Cartoon 31: Never-ending Death in Prisons

Sattar Beheshti, 35, a laborer who criticzed the Iranian government for its oppressive policies in his blogs, was arrested on Tuesday, October 30. His arrest came after several warnings and summonses by Iran’s Cyber Police who had at one point threatened Beheshti that if he kept writing his critical blogs, they would “make his mother wear black” in mourning for him. After his arrest at his home in the low income neighborhood of Robat Karim, 35 kilometers outside Tehran, his family was unable to gather any information about his whereabouts. Several days later, he was transferred to Evin Prison’s Ward 350 for one night, where cellmates reported he had been brutally tortured and “not a single healthy spot was visible on his body.” Tehran Security Police officials informed his family on Tuesday that they were to buy a grave and go to collect Beheshti’s body. Sources close to Beheshti family reported later that he had suffered facial and head injuries and that his shroud was splattered with blood at the time they took the body for burial.