Official Daily Accuses Iran’s Sunni Leader Of Leading ‘Riots’
The official newspaper of the Iranian government has lashed out at Sunni religious leader of Zahedan, claiming that Mowlavi Abdolhamid is trying to lead “riots”.
The official newspaper of the Iranian government has lashed out at Sunni religious leader of Zahedan, claiming that Mowlavi Abdolhamid is trying to lead “riots”.
Iran Daily, the formal government newspaper, leveled the accusation on Saturday, saying that the Friday Imam of Zahedan in the largely Sunni southeastern Sistan- Baluchestan province continues to play his “destructive role against national security and unity”.
The daily also claimed in an editorial note that the “CIA media arms have invested on Abdolhamid”.
After the Bloody Friday of Zahedan on September 30, in which tens of Baluch citizens were killed by the regime, Mowlavi Abdolhamid held Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responsible and demanded the cancellation of death sentences for protesters. He has continued calling for justice and respect for the people, gaining support from non-Sunni Iranians.
Last week, Mohammad Javad Larijani, one of the political figures of the Islamic Republic, implicitly called for the destruction of Makki Mosque in which Mowlavi Abdolhamid makes critical sermons on Fridays.
Earlier in November, the hacktivist group Black Reward targeted the data servers of Fars news agency, a media network affiliated with the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard, releasing several documents to media indicating that Khamenei is dismayed by Mowlavi Abdolhamid’s remarks, the most prominent religious leader of Iran's largely Sunni Baluch population.
The documents also revealed that instead of arresting or harming him, Khamenei ordered underlings to tarnish Abdolhamid’s reputation so that his influence would decrease among the Sunni population of the country.
In a letter smuggled out of the prison to Iran International from, political prisoner Sepideh Qolian has recounted what she personally witnessed at the “Education Building”, which used to serve prisoners studying when she was taken to the facility by a guard to take an exam.
“The young boy swore that he had not beaten anyone (security forces) but they wanted a confession from him. Don’t say anything. For God’s sake, don’t say anything [that is not true], I told him … The female guard shut my mouth and dragged me away,” she wrote in the letter.
Qolian and Esmail Bakhshi, labor activists, were tortured into so-called confessions after being arrested in November 2018 during labor protests in southwestern Khuzestan province. In January 2019, the state television’s infamous 8:30 program aired their “confessions”.
The pair were tortured into saying they belonged to a diaspora Marxist group. Both later denied what they had said on camera. Qolian also had to “confess” that she had shot videos and photos during the protests of January 2018 and sent them to the media outside Iran which the authorities always refer to as “enemy” or “hostile” media.
“It felt as if I had completely lost my volition and consciousness after three consecutive days or even more of being kept awake, being interrogated, and being locked up in a toilette. I took the text that had been prepared [by the interrogators] and read from the paper in a half-conscious state. Reading every line felt like the sound of another lash hitting my body and soul,” she wrote in the letter that was received by Iran International.
In 2019, Qolian who was held at Qarchak Prison at the time saw the video of her own confessions on television and realized that the presenter, Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, was the same female interrogator who her other interrogators called Ms Askari.
Subsequently, in a series of tweets Qolian spoke about her ordeal and said the texts that she and others were made to read in front of the camera were prepared by Zabihpour.
Qolian who has been in and out of prison several times took legal action against Zabihpour but says the case was dropped by the authorities within hours from the registration of her complaint. Instead, she was sentenced to eight months in prison herself, in addition to her previous sentences, for daring to make such a complaint against Zabihpour.
Zabihpour who has come to be known as ‘journalist-interrogator’ in the media has been presenting the IRIB’s 8:30 program together with Ali Rezvani, for several years. The program is infamous for its smear campaigns against both domestic and foreign-based opposition and airing of forced confessions.
The United States and the European union have both sanctioned the IRIB for its role in human rights violations. In November 2022 the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also designated Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour and Ali Rezvani for cooperating with the intelligence ministry and the IRGC’s intelligence organization (SAS).
The IRIB has in the past four decades aired the so-called ‘confessions’ of numerous people from every walk of life, from top politicians to activists, from social media influencers to ordinary criminals, from individuals charged with economic corruption to the family members of those accused of a crime or those whose statements could corroborate the claims by authorities in any regard.
