Iran’s Appalling Human Rights Comes To Forefront As Released Hostages Detail Regime’s Torture Tactics

(New York, N.Y.) — Last week, the U.S. Department of State blacklisted two Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) interrogators on charges of torture and other inhumane punishments of political protestors. The sanctions come in the wake of disturbing revelations regarding the Iranian regime’s maltreatment of two recently released prisoners – Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Kylie Moore-Gilbert.

British-Iranian project manager Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, was released last week after serving a five-year prison sentence for trumped-up charges. Immediately following her release, the regime introduced a new charge against her of “spreading propaganda against the regime.” In an interview with independent investigators following her recent release, Zaghari-Ratcliffe revealed that she was tortured while detained, including “sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, stress positions and prolonged handcuffing, chaining and blindfolding.” During her imprisonment, she was also denied access to legal counsel and medical care, and was placed in solitary confinement for several weeks.

Australian-British academic Kylie-Moore Gilbert was released from Iranian custody in November 2020 after more than two years in Tehran’s notoriously brutal Evin Prison. Moore-Gilbert was arrested and imprisoned by the IRGC in 2018 on baseless allegations that she was in Iran as an Israeli spy. Moore-Gilbert maintained her innocence and rejected offers from the IRGC to work for them in exchange for a shorter sentence. In an interview last week, Moore-Gilbert detailed the psychological torture she experienced during her imprisonment: “Its extreme solitary confinement room designed to break you. It’s psychological torture. You go completely insane. It is so damaging. I would say I felt physical pain from the psychological trauma I had in that room. It’s 2-meter by 2-meter box.” 

United Against Nuclear (UANI)’s resource, Executions And Other Punishments, analyzes the cruelty of Iran’s system of punishment. Iran’s judicial system remains among the most brutal in the world. Tehran continues to target political dissidents and ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. The inhumanity of Iran’s system of punishment goes well beyond executions, however. Individuals may be arrested and indefinitely detained without charge or on trumped-up offenses; subject to degrading treatment, including torture, to extract confessions; denied rights such as access to legal counsel and fair and speedy trial; and incarcerated in overcrowded prisons where they are subject to torture, rape, and other atrocities.

To read UANI’s Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe resource, please click here.

To read UANI’s Kylie Moore-Gilbert resource, please click here. 

To read UANI’s Executions And Other Punishments In Iran resource, please click here. 

###