Two Iranians Speak Of Torture By Khomeini Regime

Two Iranians Speak Of Torture By Khomeini Regime

Associated Press

November 20, 1986

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A 25-year-old Iranian woman said Thursday she was tortured so severely during more than three years of imprisonment under Iran’s revolutionary government that she had to undergo surgery three times.

Azam Riahi said the soles of her feet were beaten with knotted electric cables until ″all the flesh ... was destroyed and, after each blow, blood would squirt into the face of my torturer.″

Ms. Riahi spoke at a news conference called by the People’s Mujahedeen, a group opposed to the fundamentalist Islamic regime of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The U.N. General Assembly’s social committee currently is reviewing a U.N. report on human rights in Iran. The report did not reach any conclusions.

Patricia Byrne, a U.S. delegate to the committee, on Thursday urged the U.N. to express concern over the ″serious violations of human rights in Iran.″

The international human rights organization Amnesty International has said torture in Iran was ″widespread and in some cases systematic.″

Ms. Riahi and Behzad Naziri, another former prisoner who also attended the news conference, said the Tehran government was systematically torturing about 140,000 prisoners of conscience.

Ms. Riahi said she was arrested in August 1982 while visiting imprisoned relatives. She said she spent more than three years at Tehran’s Evin Prison before managing to escape. She said her husband remains in prison.

After the first beating on her feet, the scars were covered by two skin grafts. She said she was dragged down to the torture chamber again to be beaten on the healing wounds.

When she was unable to walk on her torn and swollen feet, guards kicked her stomach, she said. Because of her new injuries she underwent an appendectomy and had an ovary removed, she said.

She said she escaped during her last hospitalization.

Ms. Riahi, who wore a scarf to cover her hair and woolen leggings down to her ankles, readily bared her badly scarred feet to reporters and photographers.

Naziri, 27, worked for the French news agency Agence France-Presse when he was picked up in June 1982 following the arrest of his sister, an Iranian television reporter who had criticized the government.

He said he was systematically flogged, beaten and made to stand facing a wall for days without bing allowed to eat or to rest. After he escaped during a transfer to another prison, his father was apprehended to be held as hostage in his place, he said.

Naziri and Ms. Riahi were accompanied by Kazem Rajavi, brother of Mujahedeen leader Massoud Rajavi, who is now in Baghdad.