Quoting information from activists in the province, Human Rights Watch said it understood two detainees have died in Intelligence Ministry detention facilities in the past week.
Human Rights Watch said its reports say sweeps in the towns of Hamidiyeh, Shush, and Ahvaz were carried out with some of the arrests in response to anti-government slogans and graffiti spray-painted on public property expressing sympathy for the Arab Spring and calling for a boycott of next month’s Majlis elections.
Human Rights Watch said it received information that Mohammad Kaabi, 34, and Nasser Alboshokeh Derafshan, 19, died in detention centers run by local intelligence officials in Shush and Ahvaz respectively, apparently as a result of torture.
The Khuzestan sweeps appear to be part of a broad national crackdown on dissidents that the authorities have instituted in advance of the March 2 elections. (See Iran Times report on the crackdown, Feb. 3, page one.)
Human Rights Watch said several Iranian Arab rights groups gave it the names of 66 Arabs arrested since last November, mostly in recent weeks.
It said the first arrests, on November 28, were of a prominent activist, Hassan Manabi, an elementary school principal, and his brother Ghabel.
Human Rights Watch said it has not been able to verify the circumstances of each arrest due to severe government restrictions on independent monitoring
Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Security operations in Khuzestan province since protests there last April have resulted in the largest number of deaths and injuries since the crackdown that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election.”