A young Iranian protester who died in jail after being arrested for taking part in post-election protests was beaten to death, Mehr news agency said on Monday, citing a source in the coroner’s office.
Iranian officials had said Mohsen Ruholamini, who was arrested during a July 9 demonstration against the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, succumbed to meningitis.
But the source in the coroner’s office ”vehemently denied” the official version, saying that 25-year-old Ruholamini had in fact died from ”repeated blows” received in jail, according to Mehr.
”A coroner’s commission on August 16 reached its final finding indicating that the cause of Ruholamini’s death was physical stress, bad detention conditions and repeated blows, including one from a hard object,” the source said.
”Ruholamini was kept in Kahrizak detention centre and while he was in an inappropriate physical condition, he was on his way to Evin prison where his condition deteriorated,” the source told Mehr.
”Before being admitted to Evin, he was taken to a hospital but he died.”
Mohsen’s father Abdolhossein Ruholamini was a senior campaign adviser for defeated presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, the former head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The Mehr report could not be independently confirmed.
On August 9, Iran’s police chief, Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam, said protesters who died at Kahrizak jail had succumbed to a viral disease.
Iranian authorities have ordered a probe into the deaths of protesters held in Kahrizak, a jail located south of Tehran which has now been closed after an order from the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Police chief Moghaddam has said that at least three wardens had been jailed over the incidents at the prison, where he said arrested protesters arrested had been crammed into facilities intended for ”dangerous criminals”.
The Mehr report comes a day after Khamenei vowed that those who committed ”crimes” against people harmed in the vote unrest would be prosecuted.
Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi has claimed that several protesters jailed in the June election unrest died in prisons after they were tortured, beaten and made to crawl like animals.
”Some youngsters who were chanting slogans were beaten in such a way that they lost their lives,” Karroubi said.
He has also claimed that some people detained during the protests have been raped or tortured in custody.
About 4 000 opposition supporters, including reformists and journalists, were arrested during the protests, and about 30 killed, officials said.
Most of those detained have been released, but about 200 remain behind bars and about 110 have been put on trial. — AFP
