Iran’s state TV airs ‘forced confessions’ from protesters sparking execution fears

Iranian state media is accused of releasing a record-number of forced televised confessions after a crackdown against dissidents.

Iran has been gripped by a wave of anti-regime demonstrations since December as people took to the streets across the country to protest against the government and rampant inflation.

The death toll has been mounting for weeks, with more than 7,000 killed in less than two months while nearly 54,000 arrests have been made, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Meanwhile, the families of protesters are in limbo over the fate of those held by the regime, with many not hearing from their loved ones after their capture.

There are fears that confessions are extracted using psychological and physical torture.

One of those captured is 28-year-old artist Venus Hosseini-Nejad, from Kerman, whose family say they have not heard from her since mid-January when she was driven away by plain-clothes security personnel.

She has reportedly been holed up at a detention centre run by Iran’s infamous Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Her family fears she could face being executed at any moment if she is transferred to a prison, ABC News Australia reports.

Then on February 1, they were left shocked when Iran’s state broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), aired what appeared to be confessions from her and other youths.

Their broadcast statements were labelled ‘forced confessions’ by human rights campaigners.

The family say Hosseini-Nejad’s confession, which they don’t believe to be real, came under pressure from interrogator Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, who is on US government’s sanctions list, ABC News reports.

She managed to tell her family she made the confessions under pressure after a promise she would be freed in three days.

They also fear Hosseini Nejad, who has bipolar disorder, is not receiving her medication, which she has been taking for 12 years, and are ‘really concerned about her mental state,’ a family member said.

Negar Manshady, Hosseini-Nejad’s distant cousin living in Perth, Australia, insisted that the accusations that the artist was part of the protests last month was ‘completely false.’

The cousin claimed the arrest was due to Hosseini-Nejad Baha’i religion, a banned faith in Iran despite being the largest non-Muslim minority.

The TV footage typically features interviewees confessing to a range of alleged offences, including committing violence against the security forces, accepting money from Iran’s enemies or sharing banned posts on social media.

In another clip – one of at least 240 aired false confessions, according to campaigners – a man says as his voice trembles that he ‘made a mistake’ while a shadowy interrogator presses him about the deaths of regime security forces.

‘If I’d known, I would not have done it,’ the man says.

Other people swept in the arrests include Peyvand Naeimi, 30, and Shayan Shakibayi, 29.

Naeimi, who is also Baha’i, was snatched from his workplace on January 8 without an arrest warrant, according to his cousin, who lives in Canada, Rozhin Rasekhi.

In the forced confessions, he has been accused of links to ‘Zionist networks, ‘satanism,’ ‘planning violent acts’ and ‘organising protests’ – allegations his family say are ‘completely nonsensical.’

Rasekhi said: ‘On the 19th day when he called his parents, he was clearly under extreme pressure. And he was threatened with execution.

‘He said, and I’m quoting this, ‘I am exhausted. I will cooperate with them. I will do whatever they want and say whatever they want. Even if they want to execute me, let them execute me so that I can be relieved.

‘And then he says [to his parents], ‘You should not be upset either. My soul will be freed from the cage of my body.’

His family, who insist Naeimi is innocent, fear what could be the next steps as the 30-year-old now faces two charges – assembly and collusion against national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.

Experts have said the authorities aim to frighten and humiliate demonstrators to quash dissent.

The regime’s violent crackdown sparked the US President Donald Trump to threaten Iran with military action. He also threatened that a failure to reach a deal over Iran’s nuclear program would be ‘very traumatic.’

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