TEHRAN \u2014 An influential Iranian lawmaker said Monday that a blogger who died last week while in captivity had not been tortured during interrogations.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to a preliminary report, no traces of beating were seen on his body,\u201d 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\u00a0Iran<\/a>\u2019s Parliament and judiciary followed up a human rights complaint that was first raised internationally.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cHis body showed no fractures of bones, nor did his skull,\u201d 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 \u201cextremely exhausted\u201d and had recommended a psychiatric evaluation.<\/p>\n The death of Mr. Beheshti, a government critic who was regarded as a relatively minor figure among Iran\u2019s bloggers, has provoked outrage among both opponents and supporters of Iran\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n The judiciary spokesman said Mr. Beheshti was arrested on Oct. 30 upon the request of Iran\u2019s cyberpolice, known here as FATA.<\/p>\n Since its establishment in January 2011, FATA has arrested several bloggers who had been critical of Iran\u2019s leaders, and also a group of youths who had created a \u201chot or not\u201d contest on Facebook rating profile pictures of boys and girls.<\/p>\n Mr. Beheshti\u2019s Web site, \u201cMy Life for My Iran,\u201d criticized Iran\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n A day before his arrest, Mr. Beheshti published a post saying that officers had warned him in a telephone call that his \u201cmother should soon don a black shroud because you refuse to shut your big mouth.\u201d But, he added, \u201cI will not remain silent even at the moment of my death.\u201d<\/p>\n His arrest was quickly picked up by foreign-based satellite channels and Web sites. In interviews, family members said officials told them on Nov. 6 to come and pick up Mr. Beheshti\u2019s body. One of Mr. Beheshti\u2019s maternal uncles said that he had been present at a hurried funeral for the blogger in his hometown, Robat Karim, outside Tehran, but that he had not been allowed to identify the body.<\/p>\n One opposition Web site reprinted a signed, official complaint form against an interrogator that it said had been lodged by Mr. Beheshti while he was at Evin prison.<\/p>\n \u201cI, Sattar Beheshti, was arrested by FATA and beaten and tortured with multiple blows to my head and body,\u201d the document, published by the Kalame Web site, read. He added, \u201cI want to write that if anything happens to me, the police are responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Ejei, the judiciary spokesman, confirmed the existence of the complaint, but said it was \u201cvery ambiguous.\u201d<\/p>\n One blogger, Ehsan Rastgar, said that no matter what Mr. Beheshti\u2019s political inclinations might have been, he should never have been interrogated by people who cannot distinguish between a \u201cmurderer and a blogger.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Mr. Rastgar, who said he had personally given detailed information to members of Iran\u2019s Parliament about Mr. Beheshti\u2019s death, the blogger had been interrogated by the criminal investigative police, which normally deals with cases of rape and murder.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t go around treating bloggers as if they are militants,\u201d Mr. Rastgar said. \u201cIf they do something wrong there should be a court summoning and possibly a conviction. But not this.\u201d<\/p>\n NY Times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TEHRAN \u2014 An influential Iranian lawmaker said Monday that a blogger who died last week while in captivity had not been tortured during interrogations. \u201cAccording to a preliminary report, no … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[327],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}