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Iran
Hadi Rostami in a photo posted on May 12, 2022. Photo: Submitted/Kurdistan Human Rights Network
ERBIL, Kurdistan - One of the eight prisoners facing the imminent risk of amputation in a Tehran prison has pleaded with the international community in an audio message, urging them to save him from the medieval punishment by the Iranian government, stating that confessions were obtained under extreme torture.
Hadi Rostami, a father of two from Ilam province in the Kurdish area of western Iran, has said that he and two other defendants were tortured “to the brink of death” in order to own up to a series of theft incidents worth nearly a quarter million dollars. Rostami has repeatedly pleaded his innocence and retracted his confession which he said was obtained under torture.
“They beat us savagely…at Ardabil police, they beat us so badly…that my hand broke and I had to spent 7-8 days in hospital and all my fingers stopped working,” Rostami said in the audio message obtained by two human rights organizations: the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center and Kurdistan Human Rights Network based in Paris.
The eight men have been sentenced under Article 278 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code to “have four fingers on their right hands completely cut off so that only the palm of their hands and their thumbs are left.”
Amnesty International said in a statement that amputating the fingers of these prisoners “is yet another shocking reminder of the shameless inhumanity of the criminal justice system in Iran, which legalizes torture, a crime under international law,” and said that the convictions of the men was secured under torture tainted “confessions” following unfair trials. Iran is a party to International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and is obliged to prohibit and punish torture including stoning, forced blinding, flogging and amputation, at all times.
Rostami, 36, and two other defendants Mehdi Sharfian, 39, and Mehdi Shahivand, 44, were convicted of a series of break-ins to the houses of four individuals as well as robbing safes containing gold and cash in November 2019.
“All three of us would be taken to the brink of death [under torture],” he said. Rostami has elaborated on the way he was treated by the police (agahi) in a letter to the judiciary on September 20, 2020.
“Hadi Rostami said that, during the investigation phase, agahi interrogators punched, kicked and beat him with various instruments. He also said the interrogator demanded that he sign a blank piece of paper and that he did so only when he reached the point of physical and mental collapse. Prosecution authorities subsequently added, without his knowledge, the details of his charges to the blank paper to make it appear that he had accepted the charges,” Amnesty which obtained a copy of the letter said in a report.
Rostami has said that his family was desperately poor in the Mehran area of Ilam province, one of the most financially deprived provinces in the country, and has owned up to a few burglaries worth less than $600 in order to pay for the treatment of his son’s illness.
“I was poor and because of my son’s illness that is why I committed this [robbery],” he admitted. But later the authorities said that he was involved in a series of other thefts, including some that happened during the time that Rostami was in prison, according to US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
In January 2021, under significant psychological pressure, and after his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears as his sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court, Rostami swallowed a piece of broken glass in order to end his life. He survived miraculously after he was taken to hospital.
According to Boroumand Foundation, at least 237 people have been sentenced to amputations from the beginning of 2000 until the 24 of September 2020 with the authorities carrying out at least 129 of them.
President Raisi, in his previous position at the judiciary, said that amputation is “one of the great achievements” of the Islamic Republic.
Rostami has written extensively to Iranian judiciary officials to plead his innocence. “I have written to the head of the judiciary and the general prosecutor, I wrote to all the organizations of the Islamic Republic but I have received no answers,” he said. “I even spoke to Raisi who was the head of judiciary then and visited Urmia [prison] and said ‘your issue will be resolved my son’ but received no answers,” Rostami said referring to a visit by the head of the judiciary Ebrahim Raisi in June 2019. “That is why I am calling on international organizations to help me…I have two sons and one of them is ill.”
“We call on the international community to urgently intervene to stop these sentences from being carried out … It is unacceptable that the authorities in Iran continue to commit such criminal acts of cruelty with impunity,” Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa said.
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