Journalist Nooshabeh Amiri and human rights lawyer Mehrangiz Kar have both written in Rooz Online about “confessions” in the cases of the Iranian-American detainees and others unjustly held in Evin Prison.  Amiri writes about the conditions under which false confessions are extracted:

Depriving a prisoner from sleep. Stealing the comfort of darkness from a prisoner through lights that never go off. The silence of the cells that never ends except for the sound of tape recorded wailing of other prisoners. The voice of a pleading woman. The cracking voice of a man who is broken. The voice of a child calling for help.

And then comes the long wait. Very long. During which there is no news, no communication. And then interrogations take place again. Sleep deprivations are imposed. The recorded wailings. Silence. And then the same recipe all over again.

Eventually the prisoner talks and writes: espionage, participation in the velvet revolution, connections to foreigners, sexual corruption, etc. Take a look at the confessions. Has anyone said anything other than these? [full article here]

Mehrangiz Kar, herself a former prisoner in Evin, provides a legal analysis:

A credible confession has certain characteristics. A self-incriminating confession in front of television cameras set up in a prison cell is neither credible nor legitimate. The confessions of Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh are at odds not only with internationally recognized principles of human rights, but also with principles laid out in the Islamic Sharia [body of Islamic law].

Article 1262 of Iran’s civil law, which was drafted about eighty years ago in accordance with Islamic principles, lays out the criteria for a “credible confession.” The law specifies that a confession is not credible whenever the agent’s will is not free, or the confession is extracted under duress and pressure.

Despite its other shortcomings, the Islamic penal code is adamant that a confessing agent must be mature, sane, able and free. Given the definition of terms like maturity, sanity, ability and freedom, how can the remarks of Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh be considered credible? [Full article here]