Article 218 of the IPC stipulates that, in the case of hudud crimes, defendants’ claims that their
confessions or testimonies were made under coercion are to be taken at face value. The
exceptions to this rule are the offenses considered more serious under moharabeh (“war against
God”), “corruption on earth,” or “indecent offenses committed by coercion, force, abduction, or
deception.” In these instances, the court must carry out examinations and investigations of claims
of coerced confessions of guilt.
In practice, a variety of coercive means, both physical and psychological, continue to be widely
used by interrogators against suspects after their arrest and in the pre-trial phase, including to
secure confessions or collaboration with authorities. In the absence of adequate legal safeguards,
courts continue to rule confessions made without the presence of a lawyer during the
investigation phase as admissible, and in many cases, confessions extracted from torture have
been the primary evidence on which judges have based their verdicts, including in death penalty
cases.
Current Iranian law allows a person to lodge a complaint if they are subjected to torture,
inhumane treatment or detention, and to seek punishment for offenders at the judicial
disciplinary courts, the Armed Forces Judicial Court, the Parliament’s Article 90 Commission,
and/or Oversight Bodies for the exercise of Citizenship Rights in the country's provincial courts.
No report has been published yet on the functioning of these institutions as the government
authorities seldom make this sort of information public, so it is difficult to say how many
complaints are being investigated and responded to by state institutions. Despite the existence of
legislative mechanisms for victims of torture during detention to receive compensation,6 there
are no public reports of victims receiving compensation of any sort after submitting allegations
of violations of their right to freedom from torture. It is assumed that there are cases of victims
being compensated but this information is not made public by the relevant authorities.
Though there are instances where allegations of torture in prison and detention facilities are
investigated by various state mechanisms in charge of such processes, there is no information
available on such investigations resulting in any sort of disciplinary action or prosecution against
the alleged perpetrators. On the contrary, high-level cases of torture allegations raised by
prisoners against prison authorities often end in the state mechanisms in charge of investigating
these allegations declaring that no torture took place, resulting in the victims being accused of
“propaganda against the regime,” a charge that can carry a sentence of up to a year in prison, for
allegedly lying about their abuse and misusing state resources in investigations on false claims.7
Despite numerous requests and reports from human rights organizations and the United Nations,
reports continue to be published about judicial and security authorities failing to meet
6
7
Articles 14 and 255 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
https://iranintl.com/en/iran/vaezi-regime-has-right-sue-esmail-bakhshi-torture-claims
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