Jafar Kazemi

RAHANA – Jafar Kazemi was arrested on September 18, 2009 and sentenced to death. In a letter written to the United Nation’s secretary general and published by HRDAI, Kazemi’s wife describes the family’s ordeal since her husband’s arrest.

Jafar Kazemi has been executed today, 24th of January in the early morning in Tehran.

The following is the English translation of Rodabeh Akbari’s letter:

My name is Roudabeh Akbari. I am a housewife, married to the political prisoner Jafar Kazemi and a mother of two children.

My husband was arrested on September 18, 2009 at 6 am on Haft-Hoz Street in Tehran. We did not hear from him for two weeks. He was tortured for three days and then placed in solitary confinement for 74 days under harsh conditions.
My husband was accused of supporting and propagandizing for the Mojahedin Organization (MKO), as well as visiting our son in Ashraf (MKO camp in Iraq).
In prison, after being tortured and spending three months in solitary, he was pressured to make televised confessions. Faced with his resistance, they then tortured him again, and three of his teeth were broken as a result of severe beatings. Presently, my husband remains in a worrisome physical and emotional state.
At the end of the initial trial, during which judge Moghiseh sentenced him to death, my husband’s lawyer verbally objected to the ruling, which he argued was excessive and unlawful for the existing charge of anti-state propaganda. The judge remarked that he was under pressure at that time by higher authorities to rule in this fashion. According to my husband’s lawyer, during the second trial, the court did not even look at the defense statement, which contained 3 pages of arguments regarding the anti-state propaganda charge, and in a 2-line ruling upheld the initial court’s ruling (death sentence). Judge
Zargar was the judge who presided over the appeal hearing.
The interrogator has told my husband that “we need to sacrifice a few in order to save the regime, and your name has been drawn as one of them”. My husband was asked again to make an interview about the Ashura events of December 27th 2009, but he refused to comply as was arrested 3 months before Ashura. The interrogators threatened that if he refused to make the confession, they would torture his wife and his children before his eyes. In spite of threats by the interrogators that they would cut his wife in pieces before his eyes, he continued to resist making any confessions in interview. The interrogators reacted by telling my husband that his execution was final and would be enforced. After 74 days of solitary in ward 209, he was held in a place they call the suite, before being moved one week later to ward 350.
For three weeks, despite repeated attempts by me and my younger child, they refused to let us visit with him.
Which law, country or ethics, says that visiting one’s child is a crime? If the Islamic Republic considers visiting your children a crime punishable by death, then my husband is guilty.
Given the critical situation of the political prisoners, and considering the total lack of will to review the inhumane and illegal court rulings against innocent prisoners, I demand the immediate stay of execution for those have been sentenced to death.
What I described above does not only apply not to my husband and our family; all the families of political prisoners are in the same excruciating psychological situation. All the families of political prisoners want immediate action from the United Nations and the UNHCR commissioner.
Yours truly,
Roudabeh Akbari, wife of political prisoner Jafar Kazemi
Ordibehesht 1389