A documentary account of two executions and dramatic confessions
Bahman Ahmadi-Amouie, a journalist and former political prisoner, has revealed the forced confessions and execution of two members of the King's Association in 2009. He says they were promised that they would be released after making a showy confession.
On February 29, 2009, Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Alizamani, two accused of being members of the “Iranian Monarchy Society,” were executed by a Revolutionary Court verdict. Rahmanipour was 19 years old and Alizamani was 37. They were tried in the court of those accused of the events following the 10th presidential election, even though both of them had been arrested before the protests.
Bahman Ahmadi Amouie, a journalist who was himself arrested in the 2009 crackdown and spent five years and four months in prison, described the details of the trial of the "Society of Kings" defendants in a series of tweets.
Amoyee writes that while we were in prison, we heard interesting stories from people close to the King's Association: "This association was fully active under the supervision of the Ministry of Intelligence of the Ahmadinejad government, and unbeknownst to them, they publicly celebrated Hitler's birthday with guests from Germany at the Arasbaran University. In their meetings, they burned the Quran, recited epic poems about the murder of Arabs and the virtue of Iranians, and filmed it."
Amoei says that several of these people went to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2006 and had a radio program, but in 2007 they returned to Iran with the cooperation of the Ministry of Intelligence; they were detained for a few days and then released: "In May 2009, a month before the coup, they went to them and interrogated them again, but this time they had to confess that they had just come from Iraq and that their goal was to destabilize the country politically following the events after the elections. They also promised that they would be released after this confession."
The journalist testified that they practiced how to speak in court several times in the presence of intelligence agents and people from the judiciary: "After confessing in court, they happily danced and danced from the Revolutionary Court to Evin Prison, saying that they would soon be free. One of them was so hopeful that he asked his family for the college entrance exam books and read them day and night, hoping that the interrogator would tell him that he would be released and that he could take the college entrance exam. But one day, two of them were executed. One was the same 19-year-old young man, and the rest were given life sentences, 10-year sentences, and 15-year sentences."
Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Alizamani were arrested in April 2009. When their confessions were broadcast from the 2009 courts, one of those who was in the same cell with Alizamani wrote on the “Nowrooz” website: “Mohammad Reza had no news from the outside and was asking us about the events after the elections.”
Nasrin Sotoudeh, Arash Rahmanipour's lawyer, also told Deutsche Welle after the execution of the two men: "In addition to all the pressure that was being exerted against Mr. Rahmanipour, he told me that the agents had constantly asked him if he confessed to things he didn't do, we would convert your execution to 10 years in prison, which never happened."
Ms. Sotoudeh had said that the Rahmanipour and Alizamani cases were being re-examined by the Supreme Court, and the lawyers had been informed that the cases were going to be sent back to the Revolutionary Court to correct the deficiencies.
The execution of these two men, while the 2009 protests were still ongoing, was seen as an act of intimidation and a warning to protesters and critics. Ahmad Jannati, who was the interim Friday prayer leader in Tehran at the time, defended the execution of the two men in his Friday prayer sermons, telling Sadegh Larijani, then head of the judiciary, “You executed two people. Your hands should not be hurt.”
Source: DW
