Full Name:
Mostafa Mohebi
Positions:
– Deputy Justice to the Tehran’s Prosecutor, till 15 June 2016
– Director General for Prisons in Tehran Province, June 2016-present
Human Rights Violations:
As Head of the Prisons Organization in Tehran province, Mostafa Mohebi is responsible for the wellbeing and security of prisoners within his jurisdiction. Sina Ghanbari was one of the protesters detained during the December2017-January 2018 protests. Ghanbari died in unknown circumstances whilst in custody at Evin Prison in Tehran, one of the prisons within Mostafa Mohebi’s jurisdiction.
Twenty-two year old Sina Ghanbari was arrested by NAJA forces during the protests of 31 December 2018 and transferred to Ward 4 of the Quarantine wing at Evin Prison. Six days later, on 6 January 2018, Mostafa Mohebi claimed that Ghanbari had hanged himself in a prison toilet.
On 11 January, Attorney General, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, confirmed the death of Ghanbari stressing that he had committed suicide. Talking to the press, he claimed that he “was a drug addict and footage [of the incident] is available”.
On 5 February, following his visit to Evin Prison, Tehran Member of Parliament, Alireza Rahimi, rejected Montazeri’s claims in his personal Telegram channel writing that:
“The said footage is incorrectly referred to as Sina Ghanbari’s suicide clip. This is while the clip only shows some footage of the outside of the toilet facilities and there is no footage from the inside of the toilet or the incident resulting in the death; basically no footage of the suicide exists”.
The prominent human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, told the Centre for Human Rights in Iran that security agents had encouraged the prisoners to ask for “methadone” so that they would be freed sooner.
In a tweet on 16 January, Tehran Member of Parliament, Mahmoud Sadeghi, also confirmed the news that prisoners including Sina Ghanbari were forced to take pills:
“Based on statements by the relatives of one of the detainees who died in prison, he had contacted them from prison several times to say that he and the detainees were being forced to take some pills that made them sick.”
The circumstances of Sina Ghanbari’s death have not yet been investigated by an independent body.
