TEHRAN - The head of Iran's hardline judiciary has launched an unprecedented attack on the Islamic republic's security services, comparing their treatment of detainees in some cases to the US abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Quoted in Iranian dailies Thursday, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi also told law enforcement officials to refrain from extracting confessions from suspects and show restraint in enforcing the Islamic republic's strict dress code.
"Sometimes they do some things like put a bag over the head, which resembles what the Americans do to terrorists in Abu Ghraib," Shahrudi was quoted as saying in a reference to police handling of suspects during arrests.
"It is no joke to detain and hurt people's dignity and reputation," said the judiciary chief.
Iran's judiciary, a bastion of the religious right wing, has rarely acknowledged accusations of rights abuses in the country -- but in recent months Shahrudi has appeared to be increasingly open to accepting complaints.
Shahrudi denounced what he said were cases of the police issuing summons, making arrests and carrying out interrogations without authorisation, saying "such actions are against the constitution, the principles of Islam and even international legal principles."
"Do not give officers carte blanche to make dossiers. This is against the law. Interrogation is the job of the judge. A confession that is not made before a judge is void and is not a confession," he was quoted as telling a gathering of state prosecution staff.
Shahrudi also complained of cases where suspects arrested for financial crimes have been subjected to an interrogation over "morals, family, pictures and family trips".
"A person must not be pressured into confessing to what he hasn't done," said Sahahrudi, whose comments came amid renewed complaints from a group of detained journalists that they were abused and forced to sign confessions.
The top ayatollah also warned against over-zealous morals policing, just a week after police announced they were poised to put into action their usual pre-summer crackdown on skimpy dressers.
"Bad veiling will not be fixed by detention," he said, warning that tough crackdowns "will be exploited by foreign enemies and the counter-revolutionary opposition".
"Police and security measures will worsen (the situation). There are tens of civil ways to combat such corruption."
Earlier this week four Iranian webloggers arrested during a crackdown last year wrote to Shahrudi to complain of having been subjected to "physical and moral pressure" that forced them to confess.
"During our detention, (we were) subjected to physical and moral pressure and all of our confessions were false and have no legal value," wrote Mahbubeh Abbas-Golizadeh, Fereshteh Ghazi, Massud Ghoreyshi and Hanif Mazruwi.
They appealed for Shahrudi's intervention, because the "confessions of several of those accused were extracted by force."
A group of around 20 Internet writers and technicians working for pro-reform websites were arrested in a crackdown that began in September last year on suspicion of "propagating against the regime", "insulting religious values" and "disturbing public order".
They were released by the end of the year, but four of them -- not those who wrote the letter -- are still facing charges. Some of those detained made detailed confessions to the judiciary before publicly retracting them once released.
05/05/2005 09:58 GMT