A Documented Account of Two Executions and Show Confessions
Bahman Ahmadi-Amoui, a journalist and former political prisoner, has revealed details about forced confessions and the execution of two members of the Royalist Association in 2009. He says they were promised they would be freed after making show confessions.
On February 28, 2010, Arash Rahmani-Pour and Mohammad-Reza Ali-Zamani, two men accused of membership in the “Iranian Royalist Association,” were executed by order of the Revolutionary Court. Rahmani-Pour was 19 years old and Ali-Zamani was 37. They were tried in a court hearing alongside defendants in the post-election unrest of the tenth presidential election; however, both had been arrested before these protests.
Bahman Ahmadi-Amoui, a journalist who was himself arrested during the 2009 crackdowns and spent five years and four months in prison, detailed the court proceedings against “Royalist Association” members in a series of tweets.
Amoui writes that while we were in prison, we heard interesting accounts from people close to the Royalist Association: “This association operated entirely under the supervision of the Ministry of Intelligence during Ahmadinejad’s government without their knowledge. They publicly held a birthday celebration for Hitler with guests from Germany at the Arsbaaran Cultural Center. In their meetings, they burned the Quran and sang epic poems about killing Arabs and the virtue of Iranians, and they filmed it.”
Amoui says 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 April-May 2009, a month before the coup, they went after these people again and interrogated them again, but this time they had to confess that they had just come from Iraq and their goal was to destabilize the country politically following the post-election unrest. They were also promised that after making this confession they would be freed.”
This journalist testifies that they, in the presence of intelligence agents and people from the judiciary, rehearsed how to speak in court several times: “After confessing in court, they joyfully walked and danced from the Revolutionary Court to Evin Prison, thinking they would soon be released. One of them was so hopeful that he asked his family to send him university entrance exam books and studied day and night with the hope that his interrogator had told him he would be freed and could even take the exam. But one day two of them were executed. The other one was that 19-year-old young man, and the rest received life sentences and 10-year and 15-year sentences.”
Arash Rahmani-Pour and Mohammad-Reza Ali-Zamani were arrested in March 2009. When their confessions from 2009 trials were broadcast, one of those who shared a cell with Ali-Zamani wrote on the “Nowruz” website: “Mohammad-Reza had no news from outside and would ask us about the post-election events.”
Nasrin Sotoudeh, Arash Rahmani-Pour’s lawyer, also told Deutsche Welle after the execution of these two men: “In addition to all the pressures against Mr. Rahmani-Pour, he told me that officials constantly asked him if he would confess to acts he hadn’t committed, we will change the executions to 10 years imprisonment, which never happened.”
Ms. Sotoudeh said that the case of Rahmani-Pour and Ali-Zamani was under review in the Supreme Court and lawyers had been informed that the cases would be sent back to the Revolutionary Court to correct procedural errors.
The execution of these two men at a time when 2009 protests were still ongoing was considered intimidation of opponents and a warning to protesters and critics. Ahmad Jannati, who was the interim Friday Prayer leader of Tehran at that time, in his Friday prayers defended the execution of these two and told Sadegh Larijani, the then-head of the judiciary: “You executed two people. May your hand not hurt.”
Source: DW
