghi Rahmani, and Reza Meini—four direct witnesses to political repression—were present.

Reporters Without Borders said the document was provided to the organization by individuals who wish to alert public opinion and international institutions about the ruthless repression by Iran’s judicial apparatus.

The aforementioned organization states that it has analyzed the contents of this file from 1979 to 2009: “In this file, 1.7 million names have been registered, encompassing all social classes and individuals including women, men, and children, religious and ethnic minorities, ordinary prisoners, and political prisoners, as well as journalists and citizen reporters. Analysis of this file for the first time reveals that the judicial apparatus attempted to manipulate or distort the truth regarding the situation and charges against journalists and political prisoners.”

“An Organized Lie”

Reporters Without Borders confirms that the Islamic Republic regime, in the first three decades following the revolution, arrested and imprisoned at least 860 journalists, executing some of them. The full name of each person, the date of arrest, the charge, the arresting agency, and the prosecution branch are recorded in this file, but the profession of the accused—journalism—is not mentioned anywhere. The organization states that the regime’s repeated claim that no journalist or political prisoner has been detained in Islamic Republic facilities is “an organized governmental lie”: “in order to silence critics and deceive international human rights organizations.”

According to the disclosed documents, at least 57 journalists or citizen reporters have been charged and imprisoned on fabricated charges such as “action against national security,” “espionage,” “insulting sacred beliefs,” “disrespect to the Leader,” or “cooperation with foreign agents.”

At the Reporters Without Borders press conference, Christophe Deloire, the director of the organization, stated: “The existence of this file and its millions of data points not only reveals the extent of the lie perpetuated by Iranian government officials throughout all these years regarding the absence of political prisoners and journalists in the country’s prisons, but also demonstrates that the Islamic Republic regime has for 40 years continuously and systematically imprisoned hundreds of men and women for their beliefs or journalistic work.”

Deloire asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to challenge and hold Islamic Republic authorities accountable for this governmental lie.

The names of well-known journalists such as Faraj Sarkohi, Reza Alijani, Taghi Rahmani, Akbar Ganji, Mohammad Sadegh Kaboudvand, Zhila Baniyaghoob, Bahman Ahmadi Amouei, Saeed Matinpour, Hengameh Shahidi, Narges Mohammadi, Ahmad Zeydabadi, and others are among the hundreds of names in this file.

Zahra Kazemi is registered in this file with number 18021664, and the date of her death has been changed from the 2nd to the 10th of July 2003. Investigation shows that six months after this killing, Ms. Kazemi’s name was registered as an accused with a new number 18334859.

Acknowledgment of Execution of Four Journalists

The names of four executed journalists, their registration numbers, charges, and arrest dates appear in this document: Ali Asghar Amrani, Saeed Soltanpour, Rahman Hatef Manfared, and Simone Farzami. Simone Farzami, head of the French News Agency office in Iran and editor-in-chief of “Journal de Teheran,” was an Iranian-Swiss national who was arrested in April 1980 on charges of espionage for the United States and executed after six months.

Of the 61,924 women registered in this document, 218 are journalists and citizen reporters. The name of Zhila Baniyaghoob appears several times in the judicial apparatus file with arrests by various agencies. This journalist and director of the Iranian Women’s Organization website has been sentenced to have no right to work until 2040.

This file also documents arrests following the 2009 elections. The contents of this document show that more than 6,048 people, including 600 women and 5,400 men, were arrested during that year’s popular protests and on charges of “action against internal security.” This is while the Islamic Republic has consistently denied arresting people for participating in demonstrations.

The file of Iran’s Islamic Republic judicial apparatus contains information about at least 61,940 political prisoners from 1979 onwards, with at least 520 of them being between 15 and 18 years old at the time of their arrest. The document also includes names of victims of the 1988 summer mass executions of political prisoners. This is while the Islamic Republic has never formally acknowledged the massacre of political prisoners.

This file shows that 5,760 Iranian citizens in Tehran were pursued, arrested, and in some cases executed solely on the charge of membership in the “misguided Bahai sect.”

Shirin Ebadi, Abdolkarim Lahiji, and Nasrin Sotoudeh are among those whose names appear in this document. The names of other individuals also appear in the file that could indicate the efforts of security agencies to arrest them.

Reporters Without Borders emphasized that the relevant document, after receipt, underwent months of review and cross-referencing of information with lists from other national and international organizations, and was verified by a number of observers, experts, and survivors of the massacres of the 1980s and 1990s.

Reporters Without Borders formed an “oversight committee” to verify and monitor the data, whose members are Shirin Ebadi and three political prisoners from the 1980s—Manirah Badraan, Iraj Mesdaghi, and Reza Meini. The committee’s duty is to oversee and ensure the use of the Iranian judicial data file in accordance with human rights standards, oversee and ensure the utilization of the file for improving the human rights situation in Iran, and specifically the right to truth and justice for the victims recorded in the file and their families. Shirin Ebadi chairs this committee.

Source: DW