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Where Iran's Regime Learned Its Tricks
Vahid Salemi / AP Photo
Iran's torture practices are even worse than the beatings on YouTube. Daily Beast contributor and human rights lawyer Scott Horton on the nation's most notorious torturer.
Since June 14, Iran has witnessed a mass popular uprising against a fraudulent election, which bears some close comparisons with the one that toppled the shah in 1979. But the enthusiasm and resolve of the Green Revolution has been held in check by the brutal tools of a sophisticated police state that learned from the shah’s equivocation. The tools used so far and those now in planning allow us to sketch the outlines of the Khamenei police state. They also allow us better to understand what the opposition means when it calls for the restoration of the rule of law in Iran.
One name now circulates: Saaed Mortazavi, nicknamed the “Butcher.” He is now expected to be given the protesters’ cases with a special mandate to deal with them swiftly.
Organized Police Violence
Iran’s theocratic state has a number of police organizations that serve overlapping but different functions. It has conventional police officers, who are frequently characterized by protesters as more moderate and restrained. An informal, youthful paramilitary police called the Basij have carried much of the brunt of the effort to suppress demonstrators. The Basij are controlled by the Iranian Republican Guard and are under the authority and control of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei—with personal loyalty to Khamenei a principal criterion for recruitment of members. Before the uprising, the Basij’s major function consisted of enforcing rules of public morality—requiring women, for instance, to wear the hijab in public, collecting and destroying pornography, and monitoring for and destroying satellite dishes. The use of truncheons and physical brutality are Basij signatures.
These informal militias have been boosted dramatically in recent weeks with fresh recruits who have been told that the demonstrators are bent on toppling the state. They have been given full license to use harsh force to put the demonstrations down. Roozonline, a Farsi Internet newspaper, recently featured an interview with one of the new recruits. Here’s a summary by The Guardian’s Robert Tait of the interview:
“The man, who has come from a small town in the eastern province of Khorasan and has never been in Tehran before, says he is being paid 2m rial ($200) to assault protesters with a heavy wooden stave. He says the money is the main incentive as it will enable him to get married and may even enable him to afford more than one wife. Leadership of the volunteers has been provided by a man known only as ‘Hajji,’ who has instructed his men to ‘beat the counter-revolutionaries so hard that they won’t be able to stand up.’ The volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces such as Khuzestan, Arak, and Mazandaran, are being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran. Other volunteers, he says, have been brought from Lebanon, where the Iranian regime has strong allies in the Hezbollah movement. They are said to be more highly paid than their Iranian counterparts and are put up in hotels. The last piece of information seems to confirm the suspicion of many Iranians that foreign security personnel are being used to suppress the demonstrators. For all his talk of the legal process, this interview provides a key insight into where Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believes the true source of his legitimacy rests.”
Iranian authorities deny that orders have been issued to use lethal force against the demonstrators, but at a minimum many dozens of cases have been recorded in which protesters or individuals in crowds were shot or beaten to death. One particularly gruesome incident reported on June 25 near the Iranian parliament documented a militiaman wielding an ax to hack victims to pieces. Apparent evidence of his work can be viewed here.
Police suppression techniques include use of tear gas and helicopters dumping burning liquid on protesters (likely tear gas compounds suspended in water). Police also use cameras and other imaging devices to make images of the protesters for use in their later identification and arrest. The regime also uses torture.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
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Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
Torture Prosecution Turnaround?
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
The Real Story Behind the CIA's Torture Policy
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
As you chronicle the torture, I, naturally, flash back to Abu Ghraib, GITMO, Bagram and America's program of enhanced interrogation techniques. Once torture is rendered, the body and mind are quickly broken, detainees of whatever stripe ready to say that which the torturer wants to hear. Once this information is given, redundant applications are more to appease or titillate the megalomanic sadists who administer these brutalities- the corruption of absolute power. That people should be forced to endure so much when asking for so little is horrific to behold. Allahu Akbar, the rallying cry of the demonstrators must be taking on different meanings for those arrested and inhumanely defiled.
While I do not conodone torture no matter what the name, you are comparing innocent Iranian citizens to violent and dangerous terrorists. America has a right to protect it's interests just as Iranians have a right to a fair democratic process. You are comapring apples to oranges here.
You premise your opinion on that you know who is innocent and who is not. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Justified or not, we have opened Pandora's Box by allowing torture to take place in our country and there is no way of closing it. We have no right to criticize the regime in Iran for striking down hard on those who seek to topple the government. To them, they are terrorists who are putting the stability of the nation at risk. The crowds are organized and led by antagonists that the Iranians have to right to "protect" it's own citizens from.
We havn't a moral leg to stand on!
The prisoners in US custody were tortured into admitting guilt long before anyone had any notion of giving them fair treatment under the Law of War or the US Constitution. It required acts of Congress to decide that the US would lower itself to the level of terrorists and tyrants by abusing people into confessing to made-up crimes. Our victims in custody are as much terrorists as any person can be beaten, sodomized, drugged, raped, drowned, starved, sleep deprived, stress positioned, and humiliated into admitting to be.
The difference is the Iranians are patriots abused by their own illegitimate government. Like any victim of the Bush administration would be.
How do you know whether the prisoners the American government is holding are guilty or innocent since most have not had trials and all information about them is being surpressed?
I naturally flash back to ":4 Dead in Ohio"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvg4n8Txgdc
At Abu Garib, they made the guys - who were generally bad guys - get naked and piled up on each other. In Iran, they are beating, permanently injuring and even killing people who are their own civilians, in the streets, doing not much more than raising a voice. This is not a fair comparison, and sounds like the kind of tripe that dictators use all of the time to justify their tyranny. The only people the Americans really tortured were the jerk-offs who did 9/11, and even though I don't agree with it - I really don't care about it in that case, they should be killed for what they did.
While it's worth calling out somewhat of a double-standard, it's not really an argument for anything.
Nobody ever demonstrated that the people in Abu Ghraib were bad people or even criminals. That is the first injustice. They were sold into custody by criminals working with our government and then tortured into confessing things that weren't true, which worked against the US' interests in a number of ways, including sending the intelligence agencies into a tizzy of self-fulfilling terror scenarios they tortured people into confirming. If you can't see the irony of that you are impaired.
Let's have some honest discussion here.
Pick one.
If forced to, would anyone prefer
"interrogation" by the Iranian government
or U.S. interrogation ?
Be honest.
Oh please. Abu Gharib wasn't much more than a fraternity hazing.
The U.N. Convention on Torture prohibits renditions which Pressident Clinton committed and now President Obama is doing. Are you judge and jury only on the Bush administration?
There is no such a thing as the Iranian Republican Guard, but rather it is the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps. The Islamic regime is an ideological system like Communism or Nazism, which their ideologies are much more important than the well being of the whole world. At least the Communists or Nazis believed in the materialistic world, while the Islamic regime believes that this world must be destroyed in order for them to go to heaven. That is why appeasing the Islamic regime in Iran is futile!
These guys are amatuers. Get Cheney & Bush in to show them how torture is really carried out by pro's. Who are we now to stand in judgement. The west lost that moral right years ago with Abu Graib etc. What slippery slope to hell are we on.
R U serious? I would have to say that Cheney & Bush are the amatuers.
Rafish
Waterboarding three guys ( can't call them terrorist) by Bush is worst then slavery, genocide of native Americans, pacific islanders and filipinos. Bush's act is worst then FDR's internment of Japanes Americans. Making prisoners take degrading pictures in Abu Grab prison is worst then president Kennedy's Vietnam war were countless Vietnamese were dropped from helicopters for refusing to answer questions. I think there is political bias here about moral standards.
Maybe we can agree that it is all wrong, Rafish is using a recent example. Many atrocities have been committed in "our name" in the past, present and most likely, in the future.
I never thought I would say this, but I kind of agree with hent85. While it is totally clear that Bush, Inc. where incredibly corrupt & immoral, I don't think it helps the argument against them that everyone is histrionic & over-the-top about it. It doesn't appear that we were cutting people's fingers off or other gruesome stuff like that. I'm not saying I agree with waterboarding, but couldn't we be a little more realistic about how bad what we have done actually is (or isn't?)
The saying in Vietnam era was " Change their minds, their asses will follow." In todays repertoire in the middle East, "You can't change the world, but you can change yourself." There seems to be a lot of inner reflection lately. People are asking themselve's "Why am I/we being treated like this?" I hope the words are contagious.
"...I think a better way would be to amend the Constitution say with series of laws and call it "Mi'han-parast Act" under the guise of "War on Tehran"; then we strip them from all their rights, create an off-shore prison say in Kish or Gheshm island on Persian Gulf and send them all there. While there, we can then use enhanced interrogation technics trying to find out who their accomplices are and what they may be planning for next election. Afterwards, they will be tried by special Revolutionary Guard tribunals setup specifically dealing with these "Green" infused infidel combatants. The ones who are found guilty will be turned into shark food and will be distributed amongst different government controlled fisheries to further promote environmentally sound Green Movement and the ones we find nothing against them will be relocated to say Chah-Bahar, Ali-goodarz, Venezuela or some such place. I think that will be the much fairer and more democratic way of handling these uncivilized "Green Eye" misfits and I mean it; I mean have you been to those islands ? They are closest place to Paradise, plus most of these guys if not all, will "die to get in Paradise" - Iranian Neo-conservative spokesperson.
Torture by Americans is absolutely nothing compared to the torture used by other governments.
Doesn't make it right, but does give perspective, don't you think?
How many female detainees held by Americans injured themselves by pulling off their own fingernails and brutally raping themselves?
There is a reason the protestors in Iran want a regime change.
I hope they survive long enough to see it happen.
And that it will be better than the last three.
Torture is torture. The fact that you can't see it makes you part of the problem.
Can you define torture? According to the "UN Convention on Torture" rendition that President Obama is doing is torture. Torture is both physical and mental. The European Union considers the death penalty as a violation of human rights, so does Human Rights Watch and the UN. They also see locking up violent inmates for 23 hours everyday is an act of torture; close all those maximum security state and federal prisons. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU see tasers as instruments of torture when used to subdue a violent suspect. Even deporting an illegal alien is seen by some as torture for denying one the right to move anywhere they choose. How come we not arresting our leaders now?
Hent85 - the inability of people to agree on an exact definition is normal. Like many other things it exists on a spectrum. People also can't agree on what exact volume LOUD is so the courts work out a decibel rating to protect our hearing. We wouldn't allow any of what happened at Abu Graib to be perpetrated in the prison system in America because it's acknowledged that these things ARE torture. I've noticed that after Madcow's and Christopher Hitchens' attempts to show how waterboarding wasn't torture (both didn't last even 10 seconds and both admitted to severe psychological distress, loss of sleep, etc.) there haven't been many who have been willing to try it.
If these things were happening to you, or someone in your family your definition would change.
As for the ACLU's belief about Tazers, there is a big difference between giving the police the right to use one on a belligerent biker or someone's who's cranked up on drugs vs. someone who has verbal diarrhea and wants to ask John Kerry a few questions. Electrocuting the guy was completely inappropriate use of the application of extreme pain. Still, everyone can agree a single tasering is on the very mild side of this. Waterboarding, endless sleep deprivation (which can cause death), sexual humiliation, and the other methods of Abu Graib are in the middle and definitely are torture. What's happening in Iran right now is on the extreme end of things, literally torturing people to death.
If Obama didn't make it clear from the beginning that he was totally opposed to torture, he wouldn't have any moral high ground to denounce what is happening in Iran.
Cymatic
I see here your making measured definition of what torture is that many liberals said conservatives should not be using.
The definition of waterboarding enemy combatants as torture was not defined by SCOTUS it was a political decision in congress by passing a law prohibiting such acts. The courts have determined there are two standards of law between US citizens and enemy combatants not on US soil. Without the law authored by Sen. Mc Cain ,waterboarding would still be legal.
Not many want to be isolated for 23 hours a day, which some studies have shown cause permanent mental damage, but we still practice it.I know very well familes whos had family members in isolation units don't think Segregated Housing Units are human and want them closed.
There are those who have been tasered don't agree with you that it's mild. People have died from tasers while waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and sexual humiliation has not killed anyone. The ACLU has sued to have tasers removed. The same group was also the ones who wanted to make waterboarding illegal; they see no difference between the two.
As for Obama's moral standing, Bush also said " we don't torture" yet you accept Bush did torture. But, Bush didn't until congress passed a law prohibiting what Bush did. I'm applying the standard on torture on the UN Convention on Torture which we are a signature to. Obama is inviolation of the convention giving him the same moral standing as Bush.This Convention was used by those to justify banning waterboarding.
When CIA director Paneta was asked if he would never use the the same methods his answer was the president wants to keep that option. That only tells me Pres. Obama will do what Bush did in an emergency.
Cymatic
The authorities and court have determined the tasing of the guy who disrupted Kerry was legal yet you don't think it was right. Are you the last person to make judgements as to what is right or wrong.
It is not right to torture, no matter how you try to spin it.
These incredibly sad and tragic events are signs that peaceful demonstration will not work in Iran. The current regime is evil and will kill all of those who disagree.
A revolution is the only tactic that will work. Sadly, the Iranian people are not armed and have no means to execute a revolution.
I'm usually against war. But if Iran continues to be a terrorist ruled Regime, then We (the USA) should go over there and destroy the Regime....before they get the nuke. Because these crazy bastards will use the nuke...if they get it.
I'm a pretty anti-war person myself, but I think that the West should signal Israel to destroy Iranian nuclear program, long range missile sites, air force and navy, and then blockade the country.
The only word that comes to mind is delusional; the author is delusional, as are many of the commentors. Everything that we know about the Iranian election we know second hand. Phone videos and twitters can easily be manipulated but we do know in 2007 the president of the United States authorized covert activities against the peaceful state of Iran.
What has Iran been convicted of? Nothing. Who has Iran invaded? No one!
Who has Iran threatened? No one!
Mr. Horton starts with an unproven assumption and then degenerates from there in to just name calling and empty rhetoric. Who do we know for sure that tortures prisoners? Who do we know for sure that creates media campaigns of spurious charges? Who do we know for sure that confines prisoners without charges? You know who.
The same country that sits on two side of Iran's borders. This common misconception that we only tortured "The Guys" that did 9-11 is ridiculous we have torture and sexually abused hundreds not including the thousands innocents who just happened to get in they way. Remember when they said that Saddam was hiding in a Baghdad apartment building? Two missiles and sixteen dead families later we get, "Our bad."
This quickness to pull the war trigger is a symptom of a sick society; do you think that the German public wasn't told the same things about Poland? Do you think the Russian public wasn't told the same things about Afghanistan. The Soviet troops were going to aid the Afghans to liberate them from their oppressors.
Was the election legit in Iran? Maybe, maybe not, but it is Iran's problem not ours. Was the election legit in Egypt or Syria or Lebanon or the United States in 2000 and 2004? Probably not.
Take a wide-eyed look at what your interventionist foreign policy has bought you! A morally and financially bankrupt society, instability in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and now you want to go into Iran? Delusional, delusional is the only word that near fits.
We don't dare invade Iran because we don't have the power and the world would never stand for it. Our Chinese masters would simply stop buying our treasury bonds.
The whites gave infected blankets to native Americans. Didn't FDR intern Japanes Americans and attack countries like Algiers in it's war against Hitler that never invaded our mainland yet you only bring up the illegal act of the previous administration. I can rationalize also, the logic that we have no reason to get angry at the Japanes for the attack on Pearl Harbor since the Hawaiin islands were taken by force from the native who had no say in it. There are video tapes of German soldiers with white flags being shot by US soldiers in WW2.
We are not a perfect country, I know very well the from the personal effect of US foriegn policy, but I also see the good that this country has done. Without the US western Europe, Japan and South Korea would not be at peace. These countries are secure yet they all still require the protection of US military power. During the cold war the US did not exactely have their hands free of the blood of innocent people but is that reason the US should not help protect the innocent from dictatorships? If so Clinton was right in not interfering in the genocide in Rawanda and should not have apologized for his inaction.
when it comes to war, there is no good versus evil. Both sides commit atrocities.
The "strong moral support" that people are urging President Obama to give to the Iranian opposition movement is all well & good.
But what these brave & decent people really need are guns.
Lots of guns.
While making publicly measured statements about the situation in Iran, I fervently hope that behind the scenes Mr. Obama has the CIA shipping crateloads of AK-47s, ammunition and cash across the border into Iran. Thugs like those in the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij are never going to voluntarily relinquish power.
And yes, we're going to have to bomb Iran within the next year to wreck their nuclear program. However much we might prefer negotiations that would result in its suspension, that ain't gonna happen. Anyone who seriously believes that it will is either stupid or delusional. These mad dogs want their bomb, and they want it because they see it as their ultimate guarantee of security, just like Kim Jong-Il does.
I agree. Guns and explosives are the main things we have in large quantities that many Iranians probably want from us right now, along with equipment to get around the regime's efforts at jamming and shutting down communications. We could arrange to send what they need through Iraq and Afghanistan, in ways that are deniable.
Torture is torture?
Really?
Moral equivilancy aside, no person detained by Americans had his/her fingernails pulled off.
These aren't just tweets/fb postings/youtube videos. This is information provided by credible world-wide human rights organizations.
The enhanced interrogation techniques used by Americans stink. They are in no way compatible with the US Constitution.
They are NOTHING compared with what routinely happens in prisons in other countries across the world.
Does that make the US right?
No.
But it doesn't make the US monstrous either.
And sometimes, pragmatism trumps idealism.
Maybe they can trade torture tips with Obama since he believes the United States has the right to kidnap, torture, and indefinitely imprison any person on the planet.
Everybody knows America is the worst nation in the history of the world. Just ask Chomsky. Abu Gharaib was the single most oppressive and horrible thing a government has done in the past 100 years. Bush is a war criminal who make Pol Pot look like a boy scout. Bush is worse than Stalin. Abu Gharaib was worse then the building of the White Sea
Canal. It was worse than Kolyma.The interrogation techniques used by the Bush Administration were more brutal than the slayings of 20,000 Polish Officers by Russian NKVD in the Katyn Forest. Bush is worse than Mao. He is worse than Hitler.He makes Stalin seem prissy.
You sound very much like a Chomsky follower. America is so cruel Chomsky lives in it, says anything he wants but was never imprisoned or tortured. I wonder if those Russians who wrote bad articles about Stalin or Cambodians who questioned Pol Pot's methods ever got to continue teaching and writing in their country. Yeah, I've been to those American Gulags, and reeducation camps out of the cities.
"A preliminary global accounting of ythe crimes committed by
Communist regimes shows the following:
-The execution of tens of thousands of hostages and prisoners without trial, and the murder of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922
-The famine of 1922, which caused the deaths of 5 million people
-The extermination and deportation of the Don Cossacks in 1920
-The murder of tens of thousands in concetration camps from 1918 to 1930
-The liquidation of almost 690,000 people in the Great Purge of 1937-1938
The deportation of 2 million "Kulaks" in1930-1932
The destruction of 4 million Ukranians and 2 million others of an artificial and systematically perpetuated famine in 1932-1933
The deportation of hundreds of thousands of Poles, Ukranians, Balts, Moldovans, and Bessarabians from 1939 to 1941, and again in 1944-1945
-The deportation of the Volga Germans in 1941
-The wholesale deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1943
-The wholesale deportation of the Chechens in 1944
-The wholesale deportation of the Ingush in 1944
The deportation and extermination of the urban population from 1975 to 1978
The slow destruction of the Tibetans by the Chinese since 1950
....virtually identical crimes committed by the regimes of MaoZedong, Kim Il Sung and Pol Pot.
No, I am not a Chomsky supporter.
As for Rafish's comment:
"...Rafish
These guys are amatuers. Get Cheney & Bush in to show them how torture is really carried out by pro's. Who are we now to stand in judgement. The west lost that moral right years ago with Abu Graib etc. What slippery slope to hell are we on.
....go back to watching TeeVee and stuffing your face.
Yes the USA is certainly on a road to hell. We have no moral rights. WW2 did not happen.The above killings never occurred. All nations are equal in their vulnerability to judgement and I, Rafish, am certified to judge them
Leomarka
Sorry for the wrong conclusion.
Once again, the Revolutionary guard resembles the Nazi SS, in its control economic enterprises, the police, prisons,networks of spies and informers, various military and paramilitary forces--the classic state within a state or mini-state that the security forces often become in totalitarian regimes, answerable to the El Supremo alone.
Major difference between US & Iran here:-
At GITMO, people have been held & tortured as suspects & criminals for terrorist acts against US, a country they don't consider their own.
In Iran, they're doing this to their very own people, who are often simply civilians seeking meagre rights as human beings.
Not saying I find any form of torture tolerable. It's just such a *low* practice to strangle & crush your own people like that.
Thanks for this article that brings light to the human rights abuses in Iran that are unimaginable. I agree with those who say torture is torture. It isn't possible to measure to what degree it is acceptable. It never is.
The following Open Letter to President Barack Obama was written by a survivor of torture by the Islamic Republic:
I urge you to read it and pass it on as well.
I cant listen to this anymore. iran has no facilities or intrest in creating a bomb. you americans were fed the same line by Mr. Bush not so long ago and it led you into a war that everyone now realises is a failure and a mistake. Dont do it again and believe the same old tired lines.
And secondly is it really any of your buissness what other countries do inside their borders. Who appointed you world protector? Sometimes you really should mind your own country which is falling apart and the pieces being bought by china. If other countries intervene and ask for your help then by all means step in, but revolutions are not uncommon and you should let it play out. In the meantime why not heal your country.
Thank you.
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