Political prisoner responds to prosecutor’s claims in letter from prison

Iran-HRM – Political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared has reacted in an open letter to the recent remarks of Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi, chief prosecutor of the Revolutionary Courts during the 1980s, about the execution of political prisoners in 1988.

Responding to why complaints about the extrajudicial executions in 1988 have not been followed up in Iran Mousavi Tabrizi recently claimed in an interview that “in the first days when [political prisoners] were tried, the families could have filed a complaint, but they did not then.”

Akbari Monfared whose siblings were forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret in 1988 wrote in her letter “Perhaps you have forgotten, let me remind you that the families did not even have the right to hold a mourning ceremony.”

“You arrested the families in the same family ceremonies for mourning, and sent them to prison; You didn’t give the families the bodies of their loved ones, you didn’t tell them where they were buried, and not even an address! And now, three decades after the massacre you are talking about the complaint?” Maryam Akbari wrote.

“Now that I have filed a complaint after three decades, what have you done with me? Except for threats and deportation and continued illegal imprisonment?” Maryam Akbari Monfared added.

Maryam Akbari Monfared was arrested on December 31, 2009, and has already served nearly 13 years of her 15-year sentence e for “enmity against God” (moharebeh) imposed solely because she had made phone calls to her relatives, who are members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).

Maryam Akbari Monfared submitted a complaint to the office of the prosecutor in Tehran from inside prison on October 14, 2016.

The complaint concerns the extrajudicial execution and enforced disappearance in 1988 of her sister Roghayeh Akbari Monfared and her brother Abdolreza Akbari Monfared, who was 17 years old at the time of his arrest in 1980.

In her complaint, she requested “an official investigation into the extrajudicial execution of her siblings” and sought “detailed information about the executions including the location of the mass graves, and the identity of the perpetrators.”

To date, the authorities have not processed her complaint. Instead, they have subjected her to reprisals.

Two of Maryam Akbari Monfared’s brothers, Alireza and Gholamreza were executed on the orders of the revolutionary courts in 1981 and 1984 for “association and membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.”

In recent years, ministry of intelligence officials have threatened to subject her to internal “exile” or to impose an additional prison term on her if she continues to speak out against the authorities’ crimes under international law and human rights violations as she recently did in an open letter in July 2021 addressing the unlawful killings of protesters in November 2019 and July 2021.

She was abruptly exiled to the Prison of Semnan on March 9, 2021. Ever since being violently and forcibly relocated from Evin Prison, she has been facing double pressure and restrictions.

Mrs. Akbari Monfared is being detained among ordinary prisoners in the general ward of Semnan Prison, in violation of the principle of separation of crimes.