TEHRAN: A parliamentary probe has found a former Tehran prosecutor responsible for the death by torture of at least three anti-government protesters detained in the turmoil following the June elections, a conservative Iranian website reported Wednesday.
Saeed Mortazavi was the Tehran city prosecutor who was responsible for monitoring Kahrizak prison. After months of denials, Iran’s judiciary acknowledged last month that three detainees there were beaten to death by their jailers.
The Alef website, which reported the probe results, is close to lawmaker Ahmad Tavakoli. It said Mortazavi personally ordered that detained protesters be taken to Kahrizak — a facility on Tehran’s outskirts where much of the prisoner abuse took place.
Iran’s judiciary has charged 12 officials at Kahrizak — three of them with murder — but has not identified them.
Mortazavi is detested by reformists, who have dubbed him the “butcher of the press” and “torturer of Tehran” because he was behind the closure of more than 120 newspapers and the imprisonment of dozens of journalists and political activists over the past decade.
In another development, a diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Norway told Norwegian television on Wednesday that he had resigned in protest over crackdown on demonstrators in Iran but the government in Tehran denied the report.
“It was the Iranian authorities’ treatment of demonstrators during the Christmas week that made me realize I couldn’t continue,” public broadcaster NRK quoted Mohammed Reza Heydari as saying. NRK, which said it had spoken to Heydari, presented his quotes in text rather than audio or video form.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Reuters: “The report is baseless.”
