February 15, 2019
Leaked records show that the regime arrested 61,940 men and women in the capital for political offenses in the first three decades after the revolution, an average of almost six people a day.
Iran denies holding anyone on political charges.
At a news conference in Paris attended by Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, recipient of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), the media monitoring group, said whistleblowers had given it 1.7 million records detailing judicial proceedings against an array of citizens in Tehran.
RSF Secretary General Christophe Deloire said the group had spent months cross-checking the records with its own documented cases and those of other NGOs, and had established that 860 journalists had been targeted by the state.
“The file is a register of all the arrests, imprisonments and executions carried out by the Iranian authorities in the Tehran area over three decades,” RSF said.
Beyond the journalists rounded up or imprisoned, RSF said the files showed 61,940 political prisoners had been held since the revolution, with more than 500 of them aged between 15 and 18. It did not give the number of executions.
The file contains 1.7 million records of judicial actions against people in Tehran over the first three decades after the revolution. Some people appear multiple times.
For each person in the register, the file specifies the name, date and place of birth, sex, nationality, date of the entry on the register and, as appropriate, the date of arrest, the authorities responsible for the arrest, the charges, the court and prosecutor’s office involved, the date of the verdict and the sentence.
Deloire said his organization would refer the file to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights in the hope further steps could be taken to hold Iran to account.
“The very existence of this file and its millions of entries show not only the scale of the Iranian regime’s mendacity,… but the relentless machinations it has used for 40 years to persecute men and women for their opinions or their reporting,” he said.
Last month, Amnesty International issued a report accusing the Iranian authorities of a crackdown on dissent during 2018 with more than 7,000 people arrested countrywide, among them students, journalists, environmental campaigners and lawyers.
The file also contains records of some arrests the authorities have denied ever happened.
One major such case dates from 1996 and involves a very well-publicized incident surrounding Faraj Sarkuhi, who appears under Register Number 694968.
The editor of one of Iran’s leading political and cultural magazines, he was arrested by Intelligence Ministry agents as he was about to board a flight to Germany November 3, 1996. As his passport had been stamped, the regime was able to claim that he had disappeared after departing for Germany and insist he was never arrested. Germany disputed that, saying he never got off the plane in Germany.
The file confirms that he was detained in Tehran.
His disappearance caused an international uproar. Facing international criticism, the regime later staged a press conference at the airport at which it produced Sarkuhi and claimed he had just returned from Turkmenistan. In reality, the records show he had just spent two months in prison.
The file also reveals for the first time that a total of 6,048 persons were arrested in Tehran for participating in protests against President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad’s re-election in 2009.
The file also shows for the first time that 5,760 members of the Baha’i religious minority have been detained in Tehran for “membership of a sect,” although the regime has always denied arresting Baha’is merely for being Baha’is.