international standards by denying political, civil, and prisoners belonging to ethnic minorities access to medical treatment facilities.8 Although the Code of Prisons and Detention Facilities Administration acknowledges the prisoners’ right to access these facilities, in practice, there have been many reports that prison officials or the interrogation team denies this right. 9 There is insufficient information to indicate whether Iranian authorities have properly investigated prisoners’ complaints against prison authorities on their denial of medical treatment and facilities where this my amount to torture. However, since reports of the violation of this right continue to surface, most recently related to the denial of medical treatment to prisoners from the 2019 protests, 10 it seems the problem persists. Authorities still widely use torture against suspects following arrest and in the pre-trial phase to extract confessions.11 The State appears to use torture on suspects for a wide variety of charges, including drug offences, rape, murder, and political or security-related charges.12 Iran Human Rights reports cases in which people have confessed to committing crimes only to be absolved of the charges. For example, in 2014, a man who confessed to a murder was absolved shortly before his scheduled execution—the man was reported to have said “when I was charged for the murder, I was beaten so much that I thought if I don’t confess to the murder I will die as a result of the beating.”13 After recent developments linked to the 2019 protests reports have surfaced that the Iranian authorities continue to use torture, mistreatment and negligence to extract forced confessions from individuals arrested for exercising their right to freedom of assembly.14 In death penalty cases, confessions are the State’s most common means for proving guilt.15 The State has a 40-plus year history of televising confessions on State-run broadcasts, and those confessions are often extracted through physical or physiological torture, lengthy solitary confinement, and threats regarding the gravity of the sentence awaiting the accused.16 Such confessions are sometimes aired on public television prior to the trial, especially in cases involving political opponents or activists.17 Televised confessions are used not only by 8 https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/mde_13.4196.2016_health_taken_hostage__cruel_denial_of_medical_care_in_irans_prisons_final.pdf 9 https://iranhumanrights.org/2019/07/un-seriously-concerned-over-irans-consistent-pattern-of-denying-prisoners-medicaltreatment/ 10 https://iran-hrm.com/index.php/2020/02/17/medical-care-denied-to-wounded-prisoners-arrested-in-november-2019/ 11 Iran Human Rights and ECPM, Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran2019(2020), 22 12 Ibid. 13 Iran Human Rights, “Proved Innocent 48 Hours Before Execution -Had Been Tortured to Confess,” accessed Apr.24, 2020, https://www.iranhr.net/en/articles/1038 14 Amnesty International. Trampling Human Rights, 2020: https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1328912020ENGLISH.PDF 15 Iran Human Rights and ECPM, Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran2019(2020), 23 16 Id. at 24. 17 Ibid. 3