In an attempt to place maximum pressure on leaders of the
opposition, Iran’s security and intelligence agencies are arresting
and harassing their children and close relatives.
De-facto leaders of the opposition, Mir Hossein Moussavi and
Mehdi Karroubi, are under house arrest and their families are under
constant harassment by the government.
According to
Sahamnews, the official website of Karroubi, security forces
relieved Karroubi’s bodyguards last week and took over his
residence. On February 21, security forces at Karroubi’s house
locked the elderly cleric and his wife in separate rooms, and
searched every inch of their house. Their eldest son, Ali Karroubi,
was arrested by the security forces and his relatives do not know
his whereabouts.
Targeting those close to opposition leaders
and activists in not a new phenomenon in the Islamic Republic, but
the intensity of such harassment is unprecedented. During clashes in
2009, a close relative of and an organizer for Moussavi was shot by
security forces. Moussavi’s family members have insisted that he was
targeted deliberately by security forces to exert pressure on the
Green Movement leader.
The latest wave of such harassment
against notable Iranian figures was directed at the family of
Abdolkarim Soroush, an Iranian intellectual and philosopher. Soroush
left Iran to teach at Western universities and has not been able to
return to his country following the crisis of the 2009 presidential
election. But he continued his activities and his scholarly pursuits
abroad—most of which have been to the disliking of the Iranian
regime.
In order to increase pressure on Soroush, the Iranian
government harassed his son, Soroush Dabbagh, an academic at an
Iranian university, and his son-in-law, Hamed. The latter was
allegedly arrested and tortured by security forces. He was asked to
appear before state-run television cameras and “confess” that his
wife was a “woman of ill-repute” and his father- in- law a foreign
operative.
According to Hamed’s conversations with Soroush,
the son-in- law was stripped of his clothes, handcuffed, and kept in
a freezing morgue all night in an attempt by security forces to get
a confession.
In an open letter, Soroush harshly criticized
the government’s behavior and wrote, “The (animals in the) zoo of
the Velayat needed a prey,” referring to his son-in-law who fell
prey to the agents of the Islamic Republic. In the end, Soroush
damned the “infidel-producing Islamic Republic” and emphasized that
his son-in-law was not politically active, yet he was harassed
solely because of his family ties to the Iranian philosopher. |