“Killing you Will be Easy”: Labor Activist Talks About his Time in Detention

In recent weeks, Iranian authorities have issued summons for a number of people accused of “propaganda against the regime” and “membership to an illegal organization” to start serving prison sentences, a worrying development given the spike in coronavirus cases in prisons and the wider Iranian population. 

The latest person to be targeted is Kamran Sakhtemangar, a member of the Sanandaj Construction Workers' Union. On September 28, he was summoned to Branch 4 of the city’s Public and Revolutionary Court and told that he would have to report to prison within 10 days to begin serving his five-year prison sentence.

These alleged crimes are extremely serious in the Islamic Republic, and when security agents arrest, illegally detain and torture individuals facing such charges, they routinely pressure them to confess, often under torture.

Sakhtemangar insists the verdict against him was unjust. The charges against him are similar to charges the Ministry of Intelligence and security agencies have brought against other labor and political activists.

IranWire spoke to him about his arrest, interrogations and about his hope that activists will draw attention to his case and other cases of workers and political prisoners.

***

On August 29, 2019, a caravan of plainclothes officers from the Sanandaj Intelligence Office blocked off the alleys leading to Kamran Sakhtemangar's house in the city’s Hajiabad neighborhood. They used several vehicles to carry out the operation, and to the astonishment of his neighbors, raided the building where he and his family live. The men initially identified themselves as police detectives and later as the narcotics police. They tried to enter the house, but were stopped by Sakhtemangar's family and asked for a court order. Eventually, threatening to break down the door, they entered the building and inspected his apartment and other floors of the building, including his mother's house. The officers also filmed the raid. 

The agents confiscated Sakhtemangar's cell phone and phones belonging to his wife, son, and daughter. They also confiscated laptops and hard drives in the house, along with identification documents, books and even Sakhtemangar's son’s car. The possessions were taken to the intelligence office. However, since he was not at home, the agents were unable to arrest him.

Kamran Sakhtemangar insists all stages of the interrogation and trial were illegal and wants the public to know.

”The first time the security forces came to arrest me they claimed I was at home, but when I saw them, I jumped down from the fourth floor of my apartment and fled," Kamran Sakhtemangar told IranWire. "On September 4, 2019, more than 30 armed security agents surrounded and arrested my friend Ali Hosseini and me in a garden in the Araboglu suburbs of the city of Saqqez.”

Sakhtemangar says the intelligence agents were from Sanandaj and Saqqez and were fully armed. They took him to the Sanandaj Intelligence detention center that night.

 

Put in Solitary Confinement and Tortured to Confess

He was kept in solitary confinement at the Sanandaj Intelligence cells for a month, where he was interrogated and then transferred to the city's central prison. After paying a bail order of 500 million tomans [US$18,000]. Sakhtemangar was finally released after 85 days in detention.

The labor activist was tried in the First Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Sanandaj in late November 2019 while he was still in detention. He was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of "membership to the Kurdistan Komala Party" and "propaganda against the regime." According to Article 134 of the Islamic Penal Code, which relates to the aggregation of sentences, five years of the sentence is enforceable.

The verdict was approved without a trial and without Sakhtemangar’s defense being heard by the head of Branch 4 of the court. Sakhtemangar was informed of the verdict via text message. In days following the verdict being issued, he was required to report to Sanandaj Prison.

Security agencies made claims about what Sakhtemangar did when they first tried to arrest him, but he challenged the logic of these accusations. "I asked them how I could have jumped down from the fourth floor, but according to their own medical examinations after my arrest, there were no signs of fractures or dislocations, or any bruising on my body.”

He says that security officers interrogated him about all aspects of his life, including his personal relationships and sexual relations, over 12 interrogation sessions.

Sakhtemangar says the interrogators tortured him to force him to confess, including holding him against a wall with his hands held above him for hours. They summoned his son and daughter to the intelligence service and interrogated them for a full day in order to apply psychological pressure on Sakhtemangar to confess. He refused to accept responsibility for the crimes they said he had committed.  

Speaking to IranWire, Sakhtemangar described how one of the interrogators, who identified himself as a security official, threatened him. "The interrogator said that killing me and Mahmoud Salehi [a labor activist in Kurdistan who has been arrested several times for his trade union activities] was going to be an easy task for them. ’One night when you are on the road, we will send you to the bottom of a cliff. We can report an accident and a car crash. We can make sure Mahmoud Salehi dies while on dialysis. We can go to the hospital without anybody finding out.” 

 

Interrogator or Judge?

Interrogators repeatedly warned Kamran Sakhtemangar that they would dictate the verdict to the court and that he should expect a sentence of more than 20 years in prison. "That's what happened,” said Sakhtemangar. “In the first branch of the Revolutionary Court of Sanandaj, my interrogator stood beside the judge and, unfortunately, the judge, without sufficient study of the case or observing the independence and impartiality of the court or requesting a valid document proving my membership to political parties, issued the verdict dictated by the interrogator and the Sanandaj Intelligence Office. He said: I give you six years."

Authorities took just 30 seconds to inform Sakhtemangar of his charges. He was not allowed to say a single word during the trial, and neither was his lawyer. "At 12 o'clock at night, I was blindfolded. Together with several other detainees, they took us to a room in the same detention center, and the person who claimed to be an interrogator stated briefly, ’you are accused of being a member of the Komala party and of propaganda against the regime. Do you accept your accusations? I said no, and that was the whole judicial process had been wrong.

"I later found out that this person was Judge Shahgoldi, the security investigator for the Sanandaj court. On October 5, I was handcuffed and transferred to Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court for questioning, along with four other defendants in other cases. Intelligence agents were also present. The branch investigator did not allow me to speak or defend myself, and he even opposed releasing me on the bail he had set. I witnessed one of the agents constantly pointing at him to deny my release on bail. A few days later he told my family that he could not release me because it was not in his hands. Eventually, I was tried in two short 10-minute sessions in the presence of an intelligence interrogator, which shows the interference of interrogators in court procedures involving political and labor activists' cases."

Sakhtemangar’s case was referred to the prosecutor on November 4, who assigned the case to a branch of the court. On November 19, his trial and sentence were set. He said he couldn’t see how it could be possible for the court to conduct the necessary investigation into the case and issue a verdict in such a short time, “unless the verdict and the sentence had already been dictated to them by the interrogators.”

 

Targeted for Being a Kurdish Worker and the Haft Tappeh Connection

He also says he was punished just for being Kurdish and a laborer. "They ransacked all my computer files, emails and social media accounts, but found no evidence of the slightest connection to any party," he said. "In exchange for my release and to make sure my case was processed easier, I was told I should confess to doing things I had never done. They presented my books to the court as evidence, saying they were Communist books. They were all published with the permission of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. They attached a CD to my file as evidence of a secret organization, which I had never heard of. Because I had traveled to the Kurdistan region, I was accused of being in contact with party members. I am a worker and I went to the Kurdish region like thousands of Kurdish workers do every year.”

As well as being accused of “propaganda against the regime,” he also faced charges of belonging to the Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran, and he was also pressured to confess to this. 

Sakhtemangar told IranWire the accusation of membership to Kurdish opposition parties was baseless. "I was targeted for being the administrator of the International Channel, which is affiliated with the Workers' Communist Party. But the sentence they handed down to me states that I am accused of being a member of the Komala Party. And they also accused me of being a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.” The different accusations suggested to him that authorities knew little about Kurdish workers’ parties. "Otherwise, how is it possible for one person to simultaneously be a member of four different parties that have nothing to do with each other?"

He says the link to the Komala Party probably comes from his connections to people working for Ahvaz Steel, and his participation in some of the protests they had organized, as well as his friendship with Esmail Bakhshi, a prominent labor activist who worked at the Haft-Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-Industrial Complex in 2018. Workers for Haft-Tappeh organized a series of protests against the refinery in 2018 after they were not paid and endured terrible working conditions. The movement attracted international attention and support, and Bakhshi was among several activists who were jailed and forced to give televised confessions. Activist Sepideh Gholian, who has written a book about her time in prison, was also targeted. Sakhtemangar’s charge of "propaganda against the regime" also likely comes from his association with Haft Tappeh, and he received a one-year prison sentence for the charge. However, most of the defendants in that case were acquitted by the Ahvaz court.

Now Kamran Sakhtemangar faces five years in prison, and his sentence is beginning at a time when prison a particularly dangerous place because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

He told IranWire he wants the outside world to hear about what he has been through, that he has not been given a fair trial or been able to present a defense. The case, he says, has been sabotaged by security agents, and that no government department or agency has taken responsibility for his case. He calls on independent lawyers, civil activists, and all freedom-loving and honorable people to demand his case be referred to the Supreme Court. In this way, he says, he hopes he can be the voice for all political prisoners who fall victim to Iran’s security apparatus and its corrupt agents.

Related coverage: 

Labor Protests and Arrests Continue, December 12, 2018

Crackdown on University Students for Supporting Striking Workers, December 10, 2018

Sugar Refinery Workers Face New Round of Harassment, December 5, 2018