Kurdish Man Said Tortured To Death In Tehran Police Custody

A Kurdish young man living in Tehran has died in a police detention center, with the family claiming he was killed under “torture.”

The Kurdistan Human Rights Network said on Wednesday that 25-year-old Milad Jafari was arrested on drug-related charges on April 7.

A member of Jafari’s family, which is from the western city of Kermanshah, told the human rights group that the department of forensic medicine in the Kahrizak Detention Center in Tehran Province had contacted the family to pick the dead body of their relative.

The father was shown photos of the body with clear marks of bruises and bleeding on the face, the relative said, with the authorities explaining that Jafari had committed “suicide” and “fell from a height”.

His family was also told that the body was transferred on April 8 to Kahrizak, while police said the young man died on April 11.

The family refused to take the body until autopsy results reveal the cause of the death.

The Kahrizak Detention Center is notorious for its cramped and squalid cells where prisoners have been routinely verbally abused and beaten by guards.

Two inmates, Amir Javadifar and Mohsen Ruholamini, son of a well-known political figure close to Iran’s supreme leader, were allegedly beaten to death there. They had been arrested during unrest triggered by the disputed 2009 disputed presidential elections.

Complaints lodged with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led to the closure of the detention center in 2009, but the facility re-opened a year later after being renamed Soroush 111 Detention Center.