June 30, 2009
TV Confessions are Worthless
The pro-reform Iran Participation Front (Jebhe Mosharekat Iran Islami) issued a statement on Saturday ‎in which in addition to warning government elements over their drive to forcefully extract so-called ‎confessions from those who had been detained in recent protests against elections in Iran‎,...

The pro-reform Iran Participation Front (Jebhe Mosharekat Iran Islami) issued a statement on Saturday in which in addition to warning government elements over their drive to forcefully extract so-called confessions from those who had been detained in recent protests against elections in Iran, declared that the ruling faction in Iran is “not content in attaining power by any means and is now working on an extensive domestic purge of the legal political opposition.” The statement was issued after Iran’s state-run television network aired a forced confession of Amir Hossein Mahdavi, the imprisoned editor of reformist newspaper Andishe No (New Thought) which supports Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
The Front through it statement specifically said that “any so called confessions that are extracted from detainees under pressure in prison is not legal and cannot be used a reference.”
In a move that displays how volatile and sensitive issues in Iran have become, soon after the Front issued its statement, state-run TV and government managed newspapers aired and published texts of Amir Hossein Mahdavi’s “confessions” which also contained passages against reformist groups and associations and claimed that they had “plans” for creating unrest prior to the June 12th elections.
The “confessions” were aired on Iranian TV while there had been disturbing reports about the difficult conditions that political prisoners were under and the pressures they were subjected to in recent weeks for the purpose of extracting forced confessions from them. In a related news report, New York based Human Rights Watch organization published a report a few days ago in which it expressed its concern that Saeed Mortezavi had been in charge of the recent arrests in Iran. According to HRW, Mortezavi has left his footprint in such cases as the murder Zahra Kazemi, the arrest of student and political activists, including those related to the arrest of web bloggers and the tortures and pressures that had been exerted on prisoners in order to extract forced confessions from them.
Fakhral-Sadat Mohtashemipour, the wife of Mostafa Tajzadeh, who is a former senior official in president Khatami’s reformist administration in late 1990s and early 2000 told Emrouz news site a few days ago that she was concerned about the prosecutor’s efforts to extract forced confessions from political prisoners, adding, “any reference and usage of words or remarks made under current conditions are void of any credibility and we denounce such behavior before they take place.”