Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.
Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA)- New details on the executions of Kurdish political prisoners Zanyar Moradi, Loghman Moradi, and Ramin Hossein Panahi has been brought forward by a staff member at the Iranian Prisons Organizations who asked to remain anonymous.
Moradi, Moradi, and Hossein Panahi were hanged September 8th and buried in undisclosed locations without prior notice to their families or attorneys, throwing the international human rights community into an uproar over the Iranian judicial system’s chronic fits of caprice.
According to HRANA’s source, the three young men were battered before their transfer to the gallows; and per the observations of the source’s colleagues, Hossein Panahi, in particular, looked terribly ill.
“Zanyar Moradi and Loghman Moradi caught sight of Ramin Hossein Panahi while they were being transferred in handcuffs and shackles for execution,” the source explained. “When they saw [Hossein Panahi] was only half-conscious and spoke up in his defense, prison staff including Gholamreza Ziaie, Maghsoud Zolfali, and Nader Bagheri lay into them.”
The source explained that Loghman and Zanyar’s loved ones were distressed on September 7th when the men were sent to quarantine, which, while ominous, ran counter to the pre-execution protocol of sending the condemned to solitary confinement.
“The lawyers and families of these two prisoners were not sure whether they were scheduled to be executed,” the source said, adding that they were killed six hours after their family’s final visit at 10 a.m. on the 8th. “Even Rajai Shahr General Manager Hassan Ghobadi was absent during their last visit, and refused to confirm that their execution was imminent.”
According to HRANA’s source, the men’s hangings were atypical even for the Iranian prison system. Their gallows were mounted outside the designated execution quarters, known as “the silo;” it happened not at dawn, per Iranian custom, but at midnight; and the prison’s computer system shows no record of what were to be their very last movements on earth, i.e. their transfers. “We had heard that an execution had been carried out,” the personnel explained, “[but] since security officials took over the execution, even we don’t know exactly where that execution happened.”
Indeed, the details play out like a grim procedural: the Judiciary announced that the executions were carried out in “Tehran,” while a source close to the Moradi families confirmed to HRANA that Zanyar and Loghman’s bodies bore notes reading “executed in Rajai Shahr.” A visible presence on the night of the hangings was a Marivan Friday Prayer Imam notorious for his ties to the Iranian security apparatus, whose son had allegedly been murdered.
“I heard through my colleagues that the prisoners wanted to string the noose around their neck with their own hands,” the personnel said. “There was a scuffle when officials refused this request; Zanyar Moradi even claimed that Hassan Ghobadi had promised him that right.”
