[Marxism] Iranian oppositionists said to cconfess "velvet revolution" plot

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The introductory comments that follow are by Prof. Mark Jensen of United for
Peace of Pierce County (Washington):

["Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist
officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a 'velvet'
revolution," the *New York Times* reported Friday evening.[1] -- 

"The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from
political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often
subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement,
and torture, according to human rights groups and former political
prisoners,"Michael Slackman said. 

"Human rights groups . . . fear the confessionsare part of a concerted
effort to lay the groundwork for banning existing reformist political
parties and preventing any organized reform movement in the future." -- 

"Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the
confession of a *Newsweek* reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the
bidding of foreign governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a
newspaper run by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader. And at
Friday Prayer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put
on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy -- after
confessions were extracted." -- 

Slackman quoted post-confession
testimony about how Iranian interrogators force confessions from Omid
Memarian, a former Iranian journalist who was arrested and forced to issue
his own confession in 2004, and Ali Afshari a student leader arrested in
2001. -- 

"Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent
conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet
revolution 'training courses' outside the country. Atef, a Web site of a
conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali
Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former
President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully 'welcomed being
defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension, and
creating media chaos.' -- 

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the
Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that
almost everyone now detained had confessed -- raising the prospect that
more confessions will be made public." --Mark]

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/8812/


TOP REFORMERS ADMITTED PLOT, IRAN DECLARES
By Michael Slackman

New York Times
July 3, 2009 (2244 EDT -- 1944 PDT -- Jul. 4, 0714 Tehran time)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/world/middleeast/04confess.html

CAIRO -- Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top
reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a
"velvet" revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under
duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran's
disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign
nations, human rights groups say.

Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said
that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution
"training courses" outside the country. Atef, a Web site of a
conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali
Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former
President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully "welcomed being
defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension, and
creating media chaos."

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the Revolutionary Guards,
Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now
detained had confessed -- raising the prospect that more confessions will
be made public. Ayatollah Khamenei is supreme religious leader.

The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from
political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often
subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary
confinement, and torture, according to human rights groups and former
political prisoners. Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people
have been detained.

They fear the confessions are part of a concerted effort to lay the
groundwork for banning existing reformist political parties and preventing
any organized reform movement in the future. "They hope with this
scenario they can expunge them completely from the political process,"
said Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator of International Campaign for Human Rights
in Iran, a New York-based group. "They don't want them to come back as
part of a political party."

The confessions are used to persuade a domestic audience that even
cultural and academic outreach by some of the nation's top academics is
really cover to usher in a velvet revolution, human rights workers and
former prisoners say.

"If they talk about the velvet revolution 24 hours a day people don't
care," said Omid Memarian, a former Iranian journalist who was arrested
and forced to issue his own confession in 2004. "But if reformers and
journalists say they are involved in it, it makes the point for them. 
Once my interrogators said, 'Whatever you say is worth 100 times more than
having a conservative newspaper say the same thing.'"

Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the confession of a *Newsweek*
reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the bidding of foreign
governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a newspaper run by
Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader. And at Friday Prayer,
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put on trial
several Iranian employees of the British Embassy -- after confessions were
extracted.

In addition to Mr. Abtahi, other prominent reformers being held include
Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami's spokesman, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a
former deputy interior minister.

In 2007, Iran produced a pseudo-documentary called "In the Name of
Democracy," which served as a vehicle to highlight what it called
confessions of three academic researchers charged with trying to overthrow
the state. "They don't like new ideas to get to Iran," said a researcher
once investigated about his work, who spoke on condition of anonymity for
fear of reprisal. "They don't like social and cultural figures in Iranian
society to become very popular."

In 2001, Ali Afshari was arrested for his work as a student leader. He
said he was held in solitary confinement for 335 days and resisted
confessing for the first two months. But after two mock executions and a
five-day stretch where his interrogators would not let him sleep, he said
he eventually caved in.

"They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults,
psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall,
keeping me in solitary confinement for one year," Mr. Afshari said in an
interview from his home in Washington. "They eventually broke my
resistance."

The problem, he said, was that he was not sure what he was supposed to
confess to. So over the next several months, he said, he and his
interrogators "negotiated" what he would say -- and, more ominously, whom
he would implicate. Once his confession was complete, he said, he
practiced it for 7 to 10 days, and then it ran on state-run television.

Three years later, Mr. Memarian, the journalist and blogger, was arrested
in another security sweep. He said that his interrogator at first sought
to humiliate him by forcing him to discuss details of his sex life, and
that when he hesitated, the interrogator would grab his hair and smash his
head against the wall. He said the interrogator asked him about prominent
politicians he had interviewed, asked if they ever had affairs, and asked
if he had ever slept with their wives.

"I was crying, I begged him, please do not ask me this," said Mr.
Memarian, who is in exile now in the United States. "They said if you
don't talk now you will talk in a month, in two months, in a year. If you
don't talk now, you will talk. You will just stay here."

The pressure was agonizing, he said, as he was forced to live in a small
cell for 35 days with a light burning all the time and only three trips to
the bathroom allowed every 24 hours. He was forced to shower in front of
a camera, he said. At one point the interrogators threatened to break his
fingers.

"They came up with names, and topics," he said. "They gave me a
three-page analysis and said read this and include it in your confession. 
My interrogator once said, 'You have written seven years for the
reformists; it's O.K. to write for us for two months.'"

Mr. Memarian said that even in 2004, his interrogators were most
interested in several leading reformers, including Mr. Abtahi, who at the
time was an adviser to the president. When he was finally released, and
after his confession was published by Fars, he was asked to testify before
a committee led by the reform government investigating confessions, which
included Mr. Abtahi. Mr. Abtahi, who has not been heard from since his
arrest on June 16, understood even back then just how vulnerable he was,
Mr. Memarian recalled.

"Abtahi said, 'We cannot guarantee anyone's security,'" Mr. Memarian said.
"'We know what happened to you guys. When you leave this building we do
not know will happen to you, or what can happen to us in this committee.'"



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