Kahrizak versus Abu Ghraib and Gitmo

NYTIMES:

In an unusually bold public request, families of three antigovernment protesters who died after beatings at Iran’s notorious Kahrizak prison have demanded the prosecution of high-ranking officials responsible for running the extralegal detention center.

The families, in a letter to Iran’s judiciary published widely in Iranian media, stated that they were prepared to spare the lives of two prison officers who were convicted of murder, under the Islamic legal provision of ghesas, which grants the families of murder victims the right to either request or forgo the death penalty for the killers. Instead, the families called for the punishment of the officers’ supervisors.

“We do not gain pleasure from revenge nor spilling the blood of the puppets of those who have broken the law,” the letter of the three families reads, referring to the two unnamed individuals sentenced to death in closed-door trials for beating detainees to death.

The letter demanded an “unbending and uncompromising “ investigation and punishment of the “political, judicial and security officials” involved in the deaths.

Chief among the officials under scrutiny is Saeed Mortazavi, a former Tehran prosecutor and one of eight people whom the United States government placed on a blacklist this week for human rights abuses, along with current and former Intelligence Ministry leaders and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Mr. Mortazavi, reputed to be involved in the persecution of journalists and political dissenters, was suspended along with two subordinates by Iran’s judiciary last month — a move that lawyers of the victims’ families hoped would pave the way for their prosecution.

In January, a parliamentary committee ruled that Mr. Mortazavi was the official responsible for the transfer of detainees to Kahrizak despite his being aware of the substandard conditions there. After revelations that detainees had died during incarceration, Mr. Mortazavi was part of a cover-up that sought to claim that the deaths were due to an outbreak of meningitis.

THERE WAS UNJUSTIFIED GLOBAL LEFTIST OUTRAGE OVER ABU GHRAIB AND GITMO.

YET THEY WERE SILENT OVER THIS.

WHICH PROVES THE ANTI-WAR LEFTISTS ARE NOT HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS AT ALL, JUST ANTI-AMERICAN.

THE IRANIAN TYRANTS SHUT THIS PRISON.

NOW, ALL THE IRANIAN PEOPLE HAVE TO DO TO GAIN THEIR FREEDOM IS OVERTHROW THEIR REAL PRISON GUARDS: AHMADINEJAD AND THE SUPREME COUNCIL.

IT WOULD BE NICE IF WE HAD A PRESIDENT WHO WAS ON THE SIDE OF THE IRANIAN PEOPLE AND NOT INTERESTED IN APPEASING AHMADINEJAD.

SIGH.

WE CAN CHANGE THIS IN NOVEMBER: VOTE GOP.