Families of recent Iranian detainees under threat

Family of a recent detainee

Iranian Human Rights Activists issued a statement announcing that the families of a number of recent detainees have been threatened with arrest for trying to gain information on the files of their arrested kin.

Iranian security forces have informed these families they should stop pursuing the cases and should remain silent.

The statement also reports that the Human Rights Activist collaborators have been receiving emails from groups connected with the Revolutionary Guards telling them that they must end their activities. They have also been warned that their families could become detained should they refuse to end their activities.

Tehran Revolutionary Court arrested thirty people in March contending that they were agents of a plot “to destabilize the government through cyber warfare.”

Human Rights Defenders Centre, Iranian Human Rights Activists and Human Rights Reporters were named as perpetrators of this plot.

According to Human Rights Activists the majority of these detainees are in solitary confinement and have no access to phones or visits.

Reportedly those who have been allowed visitors were in “harsh psychological and physical states” and one even showed “signs of physical abuse and beatings by batons on the head and the body.”

The files of these detainees are at Evin Prison and their defense attorneys have no access to these files.

The report states: “In some cases the security forces have forced the detainees to call their families and tell them not to retain a lawyer for them. The pressures had gone so far that the detainees had resorted to unusual statements and behaviour to dissuade their families from pursuing the matter.”

Iranian Human Rights Activists also issued a statement last week listing the names of the 35 detainees whom according to the organization are arrested in a plot run by the Revolutionary Guards to suppress human rights activists in Iran.

The attacks against human rights activists have been stepped up since last February and the authorities claim many human rights organizations are fronts for enemy conspirators.