International Law

Article 5 of the universal Declaration of the Human Rights States: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Torture has been defined by the United Nations Human rights instruments to include any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by (or at the instigations of) a public official on a person for purposes such as obtaining information, confession or punishment for an act he/she or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him/her or a third person.

Torture is today internationally condemned as a contravention of the charter of the United Nations and as such a violations of the universally accepted norms of human rights and fundamental freedoms. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war, a threat of war, internal political instability or any other reason is permitted as a justification for torture.

Iran ratified the International Covenant on the Civil and Political Rights in 1974. The present regime in Iran, since its inception has considered itself bound by the provisions of the Covenant. Article 7 of this Covenant states: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel or degrading treatment or punishment.

The clerical regime since 1979 has been blatantly violating, inter alia, that specific provisions of the Covenant.

Article 6 (1) of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment states that: “Upon being satisfied, after an examinations of information available to it, that the circumstances so warrant, any State Party in whose territory a person alleged to have committed any offences referred to Article 4 [meaning torture] is present shall take him into custody or take other legal measures to ensure his presence. The custody and other legal measures shall be as provided in the law of that state but may be continued only for such time as is necessary to enable any criminal or extradition proceedings to be instituted.”

Since 1985 the United Nations, the Amnesty International, the Human Rights watch and… have been branding the “Islamic Republic of Iran” as a consistent and gross violator of the basic international norms of human rights. These are to be found in the annual reports of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human Rights in Iran, in the reports of Amnesty International, in the reports of the Human rights watch, etc.