February 15, 2019
A female environmentalist arrested in Iran with seven fellow wildlife conservationists has defiantly told a court she was tortured and forced to confess to trumped-up spying charges, human rights groups say.
Niloufar Bayani graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 2009. On the first day of her trial January 30, she repeatedly interrupted the reading of the indictment, the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said.
Bayani faces a charge that can result in a death penalty. She is one of eight environmentalists, all arrested in January of last year, now on trial. She told the court the indictment was solely based on a false confession she gave while under physical and psychological torture in Evin Prison. She said she was repeatedly beaten and threatened.
An unnamed source told CHRI, “When the defendant persisted, the judge warned her to stop her objections. But after she continued to object, she was allowed to talk for a few minutes about the coerced nature of the confessions.”
Human Rights Watch, based in New York, said Bayani, 31, also denounced her treatment on February 2, the second day of the trial. A source told the group that Bayani said: “If you were being threatened with a needle of hallucinogenic drugs [hovering] above your arm, you would also confess to whatever they wanted you to confess.”
The eight conservationists are all with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, an environmental organization. Also arrested in January was Iranian-Canadian foundation director Kavous Seyed-Emami; he died three weeks later under suspicious circumstances at Evin Prison.
The conservationists were tracking Asiatic cheetahs using camera traps — motion-activated devices collecting data about the endangered species. The Pasdaran allege their work was a cover for spying on military installations and Iranian missile launches.
Bayani and three others are charged with “sowing corruption on Earth,” which is punishable by death. The other four are facing lesser charges. The accused were not allowed to choose their lawyers.
Presiding over the closed-door trial is Abol-Qasem Salavati, a hardline judge known for harsh sentences. In 2011, the European Union sanctioned Salavati for “serious human rights violations.”
In light of the torture allegations, rights groups this week repeated their call for the conservationists to be released.
“The gravity of due process violations against these activists over the past year, and the recent allegation of torture and forced confessions, has reinforced the reality that the Judiciary [in Iran] is a tool of repression and a symbol of injustice,” said Michael Page of Human Rights Watch.
Radio Farda, the US-funded Persian-language media outlet, this week reported that some Majlis deputies have asked President Rohani to ensure the conservationists have access to their own lawyers.
The Canadian government, which cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012, has said it is “deeply concerned” about Bayani’s detention.
After graduating from McGill, Bayani obtained a master’s degree in conservation biology at Columbia University in New York. She then worked for the United Nations Environment Program in Geneva before returning to Iran in 2017.
