HCHR_The meeting of the Coordination Council of the High Council for Human Rights was held at the High Council for Human Rights with the presence of Kazem Gharibabadi, the Vice President of the Judiciary for International Affairs and the Secretary-General of the High Council for Human Rights, Asadullah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat released from prisons in Germany and Belgium, members of the HCHR and a group of media members.
At the beginning of this meeting, Gharibabadi stated: “The agenda of the first meeting is a review of the events that were imposed on Mr. Asadi during his 5 years of imprisonment in German and Belgian prisons, now that one year has passed since his release.
Referring to the long time that the Iranian diplomat has been in captivity, he said: “Almost a year has passed since the release of Mr. Asadi. The action of the German government in arresting and detaining him was a violation of international law and the 1961 Vienna Convention governing diplomatic relations between countries. The German government subjected Mr. Asadi to all kinds of mental and emotional torture without any reason or documentation”.
The Secretary-General of the HCHR further stated: Mr. Asadi was imprisoned in Belgium after being transferred from Germany and spent the most time there, and many atrocities were committed against him, only some of which were reported to the media. Our effort is to disgrace countries that claim to have human rights”.
Referring to the cases of human rights violations against this Iranian diplomat in Germany and Belgium, Gharibabadi clarified: “Mr. Asadi did not enjoy the right to contact his family, his right to health was violated and he was subjected to various mental and emotional tortures”
Gharibabadi continued: “When Mr. Asadi was in prison, he documented all these cases and then provided them to the HCHR, and we used these documents as the basis for various correspondences with international and human rights mechanisms, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Head of Human Rights Council. We raised these violations with those governments and demanded an explanation from them while seriously protesting. We must expose the human rights violations of Western countries, like what is happening in the Gaza Strip and European and the U.S. universities.
Referring to other human rights violations committed in Western countries against Iranian compatriots, the Secretary General noted: “Western countries don't even have mercy on children.
In Denmark, a child named "Darius Salamati" who is a disabled child was separated from his family and was entrusted to a Danish family; even his parents were deported from Denmark.
Gharibabadi also mentioned the deplorable situation of Hamid Nouri in Sweden and Richard John, a fellow Iranian-Armenian in the UK, and asked the media to address these issues. This is western human rights”.
In the end, the Secretary General pointed out the important role of the media and said: “The media must fulfill their duties. In Iran, if a European or an American commits a crime and is imprisoned, they create an uproar and through the media, they want to put pressure on the I.R. Iran. Our media should also reveal the human rights violations of the West. Our media should turn specific cases into subjects and should deal with them independently. We hope to be able to bring back to their family every Iranian countryman who was unjustly imprisoned and caught abroad.
Narration of Iranian diplomat released from German and Belgian prisons
In the continuation of this meeting, Asadullah Asadi, describing the events of the day of his arrest in Germany, said: “I was driving to my mission in Vienna, and the day before, my personal trip had ended when I was stopped by the German police in an area. Without telling us that they intend to arrest us, they asked us for documents. I explained that I was a diplomat and I was on my way to my mission, they took me to a distant place without any explanation, handcuffed me and put me in the back seat of the police car. They then took me to the police station”.
He continued: “My wife had to take medicine due to her illness, and I kept reminding her about this. The conditions that I am mentioning happened to me and my family and they were arrested in similar conditions”.
According to this Iranian diplomat, an unprecedented violation of the law took place in the world, and the Iranian diplomat, who enjoys diplomatic immunity, was arrested.
He stated about the conditions of his imprisonment: “They confiscated all my equipment. I was locked in a cell that had no heating and with only a small blanket on a platform. They had cut off my access to water and the same was true for my family. I reminded the police officers that “I have the right to have access to a lawyer approved by our consulate, and that you should inform the Iranian consulate of my arrest”, but later I found out that they had not done so”.
Asadi added: “They interrogated my little child, who was under the legal age. I was detained in that cell for more than 24 hours without informing my family and without being able to inform the consulate. The next afternoon, they took me to a court, where I found out why they had arrested me”.
Referring to the fact that 101 days were spent in Germany with difficulty, the Iranian diplomat said: “There are 2 detention regimes in European prisons: one is an open regime and the other is a closed regime. Contrary to my condition, I was placed next to prisoners who either had dementia from the beginning or had problems later. They examined me and said that I should be transferred to the normal section of the prison, but this order was not implemented. This period passed and the same strict regime existed until the end of the imprisonment in Belgium, and I was kept in a cell where certain people were kept. I was in solitary confinement for a month before my release, and such a thing is not prescribed for people with my conditions”.
Regarding the violation of his rights during his imprisonment in Belgium and Germany, Asadi said: “The problem with family contact was that the right to contact family was ignored for illusory reasons, and in five years I had no contact with my family and only one year I was allowed to talk to the family. In addition, I had no contact with the media and outside either.