Mother of Imprisoned Activist Describes Beatings and Threats by Interrogators to Kill Family.

In the wake of revelations of the torture of labor activist Esmail Bakhshi, others have stepped forward to join the public outcry over abuses committed against detainees in Iran by detailing their own experiences of torture in Iranian prisons. The mother of imprisoned civil rights activist Atena Daemi recently spoke to Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) about the abuse directed against her daughter.

 

“I cried when I saw Mr. Bakhshi talking about his torture. It made me angry,” Masoumeh Nemati toldCHRI on January 7. “I thought I should also write about the hell we have gone through. I should make the people aware that this is not just Mr. Bakhshi’s story. It’s my daughter’s story, too.”

Since November 2016, Daemi has been serving a seven-year prison sentence for meeting the families of political prisoners, criticizing the Islamic Republic on Facebook and condemning the 1988 mass executions of prisoners in Iran.

Recalling the day Judge Mohammad Moghiseh sentenced her daughter, Nemati said: “Her father and I were not allowed to go inside the court so we were standing behind the entrance door where I heard the things Mr. Moghiseh told my daughter.”