Adnan al-Mansouri has not heard anything from his father for ten months now. Dutch-Iranian human rights activist Abdullah al-Mansouri has been in an Iranian prison for years. That could be dangerous, according to a new UN report which says hundreds of executions take place in secret in Iranian prisons. The foreing ministry in The Hague says it is “highly unlikely” that Dutch citizens have been executed in secret.

Last year, Iran carried out the death sentence in secret 300 times; this year there have already been 146 secret executions, the author of the UN report writes. The executions are said to have taken place in a notorious prison in the eastern city of Mashhad, without lawyers or family being informed.

Whereabouts unknown
Adnan al-Mansouri knows nothing about his father’s fate. Abdullah is serving a 15-year sentence. He fled Iran in 1988 and was granted asylum in the Netherlands. In 2006, he was arrested in Syria and sentenced to death in Iran. This was later commuted to 15 years imprisonment.

“Of course, I'm concerned about my father. The last time we heard from him was in December last year. On his birthday, 23 September, Amnesty International handed 23,000 signatures to Iran to show that we haven't forgotten him. Unfortunately, we don't know where he is, actually we've never known that.”

Illegal contact
The foreign ministry says there are three Dutch-Iranians in prison in Iran. A spokesperson for the ministry says they are all alive. But the Dutch branch of Amnesty International is less convinced: “Iran is never generous with information. Sometimes the names of people who have been executed do get out via family or lawyers, but not always,” Ruud Bosgraaf of AI Netherlands says.

Dutch-Iranian activist Sadegh Nagashkar confirms this: “The regime tries to keep contact between political prisoners and their families to a minimum. The families are threatened and the authorities do not speak to human rights organisations. That makes it difficult to know how prisoners are. There is even a law now making it illegal to seek contact with them.”

Public executions
The actual number of executions in Iran is probably a great deal higher than stated in the UN report, Adnan al-Mansouri thinks. Mr Nagashkar says the situation is much more serious: 

“Some of the executions are reported by state television, the rest are kept secret. We are talking about hundreds of prisoners who are executed by hanging in different prisons. You never hear about them. We try to find out the names, the dates of the executions and where they took place, and pass this information on to the United Nations.”

Mr Bosgraaf: “In 2010, Amnesty registered 252 executions in Iran but there were probably twice as many. This year, we have registered more than 400 executions, 30 of them were held in public.”

Useless embassy
“How can Iran be put under pressure? By bringing Tehran before the UN security council and forcing it to stop the executions and human rights violations,” Mr Nagashkar says.

Adnan al-Mansouri is calling for more sanctions and an end to diplomatic relations. But he does not think the Netherlands will do that because the economic interests are too great. “As far as human rights are concerned, the embassy is useless.”

(nc/rk/imm)