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

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 federal government and rampant inflation.

The death toll has been mounting for weeks, with greater than 7,000 killed in lower than two months while nearly 54,000 arrests have been made, based on 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 family members after their capture.

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

One in every of those captured is 28-year-old artist Venus Hosseini-Nejad, from Kerman, whose family say they’ve 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 jail, 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 seemed 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 consider to be real, got here under pressure from interrogator Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, who’s on US government’s sanctions list, ABC News reports.

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

In addition they fear Hosseini Nejad, who has bipolar disorder, just isn’t receiving her medication, which she has been taking for 12 years, and are ‘really concerned about her mental state,’ a member of the family said.

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

The cousin claimed the arrest was on account of Hosseini-Nejad Baha’i religion, a banned faith in Iran despite being the most important non-Muslim minority.

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

In one other clip – one in all not less than 240 aired false confessions, based on campaigners – a person says as his voice trembles that he ‘made a mistake’ while a shadowy interrogator presses him concerning the deaths of regime security forces.

‘If I’d known, I might not have done it,’ the person says.

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

Naeimi, who can be Baha’i, was snatched from his workplace on January 8 without an arrest warrant, based on his cousin, who lives in Canada, Rozhin Rasekhi.

Within 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 nineteenth 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’m exhausted. I’ll cooperate with them. I’ll do whatever they need and say whatever they need. Even in the event that they wish to execute me, allow them to execute me in order that I might be relieved.

‘After which he says [to his parents], ‘It is best to not be upset either. My soul will probably be free of the cage of my body.’

His family, who insist Naeimi is innocent, fear what could possibly be the subsequent steps because 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 motion. He also threatened that a failure to achieve a deal over Iran’s nuclear program could be ‘very traumatic.’

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