Iran regime’s horrific mass execution of dozens of Iran Kurdish Sunni men

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Former Iranian political prisoner Farzad Madadzadeh condemns the henious amss execution of Sunni prisoners

By Rob Roberts 

The Media Express, August 2, 2016 - On Tuesday 2 August a former thirty-one year Iranian political prisoner Farzad Madadzadeh, now living as political exile in Europe, has given an interview with The Media Express about his time as a prisoner in Gohardasht, a prison 20km North West of Tehran, where this afternoon it was confirmed the Iranian regime’s judiciary has executed dozens of Iranian Kurdish Sunni prisoners.
Reacting to this news the Iranian collation group NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran) switched from requesting urgent action to halt the executions, where it now reports that “their families had been informed to go to the prison before 15.00 (local time) on Tuesday to visit them for a final time.”
The event spiraled from the detention of the Sunni men from hall ten of Ward Four in Gohardasht on Monday afternoon when reports got out about repressive forces apprehending dozens of Sunni prisoners as their hands and feet were chained, mouths shut with tape and heads covered with plastic bags.
During Farzad Madadzadeh’s imprisonment in Ward Ten of the prison he spent in the open-air areas of the same prison, of which spaces were regularly and arbitrarily imposed with special conditions, and knew at least three of the men executed today as Shahram Ahmadi, Keyvan Vaysi and Kaveh Sharifi.
Since leaving Iran, Madadzadeh is able to continue awareness of issues including the imminent executions following social networks and news wires in and outside of Iran; so safe-guarding digital networks against censorship from Iran’s notorious government-funded cyber police remains a peripheral yet vital consideration.

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The 17 year old brother of Shahram Ahmadi, one of the twenty-eight Sunni prisoners believed to have been executed this afternoon had been executed by the regime 2 years while still a child. And commenting on this, Madadzadeh says he read the boys letter in which he talks of the mental anguish and torture of being made to live through 45 days and nights, in a perceptual state of the threat of imminent execution.
Madadzadeh also commented that during the time he spent on Ward 4 of Gohardasht prison he saw many prisoners of adolescent age, the regime waiting until they reach adult age to execute them.
In terms of religious identity and quality too, the men here were of Kurdish Sunni descent, of which there is a well worn resistance in this north west region of Iran of an ongoing struggle for autonomy of religious freedom, language, expression and economy.
The chairman of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Mohammad Mohaddessin, hascondemned the barbaric act and said “the mullahs’ regime is facing absolute social isolation and widespread abhorrence by the people and thus is resorting to increased executions to create a climate of fear and to prevent the possibility of a nationwide uprising.”
Furthermore the rapidity of the executions has given little time for the United Nations to intervene, now left with one option, to internationally reproach; but also to condemn the regime for the ongoing inhumane barbarity.

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Rob Roberts is a UK-born journalist living in Paris. He writes about Paris and international.

Ambassador Bloomfield Speaks of the West's Misunderstanding of Iran

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28 Jul - At the Free Iran rally on July 9 in Paris, Ambassador Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr. gave an interview to the ‘Alliance for Public Awareness - Iranian Communities in Europe’.

Ambassador Bloomfield was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs from 2001-2005, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs (1992-1993), Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs (1991-1992), and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1988-1989).

In the interview, Bloomfield addressed U.S. government officials’ misunderstandings of both the Iranian regime and the Iranian Resistance.

He said, the U.S. is "illiterate about the significance of June 20, 1981 when the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) tried to uphold a ‘glorious outpouring of democracy,’ and Khomeini's theocrats ‘shot their way to power.’ From the failure to appreciate the true meaning of this event have flowed a number of other misperceptions that are only now being corrected - although ‘the work goes on’ to dispel ‘a global influence operation’ by the regime's Intelligence Ministry (MOIS).”

He explained that after the revolution, the PMOI endeavored to spread their message and garner support, but “on June 20, 1981, a peaceful demonstration by half-a-million PMOI supporters in Tehran was turned into a bloodbath on the orders of Khomeini, and the PMOI were forced to go underground and begin a Resistance campaign to expose and unseat the Khomeini regime.”

Further, he said, “On the one hand, the US does not understand that the regime's illegitimacy makes it behave in certain ways, and that factional fighting is best understood as a contest about how to maintain ‘one man's religious dictatorship,’ or velayat-e faqih, rather than about how to reform it. As such, President Obama's hope that the nuclear deal would lead to détente with a moderating government was misplaced. The regime has not only ‘cheated’ on the nuclear deal known as the JCPOA, but its domestic and international behaviour has worsened.”

Additionally, according to Ambassador Bloomfield, “On the other hand, the US, like other Western countries, has approached the PMOI or MEK as a ‘diplomatic commodity,’ restrictions upon its work for democracy traded with the Iranian regime in hopes of concessions. Referring to the eight-year investigation undertaken by the French which could find no evidence of terrorism, only resistance, Ambassador Bloomfield also spoke about his own research journey into the nature of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), of which the PMOI or MEK is a major part.”

In the interview, Ambassador Bloomfield described his own realization of “a global influence operation” by the regime's Intelligence Ministry “which had distorted the historical facts.” The fact that he cared so much about his own government, made it imperative that "they have the right facts," but his challenges to the current Administration to find proof that his analysis are incorrect have been met with silence.

He was initially skeptical of the NCRI's president-elect, Maryam Rajavi, when he heard her describe the regime as "weak," but her "sharp political sense" and observations "split about how best to keep power for the regime." He realized that, “It was the "paranoia" of illegitimacy which drove the factional debate and thus demonstrated the underlying weakness of the regime.”

He concluded by saying, “Regime change would not come from the outside, but from the Iranian people flowing with the global tide of those insisting that government should serve the people, he said. The West had to confront a regime which undermined it with terror, and "atone" for its ill-informed treatment of the Iranian Resistance.”