Sepideh Qolian’s Shocking Account of the Torture of an Arab Iranian Woman in Sepiddar Prison in Ahvaz

Sepideh Qolian, a civil activist who has been temporarily released on bail, has written in a series of tweets about the torture of an Arab Iranian woman in Sepiddar Prison in Ahvaz.

This civil activist mentioned on Twitter an Arab Iranian female prisoner named Zahra Hosseini, who according to her was detained in November 2018 by Ahvaz intelligence agents and held for 5 months in detention cells, where she was tortured by her case interrogators to extract forced confessions.

Sepideh Qolian, who referred to Zahra Hosseini as “my Arab sister,” says she first saw her with bruised hands and feet when both of them were being transferred to Sepiddar Prison in Ahvaz for fingerprinting.

According to this civil activist, although she was blindfolded throughout her detention, the sounds she heard during interrogations were “more eloquent and vivid” than a thousand images, and there was no greater suffering than that.

She says that on the first day she was interrogated, she heard the voices of intelligence interrogators questioning Zahra Hosseini from the adjacent cell. According to Ms. Qolian, during this interrogation which continued until morning, the interrogators demanded that the female prisoner confess to being a member of ISIS, even though she consistently identified herself as a Sunni throughout.

Sepideh Qolian, referring to the beating and torture of Ms. Hosseini by the interrogators and emphasizing that they were cellmates in Sepiddar Prison for months afterward, says that Zahra Hosseini is one of hundreds of Arab Iranian women who have been detained, tortured, and oppressed for two reasons: “being a woman” and “being Arab.”

Previously, representatives of 33 countries, including the United States, in a periodic session reviewing the human rights situation in Iran criticized violations of women’s rights, ethnic and religious minorities, and the continued execution of children in Iran, and called on the Iranian government to accede to the Convention Against Torture and ensure that no one is subjected to torture.

The U.S. State Department has also repeatedly condemned violent and widespread suppression of protesters in various cases, as well as repeated and continuous violations of the rights of Iranian citizens by the ruling regime in that country.

Source: Voice of America