After 8 Months in Prison and Pressure for Forced Confessions, Jahanbakhsh Khanjani Was Released

Jahanbakhsh Khanjani released on Wednesday

Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, former advisor to Iran’s Minister of Interior, was released on Wednesday night after spending more than eight months in prison, while according to one of the previously released prisoners, he was under pressure to confess and was constantly moved from general confinement to solidarity confinement.

Khanjani, who was Iran’s advisor to Minister of Interior at the time of Khatami’s presidency, was arrested only a few days after the elections. Up until a week before his release, he was interrogated and was sent to solitary confinement after some of his interrogation sessions.

One of the released prisoners told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that security investigators were trying to extract confessions from Khanjani against certain political personalities, including Hashemi Rafsanjani’s children. Also, his monthly salary as an expert in the Ministry of Interior has been cut since the later part of September; this is while according to his family none of the charges against him have any validity. Khanjani is also a wounded war veteran and has a neurological illness that has intensified in prison. Previously in a meeting with his family members he had asked them to save him form this place (Evin Prison).

His lawyer, Alizadeh Tabatabai, said about his client’s case that appeal process for Khanjani’s file is complete and finished, and he is awaiting for sentencing by the appeals court. The lower court, which was conducted in Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts with Judge Salavati presiding, sentenced Jahanbakhsh Khanjani to a total of six years’ suspended imprisonment, of which one year is for charges of propaganda activities against the regime and five years of it is for gathering and collusion against country’s security.