Prisoners: “we were threatened with sexual torture”

The Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners (CDPP) - Loghman Moradi and Zaniar Moradi, two political prisoners sentenced to death by public hanging contacted CDPP from Rajai Shahr ‘Gohardasht’ prison to seek help from human rights defenders and insisted that they were forced to confess under torture; that none of the accusations leveled against them were true.

According to the CDPP website, the two prisoners declared that the self-incriminating confessions they made regarding their armed activities and the murder of the son of the Friday Prayer Imam in the city of Marivan were extracted under torture and they played no role in the act [of homicide].

Loghman Moradi told CDPP, “We ask human rights defenders for help, because we really had no role in the assassination of the son of the Marivan Friday Prayer Imam. However, due to the extensive torture and threats of “sexual torture” and “the detention of our families” [had we not confessed], we were forced to make [false] confessions. No evidence was ever presented that would indicate we had a role in this act.

On December 28, 2010, Iran Daily, quoting Judge Abolghasssem Salavati, the head of branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court reported that Zaniar Moradi and Loghman Moradi were sentenced to death by public hanging on the charges of “Moharebeh”[Enmity with God] and “causing sedition and depravity on Earth”. On December 22, 2010, in a trial that lasted 20 minutes, Judge Salavati found these two Kurdish Iranian citizens guilty of being members of “Komeleh” (a Kurdish opposition party) and of participating in the July 5, 2010 assassination of Saadi, the son of Marivan’s Friday Prayer Imam, and two other individuals named Hadi and Abdollah.