Activist says Iran won't survive
2003-07-15 / Associated Press /
A jailed pro-reform activist has warned Iran's hard-line establishment that it could collapse like the Soviet Union did if it does not change its repressive regime and treatment of prisoners.
Abbas Abdi said in a letter from Evin prison, north of the Iranian capital, that Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi had openly threatened to harass his family and forced him to write confessions while in jail.
Abdi, a senior member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran's largest reformist party, was jailed in November 2002 over charges of selling classified information to foreign intelligence agencies after a poll he conducted showed strong public support for dialogue with America.
"Mortazavi even dictated the words to me how to defend myself (and) threatened that my family will be in trouble if I didn't (go along)," Abdi said in his letter.
"Physical torture is more tolerable than these sort of tortures," Abdi said in his letter signed June 14 and shown to reporters Sunday by his daughter, Maryam, during a press conference.
Maryam Abdi said the letter has been presented to President Mohammad Khatami, a close adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other top officials.
Abdi said he told his interrogators that the ruling establishment's collapse was inevitable if it didn't change its behavior.
"Prior to disintegration of Soviet Union, a paper was presented during a conference in Moscow offering scientific reasons on the country's problems. Three years after disintegration, the analysis offered in the paper proved to be accurate," the letter said.
"Such charges and harsh behaviors (in Iran) will not lead to a different fate."
http://www.etaiwannews.com/World/2003/07/15/1058231568.htm