In the glare of TV cameras, Iranians are being interrogated – and condemned to death

The regime is using real and mock executions to torture protesters and their families as a government crackdown enters grim new phase, reports Ruth Michaelson

- Ruth Michaelson

The forced confession that aired on Iranian state television is lit with a crimson backdrop silhouetting the blurred face of 18-year-old Shervin Bagherian in his bright blue prison uniform, the handcuffs on his wrists glinting on the table in front of him.

An interrogator accuses the teenager of provoking crowds of demonstrators against paramilitaries and of kicking the bodies of slain security forces. When he demands if Bagherian knows “how many families you have ruined, how many children you have orphaned”, the young man slumps forward, his head of black curls between his bound arms.

Then the official tells Bagherian his crime: moharebeh - waging war against God. Sniffling as his voice quakes, the teenager politely asks what that means. The interrogator answers with one word: “Execution.”

Bagherian begs for his life: “For God's sake, not execution! Sir, I made a mistake, I was wrong, please, for God's sake, I wasn’t doing anything.” The interrogator is indifferent.

Bagherian’s “confession” is among hundreds to have aired on Iranian state television in recent weeks, the detainees dragged from prisons to sit in front of studio lights.

The US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran says more than 50,900 people have been detained since the uprising that swept the country, as the Iranian regime enacted the most brutal crackdown since the 1979 revolution that brought it to power. A former UN prosecutor told The Observer 33,000 is a conservative estimate of the death toll, as evidence trickles out amid a three-week internet blackout.