UN Authority Figures

UN Human Rights Council's Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances: Member Saied Rajaie Khorasani of Iran since 2003

Execution in Iran © WCADP

Mission of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances: "The WGEID's mandate is to assist families in determining the fate and whereabouts of their relatives who, having disappeared, are placed outside the protection of the law. The WGEID endeavours to establish a channel of communication between the families and the Governments concerned, to ensure that individual cases which families have brought to the Group's attention are investigated with the objective of clarifying the whereabouts of disappeared persons. Clarification occurs when the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person is clearly established, irrespective of whether the person is alive or dead. The WGEID continues working on cases of disappearance until such time as they are clarified." (Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances web-site)

Iran's Term of office: 2003-2009

Iran's Record on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances:
"Some prison facilities, including Tehran's Evin Prison, were notorious for cruel and prolonged torture of political opponents of the government. Additionally, in recent years authorities have severely abused and tortured prisoners in a series of "unofficial" secret prisons and detention centers outside the national prison system...In 2004 HRW documented a number of unofficial prisons and detention centers such as "Prison 59" and "Amaken," an interrogation center where persons are held without charge, questioned intensively for prolonged periods, physically abused, and tortured." (US State Department's Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2006, Iran) In 2003 the UN Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights reported that prisoner abuse occurred frequently in unofficial detention centers run by unofficial intelligence services and the military. (US State Department's Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2006, Iran)

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