FEBRUARY 4, 1997
Iranian writer and publisher Faraj Sarkuhi has once again been arrested in Iran, and faces torture and possible execution. Along with his brother Ismail, Faraj Sarkuhi was formally arrested on Jan. 28, and is being held incommunicado. The Foundation for Democracy in Iran joins the PEN American Center and other groups in denouncing this outrageous attempt by the intelligence services of the Islamic Republic of Iran to intimidate journalists and intellectuals and to muzzle free speech.
But Sarkuhi's arrest is not just an attack on fundamental freedoms. It is also a cynical slap in the face to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, since it occurred just as German Economics Minister Jurgen Molleman announced that Europe should pursue "normal dialogue" and commercial contracts with Tehran, not "critical" dialogue. Molleman had just returned from Tehran where he was negotiating the sale of 10-12 Airbus airliners, and told the German Press Agency that German companies stood to win huge contracts for petrochemical plants, railroad deals, and steel mills if Europe would only "take the initiative" to abandon U.S. attempts to pressure Tehran.
Sarkuhi's Jan. 28 arrest is not his first time behind bars. The publisher of a monthly cultural journal, Adineh, Sarkuhi was one of 134 Iranian writers and intellectuals who signed a 1994 appeal calling on the authorities to abolish censorship. In August 1996, Sarkuhi and five other writers were arrested and interrogated when Intelligence Ministry agents burst into the Tehran home of German Cultural attaché Jens Gust, where they had been invited for dinner. On Sept. 8, 1996, Sarkuhi was detained for three days again along with twelve members of the Iranian Union of Writers. On November 3, 1996, Sarkuhi was arrested again - and threatened with death.
Now Sarkuhi has smuggled out of Iran an extraordinary 14 page hand-written letter - portions of which FDI has published on the Internet - describing in detail his Kafkaesque arrest and torture by the Tehran authorities in November, and the fake videotaped confessions extracted from him while he was in jail. "It has been officially announced that you have left Iran and your arrival in Hamburg has been registered," Sarkuhi says he was told. "You will spend some time here in jail and then be killed, your body dumped either here or in Germany after proper interrogation..." Sarkuhi said he believed he was "the victim of a plot hatched by the [Intelligence] Ministry of Iran... I realized that their objective was to use me and some others to counter the Mykonos case."
Under pressure from international human rights groups, the authorities in Tehran abandoned these plans and staged Sarkuhi's "reappearance" on December 20, at a hastily-arranged press conference at Tehran's Mehrebad airport.
With his re-arrest on Jan. 28, there is reason to fear the authorities will carry out their earlier threats to murder him, all in a cynical attempt to put pressure on Germany to acquit Iranian intelligence agents on trial in the Mykonos case in Berlin for the September 1992 murder of four Iranian Kurdish dissidents.
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran calls on European governments and international human rights organizations to intervene with Tehran to win Sarkuhi's release. FDI believes that the government of Germany bears a special responsibility in this case and should double its efforts on behalf of Mr. Sarkuhi.