Iran has chosen its protest scapegoats. Now they face execution

 The phone calls, when they came, lasted three minutes.

In those minutes, a young woman told her mother she was alive. A son told his parents he was exhausted, and said that if the security forces wanted to execute him, they should, for at least then he’d be free.

It has been nearly a month since Venus Hossein-Nejad, 28, and Peyvand Naeimi, 30, were marched out of their workplaces by Iranian agents and held prisoner as part of the regime’s crackdown against the widespread protests threatening the Islamic Republic.

For days, their families had heard nothing from them. But then Ms Hossein-Nejad and Mr Naeimi, both from Iran’s Baha’i religious minority, appeared on a prime-time state television programme.

Their faces were blurred, their words scripted by interrogators, they confessed to having organised the mass protests that were sweeping Iran.

Credit: IRIB

Their families told The Telegraph that every word was forced, and that it was another example of the Iranian regime blaming the Baha’is for crises.

They said Iranian security forces were using them as scapegoats for the protests that saw more than 7,000 people killed, trusted rights groups say, and tens of thousands arrested.

Ms Hossein-Nejad and Mr Naeimi’s families now fear they will be executed by the clerical establishment for crimes they did not commit. They had never been at the protests they were accused of masterminding.

“This is another attempt by the Iranian government to falsify the truth and present falsehoods to its own public,” said Simin Fahandej, the Baha’i International Community’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

“During every period of national crisis, whether social, economic or political, the Iranian authorities consistently and systematically scapegoat the Baha’is. This is a repeated pattern, and we are seeing it again.”

The Baha’is have endured decades of abuse under the Islamic Republic. Families have reported parents and children being detained and taken to undisclosed locations after masked officers seized their religious texts, which are seen as contraband.

Ms Hossein-Nejad was yet another victim of the Islamist regime. She was taken away from the accounting firm where she worked by plain-clothes officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s (IRGC) intelligence unit and driven away in a car.

For the next 15 days, her family heard nothing of her.

Her parents, Nahid Shabani and Enayatollah Hosseini-Nejad, spent those days moving between courts and judicial offices in search of their daughter.

They were told, at each stop, that no such person existed in any file they could access. It was only later that the family learned the IRGC had taken her.

When she was allowed to call home, her mother got three minutes every few days. She could only confirm she was alive. She could not name where she was, describe her interrogations or explain the condition she was in.

Negar, Ms Hossein-Nejad’s cousin, said she was an artist who spent her free hours painting, and a professional who had almost completed her certification as a swimming instructor. As a Baha’i, she had been barred by law from attending university in Iran.

Instead, she built her career instead through private training and years of independent work. She had managed a bipolar disorder diagnosis for 12 years with consistent medication and psychiatric care. In detention, her family fears, she has had access to neither.

“She wasn’t picked up in the protest,” Negar told The Telegraph. “She wasn’t organising anything. Under pressure, they made her confess that she was organising all these things that she wasn’t. That’s not at all what she was into.”

On Feb 1, Ms Hossein-Nejad appeared on Channel Two of Iran’s state television network during the evening political news programme.

She confessed to organising the protests. She described alleged collaboration with foreign governments and involvement in arson.

Her parents watched. Then they wrote a letter, a copy of which was sent to The Telegraph.

“During one of her phone calls, she tearfully informed us that she had been subjected to severe physical and psychological pressure,” wrote Ms Shabani and Mr Hosseini-Nejad.

“She said that due to the intensity of these pressures, she was forced to declare her ‘cooperation’ solely to escape the unbearable conditions. This fabricated video was clearly prepared to falsely implicate detainees – paving the way for unjust, severe and predetermined sentences.”

“At present,” they warned, “our daughter’s life is in grave and immediate danger.”

Mr Naeimi was taken at 2pm on Jan 8, hours before the protests he would later be accused of organising even began.

Eight plain-clothes agents arrived at his workplace in Kerman with two vehicles and no arrest warrant. When he refused to hand over his phone, they took it from him by force.

They filmed the detention as it happened. Then he, too, was gone.

His cousin described how the 30-year-old had been subjected to years of discrimination at the hands of the Islamic Republic.

As a boy, Mr Naeimi had been a gifted swimmer, training several hours daily, sometimes twice a day. He was selected repeatedly for national and international competitions.

Each time, he prepared. Each time, on the day, someone else was sent in his place – because he was a Baha’i.

He became a dog trainer instead, building his own business after early employers withheld his wages. He competed and won. Authorities shut his business down. He became a mechanic.

His younger brother, Rozhin, described him as the source of creativity in their family – a man who met every closed door with something new.

Like Ms Hossein-Nejad, Mr Naeimi was denied a university education because of his faith. Like her, he never tried to leave.

“He really loved Iran very deeply,” Rozhin told The Telegraph. “Even despite all that was happening to him from childhood until right now, he never chose to leave the country. It was very easy for him. He never did.”

After three days of no contact, Mr Naeimi was allowed a 30-second call. He could not answer his parents’ questions. After 19 days, they learned he was being held in an IRGC intelligence detention centre.

That same day, in a brief call, he spoke in terms his family recognised as signs of what had been done to him.

“I’m exhausted, and I will cooperate with them,” Rozhin quoted him as saying. “I will do whatever they want and say whatever they want. Even if they want to execute me, let them execute me, so that I can be relieved. My soul will be freed from the cage of my body.”

In a later call, he asked urgently whether a friend of his had also been arrested, the relief noticeable in his voice when his parents told him the friend was free.

The Baha’i International Community said that the forced confessions were a significant escalation but not a departure in the government’s handling of the community during moments of national stress.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the group said, the pattern has been consistent: crisis arrives, and the Baha’is are blamed.

Shia Islam is the state religion in Iran. The constitution recognises several minority faiths, including Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism, but not the Baha’i faith.

Baha’is in Iran face systematic persecution, including restrictions on education, employment and religious practice.

“The Baha’is in Iran, despite the false accusations and cruel persecutions they have faced, have only acted with resilience and service to their country and have never responded with violence,” Ms Fahandej said. “Their record of refusing to deny their beliefs in return for every worldly benefit shows their commitment above all to the principle of truthfulness.”

Ms Hossein-Nejad is still in solitary confinement. Her medications are still out of reach. Mr Naeimi is still in an IRGC intelligence detention centre.

The mood on the streets is grief for thousands of young women and men killed last month by the security forces.

Iran has chosen its protest scapegoats. Now they face execution