CNN Report on the Torture of Protesters in Secret and Underground Prisons
In an investigative report, CNN announced that the Islamic Republic uses a secret network of prisons to torture and suppress protesters and to extract forced confessions from them. CNN claimed that there are more than 40 secret torture sites located in government centers and the basements of mosques.
In interviews conducted by CNN with detainees, the existence of 8 secret torture sites in Tehran, 6 in Sanandaj, 5 in Zahedan, and others in the cities of Tabriz, Mashhad, Karaj, Saqqez, Oshnavieh, Kermanshah, and Amol has been confirmed. In Mashhad, these temporary torture sites are especially set up in mosques during protests. The new CNN investigation indicates an increase in the number of these locations recently.
According to the report, eight, six, and five secret torture sites have been identified in Tehran, Sanandaj, and Zahedan, respectively. Some of these torture sites are located inside military bases and buildings of the Ministry of Intelligence, which are not present in official documents. These locations are used for temporary detentions during protests. The report states that Mashhad is one of the places where these torture sites are established.
CNN’s report on the torture of protesters in secret and underground prisons. In this investigative report, CNN, using information provided by detainees and matching it with satellite images, succeeded in pinpointing the exact locations of many of these secret detention centers.
Findings show that the Islamic Republic’s unofficial torture sites are divided into two categories: one being undeclared illegal prisons in military bases and buildings of the Ministry of Intelligence, and the second being temporary detention centers set up mostly in mosques during protests. CNN states that Mohammad Mehdi Karami, Mohsen Shekari, and Mohammad Hosseini, all of whom were executed, were tortured in these unofficial locations before being transferred to prison.
CNN tried to describe these secret detention centers based on the accounts of two imprisoned protesters, Keyvan Samadi and Mohsen Sohrabi. According to these two protesters, the Islamic Republic uses various forms of physical, psychological, and sexual torture.
Keyvan Samadi, a third-term electrical engineering student at Tabriz University, an environmental activist, and a volunteer member of the Red Crescent in Oshnavieh County since 2015, was arrested for treating protesters. His name was removed from the Red Crescent list by order of security agencies.
He spent 21 days under severe torture and told CNN that in the secret detention centers, the worst types of torture are used to extract forced confessions. He explained that they injected him with a substance to keep him alive so they could torture him further. Keyvan Samadi believes that if he had signed the forced confession sheet, the judges of the Islamic Republic would have sentenced him to death. After enduring 21 days of torture and not signing the sheet, he was released by the prison guards.
He says that after treating injured protesters, government agents forcibly took him to a building next to a girls’ school, hidden behind trees.
There, two officers severely kicked and beat him until he coughed up blood. The use of tools such as stun guns, various knives, and syringes, kissing his neck, and licking his body by the torturer, and the use of a baton in a sexual manner against him are some of the things he describes in this interview.
The report mentions that the secret torture site in Oshnavieh is a building near the Enghelab Square in Oshnavieh, West Azerbaijan. Mohsen Sohrabi, another detainee interviewed in this report, is a sports figure and a doctor at Kosar Hospital in Sanandaj, who was arrested and tortured for providing medical services to injured protesters. He says that the agents know no bounds.
Mohsen Sohrabi has achieved national-level success in weightlifting and is also a founding member of the Tishk Mehr Charity Association for Children in Kurdistan.