Extralegal Violations of Human Rights
A 2005 Human Rights Watch document criticizes "Parallel Institutions" (nahad-e movazi) in the Islamic Republic, "the quasi-official organs of repression that have become increasingly open in crushing student protests, detaining activists, writers, and journalists in secret prisons, and threatening pro-democracy speakers and audiences at public events." Under the control of the Office of the Supreme Leader, these groups set up arbitrary checkpoints around Tehran, uniformed police often refraining from directly confronting these plainclothes agents. "Illegal prisons, which are outside of the oversight of the National Prisons Office, are sites where political prisoners are abused, intimidated, and tortured with impunity."
According to dissident Akbar Ganji, what might appear to be "extra-legal" killings in Iran are actually not outside the penal code of the Islamic Republic since the code "authorises a citizen to assassinate another if he is judged to be ‘impious’," Some widely condemned punishments issued by the Islamic Republic - the torture of prisoners and the execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 have been reported to follow at least some form of Islamic law and legal procedures, though they have also not been publicly acknowledged by the government.
Extra-legal acts may work in tandem with official actions, such as in the case of the newsweekly Tamadone Hormozgan in Bandar Abbas, where authorities arrested seven journalists in 2007 for “insulting Ayatollah Khomeini,” while government organisations and Quranic schools organized vigilantes to "ransacked and set fire" to the paper's offices.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In The Islamic Republic Of Iran
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