United Nations22.06.2006

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the Canadian government’s condemnation of Tehran chief prosecutor Said Mortazavi’s presence as an Iranian delegate at the inaugural session of the new United Nations human rights council.

Reporters Without Borders today hailed Canada’s condemnation yesterday of Tehran chief prosecutor Said Mortazavi’s presence as an Iranian delegate at the UN human rights council’s inaugural session, and urged Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay to press for a rapid explanation and response from the council’s president and the UN high commissioner for human rights.

“The presence in Geneva of Mortazavi, a man who was directly involved in the death of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, is absolutely unacceptable,” the president of Reporters Without Borders Canada, François Bugingo, said. “We are now waiting for the United Nations to act on this condemnation and not let it become a dead letter.”

Mortazavi is believed to have had a leading role in Kazemi’s death in July 2003. Kazemi was arrested on 23 June 2003 while photographing the families of prisoners outside Evin prison just north of Tehran. Tortured while in detention, she died from her injuries on 10 July 2003.

“By sending Said Mortazavi as a human rights delegate to Geneva, the Iranian government is showing its real face,” Kazemi’s son, Stephan Hachemi, said.

Those responsible for Kazemi’s murder still remain unpunished despite Canadian government pressure on Tehran. In 2002, the year prior to her death, UN human rights commission special representative Maurice Copithorne was told by a senior Iranian judicial official that Mortazavi was one of 40 judges being investigated by a judicial disciplinary court. Copithorne had responded by recommending Mortazavi’s immediate suspension pending a decision on his case by the disciplinary court.

Iran continues to be the Middle East’s biggest prison for journalists and bloggers, with 13 jailed last year. Threats, interrogation, summonses, arrests and arbitrary detention are all on the increase. Journalists often manage to stay out of prison only by paying very high bail. The situation has not improved since hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took over as president.
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2005 Thursday 31 March

Zahra Kazemi was brutally gang raped by the regime's interogators

Iran Press News: A doctor employed at Bagheeyehollah Hospital in Tehran (connected with the revolutionary guards) where Zahra Kazemi, deceased Iranian/Canadian photojournalist was transfered before dying, left Iran and for the first time, in an interview with a German publication divulged that the regime's interogators and goons had brutally gang-raped the photojournalist while she was under qustioning and torture.

The German weekly, Die Zeit [in the Thursday, March 31st issue] states that Kazemi was delivered to the hospital directly after undergoing severe torture in prison; she died on July 11th, 2003.

Dr. Shahram Azam, who examined Kazemi at the hospital was able to provide a firsthand account. Fifty four year old Kazemi was in a coma when delivered to the hospital in the early hours of June 27th 2003; her body was covered with contusions and as such, she was transfered to the emergency room of Bagheeyehollah Hospital.

Dr. Azam reports that it was quite clear that she had been severely tortured and brutally gang-raped. He went on to say that the regime's authorities (the security forces and the judiciary) continue to play the blame game and therefore at this juncture felt that there was nothing left for him to do but to leave Iran and find a way to inform the world of the regime's barbarous nature and the brutality perpatrated on the Iran people, on a daily basis, all over Iran for 26 years now.

Dr. Azam left Iran with his wife and daughter and has moved to Canada on asylum for the time being.