Doctor Tells Iran Tribunal Agents Were Looking For Wounded Protesters

Several residents in villages around the town of Saqez were rounded up by security forces and taken to an unknown location, Hengaw, a Kurdish rights group said. Abdollah Mahjuz, a former political prisoner and his cousin Mohammad Mahjuz were among those detained.

The reason for the arrests is not clear, but security forces regularly detain Kurdish citizens on suspicions of political activities or membership in underground groups.

Hengaw also reported that 20 people were arrested around the town of Baneh in Kurdistan. The Kurdistan Human Rights Network, another monitoring group, also reported that dozens of agents in civilian clothes stormed several other villages near Baneh and arrested ten people. Local sources told the rights group that agents entered home and after confiscating personal items, detained citizens with verbal and physical violence. In some cases, agents beat up family members who prevented their illegal entry into their homes.

These reports also said that security personnel are present in Baneh’s streets and nearby villages.

The tribunal, which styles itself a “Russell tribunal” after the late British philosopher Bertrand Russell, convened in London Wednesday to examine the atrocities of violence against protesters in Iran in November 2019. Iran declined an invitation from the organizers to take part.

Social media traffic showed great interest among Iranians in following the proceedings and posting comments.

‘Witness 195,’ who said he was a former major in the Iranian police, testified via video-link disguising his voice to protect his identity, that he had refused a command from an officer in the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to deploy his 60 officers to suppress the protests in a city in the west of Iran. He said he had told the police under his command they had “no right to use firearms against unarmed protesters.”

Witness 195 claimed he had seen "plainclothes agents of the IRGC and intelligence ministry spraying the protesters with bullets,” killing 15 on November 19. "Armed [agents] shot at protesters with no purpose other than intimidating them," he said. The witness said that the security forces had destroyed public property and blamed protestors.

Witness 195 said he was arrested a few months later for disobeying an order to shoot at the protesters, held in solitary confinement and subjected to psychological torture. He said he had been sentenced to nearly six years in prison but that the sentence had not been enforced.

‘Witness 128’ testified in person that he had witnessed the killing of two protesters in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

After the tribunal was shown video footage of protests on a road leading to Rask, a city of Sistan-Baluchestan, witness 128 said he had seen IRGC forces 200 meters from where the film was taken, and claimed they had shot at protesters from nearby villages trying to reach Rask by the road.

‘Witness 366,’ testifying via videoconference, displayed an x-ray, which he said was of his chest and showed a bullet, lodged in his spine on November 16, 2019, that had put him in a wheelchair. Witness 366 told the tribunal he was certain he had been shot by security forces and not by armed protestors.

The tribunal on Thursday also heard Raha Bahraini, a researcher at Amnesty International, report that many arrested protesters, including children, had been sexually assaulted, raped, or tortured by hanging and staged executions.

"This people's tribunal is very important," Bahraini told Iran International. "It's a strong initiative against the continued impunity for crimes in Iran," she said. Bahraini said there was no chance of justice through the Iranian judicial system so responsibility fell on the United Nation's Human Rights Council and the United Nations Security Council to bring those responsible for the “atrocities” to justice.

The Iran Atrocities Tribunal convened in London Wednesday with testimonies from family members who sent recorded messages or testified via video on the alleged killing of their relative in protests in November 2019.

Regina Paulose, a member of the tribunal's counsel and an attorney who focuses on genocide and crimes against humanity, told Iran International that there was no “question of impunity” for Iran’s leaders. "The people's tribunal makes it known that… the leaders have to be accountable," she said.

While ‘atrocity’ is not a legal term, the tribunal follows the model of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which was held 2009 to 2014 to review alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians following the notion of ‘people’s tribunals’ advocated by British philosopher Bertrand Russell.

"When a similar tribunal was held for Palestine, [Iran's] Press TV was probably the only media outlet in the world that broadcast it live," journalist Mehdi Mahdavi-Azad said. "When such tribunals are concerning itself, they boycott them and make no mention at all.”

Mahboubeh Ramezanifard, mother of Pejman Gholipour, told the tribunal in a recorded message that she had kept her son’s “bloody clothes to show the world as evidence that my child was murdered.” Ramezanifard said her son’s jacket had “holes on both sides because he was shot with a live bullet."

In the afternoon session, United States-based opposition activist Masih Alinejad testified from her “own findings” that the Iranian authorities had made the families of those killed in the protests bury the corpses in remote places. Alinejad said this was “psychological torture.”

Alinejad also said “authorities” had threatened families not to talk to foreign media and has asked two for the cost of the bullet used to kill them. "The families believe there is no justice in Iran,” she said. “You can take your complaint against murderers to the murderers themselves.”

"We want this tribunal to hear the truth from witnesses," Shadi Sadr, a director of Justice for Iran, one of the tribunal organizers, told Iran International Wednesday.

Speaking via video to the tribunal, Nahid Shirbisheh said her son Pouya had been shot in the head while protesting peacefully alongside his mother in Karaj. She said hers was the first family to openly tell the world about “the atrocities of the Islamic Republic.”

"We didn't fear the consequences,” she said. “As a result, we have constantly been threatened and detained. Pouya's father is still in prison, in solitary confinement for seeking justice.”

The tribunal will in the next few days also hear the testimony of three Iranian police officers, a judicial official, and two doctors who tended to the wounded at their offices or homes to avoid arrest. These witnesses have travelled to London secretly.

On October 24, Richard Ratcliffe began a hunger strike outside the UK Foreign Office. The aim of the protest is to draw attention to the fact that his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is still detained in Iran and unable to return to her family after five and a half years of separation.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was convicted in an Iranian court of plotting against the Iranian regime, which she has always denied. She has been held in Iran since 2016 and is under house arrest following a second sentence and failed appeal.

As a psychologist with an interest in the effect of fasting on brain function, I have followed Ratcliffe’s hunger strike closely. Two UCL colleagues and I visited him on day 12 and made a short film (below) of our conversation. I spoke with him about the effect of his hunger strike on his mental state.

He described feeling somewhat slower in his thinking and perhaps less able to switch from one topic to another. But he still struck me as an impressive character, greeting all sorts of visitors – from an MP who dropped by to chat, to an Iranian woman who had been detained in the notorious prison where Zaghari-Ratcliffe spent four years. Although still calm, determined and dignified, it was clear that the lack of food was starting to affect his thinking. For example, his speech was noticeably slower than in previous media interviews.

Four days after our conversation, Ratcliffe was interviewed on Radio 4’s PM program. While still clearly passionate about his wife’s plight, he sounded increasingly fatigued and, at times, his speech was a little slurred.

Alongside the well-documented physical effects of going without food for this length of time, psychologists and neuroscientists have increasingly taken an interest in the psychological effect of such experiences.

Some aspects of thinking are surprisingly well preserved when people are in a state of starvation. An international review of short-term fasting studies did not find evidence that memory or reaction times were seriously affected.

But executive function, which includes planning, inhibition (holding back a response when it is inappropriate) and flexibility of thinking, seems to worsen when people are starved, although the effects depend on how few calories a person is consuming and for how long this restriction has lasted. Of course, the risk of increased rigidity in a hunger strike is that it becomes more difficult for the person to have the flexibility to decide when it is the right time to end their protest.

Studies of attention also suggest that this is also negatively affected by even short periods of fasting. However, a few studies have even suggested that repeated brief fasts may improve some aspects of concentration and memory and even reduce depressive symptoms. But, of course, this is quite different from the extended hunger strike that Ratcliffe has been undergoing.

Part of the difficulty in understanding the effect on Ratcliffe is that research studies have not asked people to starve for longer than about four days, because it would be unethical. The studies we reviewed in our recent paper looked at periods of fasting of between four hours and four days, so Ratcliffe is now in uncharted territory.

Those who fast for spiritual reasons commonly report altered states and feelings of being purified and recharged. A study by our group showed that both positive and negative emotions can increase following a period of fasting. While negative emotional states can include increased irritation, some people also reported an increased sense of achievement, reward, pride and control.

Of course, people’s emotional reactions are likely to depend on the reason they are not eating, whether this is for religious reasons, health reasons, for research or – as in Ratcliffe’s case – for ideological reasons. Ratcliffe’s frustration at his wife’s continuing detention may be enhanced by the hunger strike, but any sense of achievement and pride he may feel at doing something so difficult may be dampened by his discussions with the UK’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, in which he reports that there was no change in the government’s approach to breaking the deadlock with Iran.

The-Conversation is provided by Reuters

The protests were the bloodiest in Iran’s history with security forces opening fire on demonstrators in many cities, killing hundreds.

On Wednesday, the counsel and panel of the three-day Iran Atrocities Tribunal heard the process and methodology used for gathering evidence and the testimonies of the witnesses and victims and security procedures to protect witnesses. It then proceeded to hearing the first witness, Amin Ansarifar, via video-link from Iran through a translator.

Ansarifar is testifying about the death of his son, Farzad who was a bystander shot in Behbahan in southern Iran. "The autopsy showed that my son had been shot in the head with a Kalashnikov," he said adding that the weapon is a standard issue used by all security forces including the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and the police.

He also said the family had been told by the authorities not to publicize the death of his son and that he filed a complaint with the authorities to no avail. Ansarifard said family members including his daughter and brother have been harassed and prosecuted for propaganda against the regime and talking to foreign-based media.

After hearing the evidence and deliberating, the panel of the Tribunal will determine whether crimes under international law have been committed by Iranian state forces and paramilitaries during the protests. The panel will also identify the perpetrators in its final judgment.

The tribunal − also known as Aban Tribunal after the Iranian calendar month of Aban − was established on the first anniversary of the November 2019 protests by the London-based Justice for Iran, the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), and the international anti-capital punishment organization Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (Together Against the Death Penalty) to investigate “atrocities” and “human rights violations by Iran” during the protests that left hundreds dead. The verdicts of theTribunal will be symbolic.

Organizers say the findings of rigorous investigations conducted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation Of Human Rights in Iran, the UN Secretary General, and organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Justice for Iran and Iran Human Rights, provide "paramount evidence on grave human rights violations" committed by state forces during the protests and the absolute impunity the perpetrators have enjoyed.

The tribunal will hear and examine evidence and testimonies on crimes against humanity, extrajudicial killings and executions, torture, rape of prisoners, and harassment of the families of the victims which organizers say all indicate an extensive systematic state policy behind suppressing protesters. The Iranian Constitution recognizes the right to peaceful protests.

In March the Tribunal wrote to Iran’s ambassador in The Hague, Alireza Kazemi Gharibadi, to inform him that it had “charged” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and former Chief Justice and current President, Ebrahim Raeesi, with gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity related to protests in 2019.

According to the group’s statement issued on March 3, the letter called on the named individuals including Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and police commanders to attend hearings organized by the Tribunal which had originally been due in July to answer allegations made against them.

Iran has not officially announced figures for deaths or arrests, nor put anyone on trial for killing protesters, but has prosecuted and passed heavy sentences including the death penalty on protesters on charges including “assembly and collusion against the regime.” Officials, including Interior Minister have put the number at over 200.

Amnesty International has reported the killing of at least 304 protesters including at least 23 minors. Reuters on December 23, 2019 claimed three sources close to Khamenei’s inner circle had confirmed he had grown impatient and ordered officials to stop the protests. According to Reuters about 1,500 people were killed in the two weeks after November 15.