{"id":1240,"date":"2018-03-06T15:53:33","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T15:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1240"},"modified":"2018-03-07T16:01:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T16:01:29","slug":"four-deaths-in-state-custody-in-iran-in-two-months-heighten-grave-concerns-for-detainees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1240","title":{"rendered":"Four Deaths in State Custody in Iran in Two Months Heighten Grave Concerns for Detainees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mohammad Raji<\/p><\/div>\n

March 6, 2018\u2014The recent death of a devotee of Iran\u2019s largest Sufi order in Tehran marks\u00a0the fourth known death of a detainee\u00a0in state custody in Iran in two months.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s outrageous that detainees in Iran keep dying in state custody,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese people are arrested, they die, and nobody knows what happened,\u201d added Ghaemi. \u201cThis lack of transparency is unacceptable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The daughter of Mohammad Raji, the\u00a0Gonabadi Dervish\u00a0who died in police custody in Tehran sometime between February 20 and March 4, is planning to sue the authorities, she told CHRI.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a lawyer to follow up on the case because my father\u2019s death was caused by blows they struck to his head,\u201d said Tayebeh Raji. \u201cWe need to shed light on this crime. We are demanding an autopsy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought they would take him to a hospital for treatment and take care of him\u2014at least out of respect for the years he spent defending this country [in the Iran-Iraq war],\u201d she added.<\/span><\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cBut on the night of March 3, we were contacted by the police and asked to bring his photo and papers to identify him. Today [March 5], [my father\u2019s] son-in-law went there and he said my father had gone into a coma and died from injuries caused by blows to the head.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Iranian officials have claimed that Raji was \u201cinjured\u201d during protests in Tehran in February 2018 but have refused to take responsibility for his death. It remains unclear exactly when Raji died and whether he died at a detention center or at a hospital\u2014regardless, his family says he died in state custody.<\/span><\/p>\n

On March 5, the Fars News Agency, which maintains close relations with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),\u00a0reported\u00a0that \u201cAn informed source denied reports about the death of a dervish in Evin Prison or in police detention and said: We have not had any deaths among members of this cult during investigations. He added: This person was injured on the night of clashes on Pasdaran St. and was taken to Baqiyatallah Hospital\u00a0but he died.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On March 4 the Tehran prosecutor denied that Raji died during the \u201cinvestigation process\u201d or while under interrogation but did not address the fact that Raji was in state custody at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow many more people will die before Iranian officials listen to calls from inside and outside the country for an\u00a0independent investigation\u00a0into these deaths?\u201d asked Ghaemi.<\/span><\/p>\n

Family Denied Access to Raji Until After His Death<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Tayebeh Raji was detained the same day as her father on February 20 but released late that evening. The authorities refused to give the family news about her father until after he had died, she told CHRI.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy father was arrested on the morning of February 20, [2018],\u201d she said. \u201cI was there when it happened. He was taken into custody ahead of me. I saw that my father was injured; he was on the ground [on 7thGolestan St.] with a bloody face. But I saw his hand move and realized he was alive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cI was detained at\u00a04:30\u00a0in the morning [February 20] and taken to the Vozara Detention Center and they released me at\u00a012 midnight. We had no information about what had happened to our father and he didn\u2019t contact us. Anywhere we went, no one had any information.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Tayebeh Raji also told CHRI that she has no information about her brother, Mohammad Ali Raji, who was also detained on February 20.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mohammad Raji was one of more than 300 members of Iran\u2019s Sufi Gonabadi Order who were reportedly\u00a0arrested\u00a0after clashes between the religious order and the police became violent in Tehran on February 19.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three policemen and two members of the Basij volunteer militia were\u00a0killed\u00a0after a bus allegedly driven by a dervish ran over them. Friday prayer leaders have since\u00a0referred\u00a0to the dervishes as terrorists and spies in their sermons.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026[T]hey caused these riots to cover up the enemy\u2019s espionage operations against our missile sites under the guise of environmental protection,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0ultra-conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, the\u00a0Friday\u00a0prayer leader of Mashhad, on February 23. \u201cThese [dervishes] must be uprooted for harming people\u2019s security.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Gonabadi Dervishes\u2019 interpretation of Islam differs from that of Iran\u2019s ruling Muslim Shia establishment. The Islamic Republic views any alternative belief system, especially those seeking converts, as a threat to the prevailing Shia establishment and has\u00a0imprisoned\u00a0members of the Sufi order and\u00a0expelled\u00a0them from universities for their faith.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Mazjooban, a website devoted to news about Iran\u2019s Gonabadi Dervishes, the clashes began when police attacked a demonstration by the dervishes on February 19, 2018, outside a police station as the dervishes were demanding the release of a fellow devotee.<\/span><\/p>\n

The website also reported that Mohammad Raji was a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) during which he\u00a0commanded\u00a0several battalions of Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Kurdistan Province. In 2004, he left the IRGC and became a farmer in Mazraehabad, a village near the city of Aligoudarz, Lorestan Province, according to the report.<\/span><\/p>\n

Farhad Nouri, a spokesman for the dervishes,\u00a0told\u00a0CHRI on February 23 that approximately 170 followers of the group had been hospitalized at the time because of injuries caused by beatings by the police and plainclothes agents.<\/span><\/p>\n

The recent multiple\u00a0deaths of detainees\u00a0under highly suspicious circumstances have raised concerns regarding fatal ill-treatment in Iranian prisons, particularly after swift official statements that the detainees committed \u201csuicide\u201d and the refusal of authorities to allow any independent investigations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iranian officials claimed that the deaths of\u00a0Sina Ghanbari\u00a0in Evin Prison on January 7, 2018, and\u00a0Vahid Heydari\u00a0at a detention center in the city of Arak that same month were suicides.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kavous Seyed-Emami, a prominent Iranian academic and environmentalist who had Canadian citizenship, also died in Evin Prison allegedly by suicide on February 9, 2018. Calls by his\u00a0family\u00a0and\u00a0UN human rights experts\u00a0for an independent investigation have gone unheeded in Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFriday prayer leaders are using the clashes with the dervishes in February to paint the entire religion as violent, which can only inflame tensions and lead to more abuses,\u201d said Ghaemi.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow more than ever, influential voices in Iran should be calling for the protection of the dervishes and all detainees instead of giving security forces a carte blanche to use excessive force against detainees with impunity,\u201d added Ghaemi.<\/span><\/p>\n

For interviews, contact:<\/span>
\n Hadi Ghaemi<\/span>
\n +1-917-669-5996<\/span>
\n hadighaemi@iranhumanrights.org<\/span><\/p>\n

Visit our website:\u00a0www.iranhumanrights.org<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 6, 2018\u2014The recent death of a devotee of Iran\u2019s largest Sufi order in Tehran marks\u00a0the fourth known death of a detainee\u00a0in state custody in Iran in two months. \u201cIt\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[309,392,393],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-chri","tag-gonabadi-dervish","tag-mohammad-raji"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1241,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}