Behind the Headlines – Monday 19 August 2019

Jamshid Chalangi:

In tonight’s program we will look at the economic cost of the Iranian regime’s regional policy for the nation;

The spat between the top clerics of the regime has been brought into open with each one accusing their rivals of corruption and cronyism;

The cleric Alam Ulhoda has said the regime’s supreme leader must have claim to being the leader of the entire human populatiotgn of the earth;

In the first part of the program we will also look at the life and tragic death of the veteran journalist Siamak Pourzand who was a role model for many of Iran’s younger generation of journalists and writers in the 1970s for his pieces about the world of cinema and Hollywood.

Siamak was arrested and tortured on fabricated charged including espionage and finally under severe duress committed suicide.

Now his widow the women’s rights activist and journalist Mehrangiz Karr has lodged a formal complaint at a US court against the regime in Iran and is asking for justice and compensation.

She is here as our special guest tonight and would tell us more about this case.

Mehrangiz Karr:

I have long been seeking justice for the death of Siamak. In Iran I had taken his case to courts of justice but none would want to listen to me as they all referred to an article which barred them to enter cases that had a political angle to it and dealt with issues of national security.

I had provided the courts with concrete evidence that Siamak had been abducted and taken into custody during which time he had been subjected to torture, against all the rulings of their own laws.

Cleric Mehdi Karoubi was the Majles speaker at the time and had agreed to take up the case within the justice system but had been silenced by the security and intelligence organs of the regime with the excuse that hearing the case publicly was “against the national security”.

All Siamak “confessions” were false and he was even forced to write and sign a letter before his death that he disagreed with my complaint against his arrest and imprisonment as he had “admitted” his charges.

Cleric Karoubi had once said that he knew about how the Revolutionary Guard had tortured Siamak and threatened to reveal their crime, which he never did.