Letter from Prisoners Marking 2 Years since the Execution of 6 Sunni Preachers in Iran
28-December-2014
Category: religious minorities
Breathing in Confinement – The Sunni prisoners of conscience held in Rajai Shahr prison have released a letter, leaked from the prison, about six Sunni preachers who were executed in 2012.
According to the report of “Breathing in Confinement”, Sunni preachers Bahram Ahmadi, Behnam Rahimi, Asghar Rahimi, Hoshyar Mohammadi, Kayvan Zand Karimi and Mohammad Zaher Bahmani were executed in Ghezel Hesar prison on 27 December 2012, after being falsely convicted of ‘Moharabeh [enmity against God] through acting against national security.
The letter has been translated into English below:
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Two years have passed since the unjust execution of six Sunni prisoners was carried out in Ghezel Hesar prison.
Six youth, whose ‘crime’ was nothing but believing in Tawhid [monotheism], preaching their beliefs, defending the oppressed Sunni Muslims and defending their Sunni beliefs from insults.
Secret executions and false charges; the regime thought that everything would be finished with the execution of these beloved youth – who were the epitome of good manners and morality, to the extent that even prison guards from Rajai Shahr and Ghezel Hesar prisons admitted that they had not seen such honorable, calm and righteous people before.
They forgot that such executions made the oppressed Sunni people, who are usually hidden from sight from the international community, more visible.
Indeed, it is the second year since the unjust martyrdom of these six youth, while their grieving mothers are still suffering, because their families were not allowed to meet them before their execution. They were not even allowed a telephone call to make amends with their families. They did not even give the families the bodies of the dead, and very strangely they buried them in their handcuffs in the Sakineh Garden in Karaj, without names or addresses, without even letting their mothers see them to say goodbye.
Who is responsible for all of this oppression and wrongdoing? The Iranian regime.
What crime did the children of Asghar Rahimi commit, to be left without a father? Ruwayda and Rayan, who can’t see their father. And likewise thousands of others, whose stories are untold, for what crimes were their wives widowed?
Just because of the regime’s own conspiracy to intimidate the Sunni youth, and their old grudges about their [Sunni’s] intellectual development and opposition, they empty the country of Sunni youth by executing them.
Throughout the ages, the tyrants have always used execution, imprisonment and torture against the seekers of freedom and justice, which only leads to the tyrants’ own loss. And if they cut the tree’s trunk, then what can they do about the roots in the soil?
We, the Sunni Kurdish prisoners of conscience in Rajai Shahr prison, remember the martyrs who spent their lives in devotion and sacrifice, and we sympathize with the families of these loved ones, whose martyrdom gave voice to the oppressed.
And we ask the Lord of the Worlds to elevate the status of their families and to grant them patience.
The Sunni Kurdish prisoners of conscience in Rajai Shahr prison, Karaj
On 27 December 2012, six Sunni preachers were led to the gallows and executed in Ghezel Hesar prison, near Tehran.
The men were arrested in 2009, before being sentenced to death in Branch 28 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, along with four other Sunni men, for the charge of ‘Moharabeh [enmity against God] through acting against national security’.
The court session lasted just minutes, and the men were not given a chance to defend themselves. The judge, Mohammad Moghisseh, used foul language and insulted the men and their beliefs.