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A mother of one of the three Iranian students still held in jail after an incident in May on Monday publicly accused the authorities of torturing the young men to obtain confessions. Azam Tajik, mother of Ehsan Mansouri, a student detained for the past four months on suspicion of publishing material offensive to Islam in university newspapers, said her son had been held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin prison.

“Our children were forced to confess in prison under torture,” she told a news conference on freedom of speech held by Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi. “When they left solitary confinement they rejected the statements they had given.” The Iranian judiciary has vehemently denied that any accused are tortured in its prisons although it has said the Tehran judiciary is preparing a report about the families’ claims. Mansouri was arrested in May with Majid Tavakoli and Ahmad Ghassaban over the appearance of “anti-Islamic” material and caricatures in reformist student newspapers at Tehran’s prestigious Amir Kabir University. “Our children denied and condemned it, but everyone from the university to security officials said they have committed an offence,” Tajik said. “Who has proven their guilt? In front of which lawyer? Under torture and in solitary confinement?” the distraught mother said.

“They beat up my son when they took him from home to jail, his nose was bleeding all along, they told us we were lying and that we should stop giving interviews,” Tajik said. The students said the material been planted in a plot to discredit them. Amir Kabir has long been a hotbed of student radicalism and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was last year the target of heckling in a stormy address to the university. Ebadi defended the jailed students, saying they were detained because they did not have freedom of expression. “Had the students taken up arms against people? We have always faced this problem that they went to prison because they were not free to express themselves,” the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner said. “This principle is forgotten that the dissidents should be free to talk, the supporters of the government have always been free to sing praises to the rulers anyway,” Ebadi said.

Source: AFP

Iran’s ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has aroused controversy after saying in a new book that revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini favoured dropping the mantra of “Death to America.” The revelation in the latest edition of Rafsanjani’s diaries comes amid growing strains between Tehran and Washington, but also after landmark talks between Iranian and US officials on security in Iraq.

The slogan of “Death to America” symbolises Iran’s enmity with the United States and is chanted by the faithful after Friday prayers and often during speeches by the Islamic republic’s top leaders. Rafsanjani’s comment comes in an entry from July 5, 1984, five years before Khomeini’s death and in the midst of the 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq which cost a million lives on both sides. “Mr Imam Moussavi, an MP from Shoushtar, also came to visit me and he suggested banning the slogans of ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to the Soviet Union’,” writes Rafsanjani, who was speaker of parliament at that time. “I told him that in principle a decision had been taken and the imam (Khomeini) has approved it. “But we are waiting for the right moment.” The newly published book is the fifth volume in a series of memoirs by Rafsanjani detailing his life story, from political activism under the shah to his work as a top Iranian leader. The book was published before the new Iranian year in March and the comments have been unnoticed until now. But they have been picked up in the local media in recent days, with hardliners condemning Rafsanjani for publishing what they see as a distortion of Khomeini’s views.

The hardline daily Kayhan’s editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari on Saturday wrote a stinging editorial calling on Rafsanjani to retract the statement. “It must be said that what Rafsanjani attributed to the imam (Khomeini) is contrary to the positions announced by the late imam and his path which is known to everyone,” he said. “More than hurting the nation, this hurts the personality of Mr Rafsanjani. It is definitely necessary that this be corrected,” wrote Shariatmadari in the editorial entitled “Pardon me, Mr Rafsanjani…” Always at the centre of the Islamic republic’s politics, Rafsanjani served two terms as president between 1989-1997. However he was humiliatingly thrashed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential vote. The cleric now serves as head of the Expediency Council, a powerful body which mediates in disputes and acts as the adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on strategic planning issues. A confidant of Khomeini who is nonetheless known as a pragmatist, Rafsanjani has consistently argued for moderation in Iran’s dealings with the United States.

During a Friday prayer sermon this month, he said that Iran was ready for talks at “any level” with the United States, although other officials have said that the time is not ripe. Rafsanjani also caused a stir last year by publishing a letter by Khomeini over the end of the war with Iraq, which prompted hardliners to accuse him of exploiting the late leader’s comments for his own political ends. Khomeini’s letter explained why it was necessary to accept a ceasefire with Iraq, and its publication was seen as a way of emphasising the importance of pursuing a realistic policy with the international community. Another contentious passage in Rafsanjani’s new book comes from an entry from January 7, 1985, when he writes of a visit to Khomeini during which the leader talked openly of stepping down. The supreme leader in Iran, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is appointed for life. “I went to visit the imam. I waited for him inside the home for a long time and it seemed he wanted increasingly to be alone. I emphasised he needed to talk to people more often. He talked about the possibility of stepping down. “I said ‘Say no more. It is not expedient.’ And he accepted.”

Source: AFP