Iran deputies say dissidents tortured in jail

Reformist members of Iran's parliament said yesterday two dissident leaders were being tortured in prison and that one did not even recognise visiting members of his family. Fatemeh Haqiqatju told a parliamentary session that veteran opposition leader Ezzatollah Sahabi and student leader Ali Afshari were being subjected to psychological torture in prison.

"Sahabi and Afshari are subjected to a kind of psychological torture. Sahabi was not emotionally stable when visited by his family yesterday. He could not recognise them," the official IRNA news agency quoted her as saying. Mohammad Baqer Zakeri, another reformist deputy, made similar allegations. "I have heard they have made 'shocking confessions'. We have heard that before, about people making shocking and strange confessions under the worst duress," IRNA quoted him as saying in parliament.

Sahabi, 75, and Afshari were sentenced last month to four and five years in prison respectively for their part in a Berlin conference on political change in Iran. Both are being held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. They are among a number of political activists jailed in a conservative crackdown on President Mohammad Khatami's liberal social and political reforms.

Reformist deputies, who dominate parliament, have tried in vain to stop what they call the persecution of fellow reformers by the conservative-run judiciary. Haqiqatju sharply criticised the hardline revolutionary court for the "violent" arrest last week of Fariba Davoudi, a female reformist journalist. "Armed agents coming for her arrest resorted to force and violence. They yanked her chador (veil) off her, squeezed her in the door frame and then searched her and her daughter's bedrooms," she said.