Transcript
A (0:00)
This is the Guardian. Today. Voices from Iran's death row. Just before we start, this episode does contain graphic descriptions of executions. This is the Voice of a 23 year old Kurdish political prisoner in Iran accused of spying for Israel. I am Naser Bakrzadeh, he says, and you're hearing my voice from Umer Central Prison. In a message recorded down a prison phone line, he says he was arrested three years ago. From that day onwards, as he puts it, my parents have been dying every day and the pain of separation and longing has been crushing them. Nasser's message is a desperate one because he knows time is running out. He says it might be the last time anyone hears his voice because his death sentence has just been confirmed. And the thing that seems to weigh on him most, how can he tell his fiance what's about to happen to him? Under the COVID of war, Iran's regime is executing political prisoners at an unprecedented rate. In the last six weeks, 18 political prisoners and protesters have been killed by the state. In his message, Nasser begs for help, but he also issues a warning. Today is my turn, but tomorrow it will be someone else's. As the world agonises about oil prices and stalled negotiations inside Iran, the regime is sending a message to its people. We are still in control. From the Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in focus, Iran's wartime executions. Daniel Boffi. You're the Guardian's chief reporter and you have been speaking to the families of political prisoners who have been executed in the past month. What has that been like? And what did they tell you?
B (2:58)
Yeah, no, it's been pretty upsetting really, because you talk to them about their brothers or sons and you hear all the gory details and then you start to worry actually for, for them because they're slightly terrified to talk to you about it. And they say, oh, the last time I, you know, one on one said the last time I spoke to someone, I had the security service come around to my mother's house, that if I spoke to the west again, that there'll be severe repercussions. You know, it's extremely high stakes. But there are those who say the safest thing for my family is for them to have a profile. We really do believe in a democratic, secular Iran. We do believe this regime can and will be taken down. And the only way that will happen is if people do talk up. And despite all the risks and the consequences that may follow.
A (3:50)
Yeah, I was really taken by some of the stories of the men that have been executed. I wonder if you could just Tell us a few, like, who were a few of the people that were executed in the last month.
B (4:04)
So there's been 18 people now, political prisoners and protesters who have been executed. Six of them were part of a group that were sentenced to death in October 2024. They were sentenced to death by the hanging judge of Iran, a man who in 2014 hanged somebody because they insisted that the story of Jonah and the whale was an allegory. These are generally young men in the late 20s and early 30s. Baba Khalip was the main character, I suppose, in my story about the prisoners who' executed. And he was 34 years old, from the northwest of Iran. He was a law graduate. He was clearly, evidently a very bright young man. He wrote a letter in which he explained that he kind of got inspired to join up with the People's Mahaj Deen organization, which is kind of an opposition armed group, rebellious group. He decided to get involved with that because he'd watched a TV channel that's associated with the group. And he got arrested first in 2018, and he got released and he got arrested again on kind of very broad char membership of this organization, collusion in seeking to damage national security. Kind of broad, vague. You couldn't really pin anything particularly on him. And then October 24, he and six others who he knew he was a keen mountaineer, and they viewed them as sort of into mountaineering and would do that together. They got sentenced to death. That doesn't mean immediately get killed. And it was a long process, but in the last month, all judicial processes, all the usual appeals, and all the rest of it to the Supreme Court, that was all expedited very, very quickly. And so he went to his death. So Babak, he produced some videos, one which was taken by somebody from outside his cell, of him in his cell. Another one he did himself talking to colleagues and friends outside the prison. He was telling them a little bit about those who had gone to the execution already, but telling them also that he intimidated. It's quite inspiring stuff. He really believed that this would end, that these executions, he said, were clearly a sign of weakness, not strength. So there's those who are in the pmoi, and then you have others who are just caught up in the January protest. There's a young man, 18 years old, 18, and there's a photograph published. And he's just such a baby face and kind of. He was accused of throwing stones, of climbing of a wall into a secure compound in Tehran, a military installation. And the idea was that he was trying to Seize guns. There's any suggestion he actually did get hold of guns or anything like that, but there was a forced confession, clearly a false confession. I mean the words were so obviously forced and yet he was hanged. The process took. He was arrested in January, murdered in. I mean I think it is murder, murdered in March. So no time to appeal, no time, no time to give defence. Amnesty International said the whole case was a nonsense, there was nothing there. But yeah, the killings have continued just in recent days. There was a 24 year old computer technician, Amirali Mijatarafari, and it was a photograph produced by the regime. It was actually a still of his court appearance, his last court appearance and it was put on the regime television. And you can see there's just confusion in his eyes about what's happening. Again, the charges around him are just so vague, you couldn't quite pinpoint what it was that he is accused of doing. But espionage is thrown around. Oh, he had links to the Zionist regime and the US government, which all seems rather unlikely. And it seems they were hanged quite quietly in a prison courtyard away from the glare of any sort of publicity.