TEHRAN ( Iran says it did not KILL BLOGGER who died last week ) In JAIL for blogging

Jailed Blogger Not Tortured Before Death, Iran Says

 

Published: November 12, 2012     

TEHRAN — An influential Iranian lawmaker said Monday that a blogger who died last week while in captivity had not been tortured during interrogations.

      

 

“According to a preliminary report, no traces of beating were seen on his body,” the lawmaker, Alaeddin Borujerdi, told the semiofficial Islamic Students News Agency. However, Mr. Borujerdi, who heads the National Security and Foreign Policy Committees in Parliament, called for further investigation into the case, a rare instance in which Iran’s Parliament and judiciary followed up a human rights complaint that was first raised internationally.

Iran’s judiciary also confirmed the death of the blogger, Sattar Beheshti, 35, acknowledging that five bruises were found on his body, but said the cause of death was still being investigated. He was held in the Kahrizak police prison south of Tehran, where three people died during the antigovernment protests in 2009.

“His body showed no fractures of bones, nor did his skull,” a judiciary spokesman, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, told reporters at his weekly news conference on Monday. He added that a doctor in Evin prison, where Mr. Beheshti was held temporarily before being transferred to Kahrizak, had reported that the blogger was “extremely exhausted” and had recommended a psychiatric evaluation.

The death of Mr. Beheshti, a government critic who was regarded as a relatively minor figure among Iran’s bloggers, has provoked outrage among both opponents and supporters of Iran’s leaders. Foreign-based opposition media have said he was tortured to death, while officials and pro-government bloggers were upset that state news media initially ignored the matter, creating a long silence that made the authorities appear indifferent.

The judiciary spokesman said Mr. Beheshti was arrested on Oct. 30 upon the request of Iran’s cyberpolice, known here as FATA.

Since its establishment in January 2011, FATA has arrested several bloggers who had been critical of Iran’s leaders, and also a group of youths who had created a “hot or not” contest on Facebook rating profile pictures of boys and girls.

Mr. Beheshti’s Web site, “My Life for My Iran,” criticized Iran’s financial contributions to the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. On his Web site Mr. Beheshti posted pictures of Lebanese youths having parties alongside images of Iranians living in poverty.

A day before his arrest, Mr. Beheshti published a post saying that officers had warned him in a telephone call that his “mother should soon don a black shroud because you refuse to shut your big mouth.” But, he added, “I will not remain silent even at the moment of my death.”