Iranian prison officials on Monday denied claims by a prominent pro-reform journalist that he has been tortured by guards in Tehran's Evin prison.
"The allegations by Akbar Ganji are completely false and aimed at creating an atmosphere of blackmail," the prisons authority said in a communiqué published in the conservative Ressalat newspaper.
"His charges of torture, beatings and threats are baseless," it said, adding that prisoners are "bound to respect the rules of their respective jails."
Ganji, long a thorn in the side of the regime's conservatives, charged in court Thursday that he had been hung upside down by guards who then kicked him repeatedly in the head and stomach.
He said he had refused to wear the standard-issue prison clothes but that the guards had forced him to put them on.
A pro-reform Iranian MP on Monday denounced the prison conditions for political prisoners in Iran in a speech in parliament carried on state radio.
"Solitary confinement, the particularly rough conditions of detention and the mistreatment of political prisoners are everyday occurrences in Iran's prisons," Tehran MP Fatemeh Haqiqat-Jou said.
Ganji was jailed in April over articles implicating former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the 1998 assassinations of several intellectuals and opposition leaders.
But he is now also on trial over his participation at a conference in Germany on reforms in Iran which authorities deemed "anti-Islamic." He has announced a hunger strike in protest.
More than a dozen others are on trial over the conference, including several other close allies of President Mohammad Khatami, and dissident cleric Hassan Yusefi Eshkevari is reportedly facing a possible death sentence.
Prosecutors have already asked for the death sentence against a former communist, Khalil Rostam-Khani, who is alleged to have organized the April seminar, held in Berlin, on the future of reforms in Iran.
Press reports said Ganji had written a letter to the president asking him to look into his prison conditions and demanding a special parliamentary investigation.
Six charges were leveled against Ganji at Thursday's hearing, including acts against national security, propaganda against the Islamic regime, and insulting the "sacred values of Islam" -- TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
