The Iranian journalist Mohamad Bagher Moradi, who disappeared in Turkey in May, has been located as an inmate in the Evin prison in Tehran, after being kidnapped by a group of unknown persons, according to what his lawyer has been able to confirm to the Al Monitor news portal.
Moradi was first able to speak to his family in November only to say that he was in the custody of Iranian authorities. Now, the lawyer Salim Efe has explained that the reporter spoke for the second time with his relatives at the beginning of December to specify that he was in Evin, one of the prisons best known by international humanitarian organizations given its specialization in the imprisonment of dissidents. .
Moradi’s lawyer has taken the opportunity to denounce that the disappearance of his client was, in reality, a kidnapping. The reporter, according to witnesses, was intercepted by “two men dressed in black” on the night of May 30 when he was going to his home in Istanbul, where he lived as a “conditional refugee”, a status that was granted to him in April.
In reality, the journalist had been in Turkey since 2014, the year in which his father was sentenced to five years in prison for his opposition to the Iranian authorities. In the complaint of his disappearance, collected by the portal, the family talks about an individual who introduced himself as a “Turkish Intelligence agent” who tried to “recruit” the journalist as an “informant” and threatened the reporter when he rejected his offer. .
Likewise, the family assures that the journalist, before being deported to Iran, spent five months in the custody of the Turkish Intelligence services, during which he was the victim of torture.
Efe plans to take legal action against the Turkish authorities based on Moradi’s account to his lawyers in Iran. “I will file a criminal complaint against the relevant officials and the government for illegal actions against a person who was under the protection of the Turkish government and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Turkey,” he said. “I think that Turkey can no longer be considered a safe country for Iranian refugees,” she added.
The Turkish government has not commented on this information.
