Iran: Journalist’s Trial Indicate Hard-line Crackdown

          
          1ran: iou na1iSt's .. rriM 1ndicates Hard-Line Crackdown Page 1 of 3
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          Iran: Journalist's Trial Indicates Hard-Line Crackdown
          By Charles RecknagellAzam Gorgin
          In recent months, Iranian hard-liners have stepped up IIeir efforts to intimidate liberal intellectuals by
          arresting a 73-year-old former journalist, Siamak Pourzand, and pressing him to confess to charges of
          spying. As RFE/RL correspondents Charles Recknagel and Azam Gorgin report, IIe case is focusing
          new attention on the hard-liners' ability to arrest reforniists arbitrarily and prosecute them in closed-door
          trials IIat inspire widespread fear and uncertainty.
          Prague, 1 April 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The terror that a closed-door trial in Iran inspires can be felt by
          anyone listening to the message Siamak Pourzand left recently on his wife's answering machine.
          Pourzand, a former journalist and head of IIe Artistic and Cultural Complex in Tehran, was abducted in
          November by unknown men who forced him into a car as he leifi his sister's borne one night. After
          weeks of searching the capital, friends and relatives found he was being held by a branch of iran's
          morality police -- IIe Public Places Supervision Offce -- whose job is supposed to be enforcing proper
          behavior in public places. Afler Pourzand's relatives discovered and visited him IIere, he was again
          spirited away, this time to a new and still unknown place of detention.
          OEen in March, Pourzand's jailers allowed him to make a few desperate-sounding phone calls to close
          family members, including his wife, Mehrangiz Kar, who is one of Iran's most prominent dissident
          lawyers.
          Kar found these words fflom her husband on her answering machine in Washington, D.C, where she is
          currently undergoing medical treatment for cancer.
          “Mehrangiz, I have declined the lawyer you suggested for me. I have an attorney introduced to me by
          IIe court. Please tell the kids, and yourself too, please do not speak to anyone [ about my case]. Please, I
          beg you.”
          As the message ends, Pourzand can be heard speaking to people around him, presumably his jailers. He
          tells them: “I called [ my wife] and my sister; neiIIer of them was at home.”
          Pourzand's call to his wife came just days before the state-run newspaper “Iran” announced he was being
          tried in a closed courtroom on charges of”espionage” and “working to undermine state security.” The
          newspaper later reported that Pourzand confessed to being in contact with people close to Reza Pahlavi,
          the son of the late shah who was deposed in Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
          Since receiving her husband's message, Kar has rejected what she believes was his forced request to stay
          silent and is gathering support for Pourzand in and outside Iran. Pourzand's supporters say such publicity
          now may be the only way to rescue the elderly journalist fflom an almost certain prison s r tence --
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          han: JournIIist's Trial InIIcates'Ha. Line Crackdown Page 2 of 3
          which, due to his frail healII, he might not survive.
          Kar's decision to speak out for her husband is grounded in bitter experience. Despite having cancer, Kar
          herself was jailed in the summer of 2000 for attending a reformist conference in Berlin. She was
          released afler 52 days following an international outcry demanding she be freed to seek life-saving
          medical treatment abroad.
          Kar recently told RFE/RL correspondent Azam Gorgin that she sees her husband's detention as illegal
          and as part of a campaign to intimidate him and other intellectuals. OEat campaign has included not only
          court charges but also a string of lurid allegations in conservative papers accusing him of everything
          from subversion to immorality.
          “I basically IIink that this case from the very beginning was illegal, disregarding human rights law. It
          doesn't even ffit in with the Islamic Republic's Constitution. [ My husband] was abducted from in front of
          his sister's house at 9 o'clock at night. Then there were articles in all the national papers and the
          conservative papers saying he had received millions of dollars from the Americans arid distributed it
          among reformist journalists,” Kar said. “OEere were [ also] reports that he had an extiamarital
          relationship, and he is accused of adultery. [ Plus] the rumor that he has been given $4 billion. So you
          see, this case did not begin legitimately, nor do I think it will end legitimately.”
          The charges of an extrarn rital affair appear intended to smear Pourzand -- and, by extension, other
          Iranian intellectuals -- wlli ir a reputation for immorality in order to turn public opinion against them.
          Kar also said IIat the way her husband was abducted and held in secret locations has made him feel
          powerless to the point of confessing to the serious charges against him.
          “I think he has arrived at IIe conclusion that he is in the hands of people who are above IIe law and have
          no compassion, either for his old age or my illness,” Kar said. “We don't know where he is. We just
          assume he is in some hellish detention, and in this hellhole he has done whatever they asked him to do.”
          Pourzand's treatment has drawn a wave of criticism from international human rights groups, who say he
          is being denied his right to a fair trial.
          Human Rights Watch said in a statement in March that “IIe judicial authorities are making a mockery of
          rule of law in Iran.” OEe statement added, “The Iranian authorities have given no reason to hold Mr.
          Pourzand and by law they should release him immediately.”
          The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said it feels “serious concern about the suspected
          ill-treatment of [ the] elderly Iranian journalist.” The organization also said it is “worried about possible
          psychological pressure on Pourzand to confess, as has happened in cases involving government
          opponents [ in Iran].”
          Pourzand's nighttime arrest by unknown agents, and now his closed-door trial, come as the latest
          escalation in a continuing hard-line crackdown against the country's intellectuals. OEe crackdown comes
          in response to reformist gains in the February 2000 parliamentary elections. Led by the hard-line-
          dominated judiciary, the backlash has seen almost all the countries' reformist newspapers shut down and
          the jailing of scores of editors, journalists, and thinkers.
          Recently, the crackdown has shown increasing signs of being conducted outside of normal judicial
          structures to deliberately create a stronger atmosphere of menace and intimidation. Recently, some 20
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          Iran: Journalist's Tria.l i dic tesHar.d- Line Crackdown Page 3 of 3
          writers, auIIors, and lawyers in addition to Pourzand were called into IIe basement of Tehran's Public
          Places Supervision Office to face interrogations by anonymous agents. During the sessions, the
          intellectuals were accused of subversive activities and threatened wiII physical violence. OEey were also
          forced to promise never to reveal IIe contents of their interrogations.
          &e.a ch1iI (ews tne I Magazine I Rw art ISer i... e IKe=aJaudio
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