Abdorrahman Boroumand Center

for Human Rights in Iran

https://www.iranrights.org
Omid, a memorial in defense of human rights in Iran
One Person’s Story

Zakaria Rigi

About

Age: 27
Nationality: Iran
Religion: Islam (Sunni)
Civil Status: Single

Case

Date of Killing: March 18, 2012
Location of Killing: Central Prison, Zahedan, Sistan Va Baluchestan Province, Iran
Mode of Killing: Death in custody
Charges: Murder
Age at time of alleged offense: 21

About this Case

He was a single, 21-year-old Sunni Moslem of Baluch ethnicity from the city of Zahedan. He was protective of other people’s rights and could not stand to see them be subjected to injustice.

News of Mr. Zakaria Rigi’s death was reported to the Boroumand Center on January 18, 2018, by one of his relatives. Additional information was given to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center in the course of an interview with this person, who has knowledge of the case.

Mr. Zakaria Rigi, child of Mohammad Azim and Mehri, was a single, 21 year-old-man at the time of his arrest. He was a Sunni Moslem and an ethnic Baluch from the city of Zahedan. He had three brothers and was the family’s second child. Mr. Rigi was an intelligent, kind, and religious man who had grown up in a religious family. His father had a high school diploma and owned a stationery store in [the town of] Mirjaveh. He had lived with his maternal grandparents in Zahedan ever since he was an adolescent. Mr. Rigi was a high school student majoring in mathematics and physics, and spent time at the local mosque teaching the Koran. His behavior and conduct were exemplary. He was a good student and would always get a high ranking at school with a good grade point average. According to people close to him, he was protective of other people’s rights and could not stand to see them be subjected to injustice.

Mr. Rigi’s case was related to the killing of a man in the course of a mass altercation at a mosque in Zahedan, but he died in custody. 

Arrest and detention

On February 12, 2006 (approximate date), Mr. Rigi went to the tribe’s elder for consultation upon his father’s recommendation and accompanied by him, and subsequently turned himself in to Mirjaveh police.

Mr. Rigi had told his friends that he did not wish the murder victim’s blood to have been spilled in vain [and for the killing to go unpunished], and had therefore turned himself in to the Mirjaveh Police. He was subsequently taken to the Zahedan Criminal Investigations Bureau located at Shahnaz Alley. He came face to face with the victim’s parents at the Zahedan Criminal Investigations Bureau and told them: “I am at your disposal. Do whatever you want with me and whatever you think is expedient.”

According to a person with knowledge of the case, Mr. Rigi had been treated well at the Zahedan Criminal Investigations Bureau because he had confessed everything. The head of the Bureau had told him “we have conducted investigations and we know you were not alone” and had asked him to name his friends, but Mr. Rigi had said that he had acted alone.

Mr. Rigi was taken to Zahedan Central Prison two days later, where he was incarcerated for six years. He was allowed to visit with his mother after a month for fifteen minutes. He had worn black clothing and had grown a beard; he looked so frail and weak that his mother didn’t recognize him. His hands were severely shaking. He asked his mother to pray for him and told her that he had started to re-read the Koran.

The head of the prison’s Information Protection Section hit him in the head with an electric club and threw him in a solitary confinement cell as he was bleeding profusely from the head.

Mr. Rigi was kept at Zahedan Central Prison’s Ward 6. He was the prison mosque’s prayer leader and taught the Koran there, which required him to always be ablated, a difficult task as the prison water was always cold. According to available information, Mr. Rigi did not have many amenities in prison. He and the other prisoners were forced to procure their necessities on their own. He was not allowed to make sufficient use of the telephone and the authorities would sometimes cut off his phone access. Prison officials had once beaten him so badly that his kidneys had been hurt. His family had gone to the Judiciary Branch in Tehran and requested that he be allowed to be sent to the hospital for treatment, but the Zahedan Revolutionary Court had prevented his dispatch to the hospital in spite of a letter [from the Judiciary Branch] to that effect. His family would obtain his medication but even then, they were not given to him on time.

Mr. Rigi thought about the people around him and was helpful to others. That was why he had a good reputation among the prisoners. If he got any money from his family, he would share it with the prisoners in need.

Mr. Rigi was persecuted by prison authorities during his incarceration. For instance, they had put pressure on him to shave his beard off and had put limits on his attendance at the mosque. According to a person close to him, the main reason for the persecution was that he was an adherent of Sunni Islam.

According to information available from various prisons in different time periods, Sunni Moslem prisoners are sometimes discriminated against. They are persecuted because of their appearance, which is in line with their religion’s requirements, and for performing their religious rites; the authorities force them to trim their beards by insulting them and using offensive language.  For instance, it was reported that the former head of [the city of] Mashhad’s Vakilabad Prison’s Ward 6.1 “was constantly on the case of Sunni Mowlavis (the term “Mowlavi” literally means “our master”; here, it means “religious leader”) telling them to trim their beards. They would respond that their religion required them to have a beard long enough to fit into a closed fist, whereupon he would say ‘your beard depresses us’… The beard of a Mowlavi that was in the same ward with me and has been transferred to Torbat-e Jaam Prison, was trimmed by force, and he was crying the entire time they were cutting it off.” (International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, April 11, 2011). In another case, Zahedan Prison’s Warden belittled and insulted Mowlavi Amanollah Baluchi, Zahedan Central Prison’s Ward 3 Prayer Room’s prayer leader, telling him: “Either you trim your beard yourself or we will do it for you.” This caused prisoners to protest. The same person had caused a prisoner riot in 2012-13 by insulting the sacred elements of Sunni Moslem’s faith; the prisoners had demanded that the prison warden resign. As a result, the protestors were quarantined one by one and subsequently sent into exile in prisons in other towns. (Baluch Activists Campaign, January 7, 2017).

In mid-March 2012, Mr. Rigi got into a scuffle with a prisoner he suspected of being an informant working for the prison warden. The reason for the fight was that Mr. Rigi believed that he was the person who had placed a knife under the bed of one of their religious leaders in prison, and had thus framed him, resulting in his exile to the city of Yazd. The head of the prison’s Information Protection separated them and was leading Mr. Rigi to the quarantine when the latter requested that he too be exiled to Yazd. The head of the prison’s Information Protection then hit him in the head with an electric club, and threw him into a solitary confinement cell as he was bleeding profusely from the head. The following day, that is, on March 18, several prisoners called Mr. Rigi’s family and told them that he had been killed.

Trial

Zahedan Revolutionary Court tried Mr. Rigi in the presence of his court-appointed attorney. No further detail is available about the trial session(s).

Charges

The charge brought against Mr. Rigi was said to have been “murder”. He was accused of having murdered a man during an altercation on the grounds of Zahedan’s Al-Ghadir Mosque.

Evidence of guilt

Mr. Rigi confessed to murder at the various stages of adjudication. Additionally, the murder victim’s body and the knife with which he had been stabbed were used as evidence against Mr. Rigi at trial.

Defense

Although Mr. Rigi confessed to murder, the evidence was not sufficient to prove the charges against him. According to a person with knowledge of the case, the head of the Criminal Investigations Bureau had told Mr. Rigi in the investigations stage: “Name your friends. We have conducted investigations and we know you had friends [that were involved].”

According to this person with knowledge of the case, the story was that, two or three days prior to Mr. Rigi’s arrest, at the same time as Ashura and Tasua (annual commemoration of Imam Hussein’s martyrdom, the fourth Imam in Shi’a Islam) (around February 9, 2006), a man and woman who were not related came to Al-Ghadir Mosque a few times, which raised objections by several Mosque-going youth. After giving the man a warning, the young men got into an altercation with him during which he was stabbed and wounded. The young men ran away and Mr. Rigi and the woman who accompanied the injured man, took the latter to the hospital. The woman, however, fled the hospital and Mr. Rigi left the hospital and went to his father’s home in Mirjaveh. The wounded man died at the hospital of severe hemorrhage. When Mr. Rigi’s friends learned of the man’s death, they called him on the phone several times, and subsequently went to him in Mirjaveh and asked him to put his hand on the Koran and swear that he would not turn them in to the police. Mr. Rigi’s father, who had become suspicious of his friends’ presence there, asked him what had happened, and Mr. Rigi told him the story.

According to available information Mr. Rigi did not allow his court-appointed lawyer to defend him.

Judgment

The court sentenced Mr. Rigi to death (Qesas). Mr. Rigi’s family had talked to the victim’s family to forgive and forego Qesas in exchange for 50 million Tumans in Diah (“blood money”). They had been able to raise 35 million Tumans of the said amount with the help and support of local elders of Zahedan’s Makki Mosque, and were trying to raise the remaining 15 million Tumans.

Actions and Statements by Government Authorities

According to a person with knowledge of the case, prison officials denied for two days after Mr. Rigi’s death that he had died and claimed that the news of his passing was fabricated, and that he was alive and doing very well. After two days, however, they announced that he had committed suicide in prison. They finally turned Mr. Rigi’s body over to his family on March 20, 2012.

Based on available information, a group of prisoners rioted for several days in protest of Mr. Rigi’s killing; the riot was quashed violently by prison officials. For instance, they would tie the prisoners to barbed wire in order to punish them.

Based on available information, after the passage of several years, two investigating judges from Tehran went to Zahedan to meet with Mr. Rigi’s family, and interviewed one of his relatives about the circumstances of his death. They recorded the conversation and took it back [to Tehran]; however, nothing has come of it thus far.

The Family’s Objections and Statements

Following the calls by prisoners informing Mr. Rigi’s family of his killing while in the quarantine section, his family and relatives gathered in front of the prison and tried to obtain information from the officials. Prison officials told them, however, that the news of his death was a lie. Mr. Rigi’s relatives insisted that they wanted to meet with him to make sure that the news of his death was indeed a lie. They were kept in the dark for a while, and were told after two days that Mr. Rigi had committed suicide in jail.

According to a person with knowledge of the case, the prisoners had told the prison’s head of Information Protection: “You hit Mr. Rigi in the head with a club right in front of us. How do you now claim that he committed suicide?! He was not the type to kill himself! Suicide doesn’t stick to someone who was a mosque prayer leader and taught the Koran for 6 years and was one of the finest people in prison.”

Prison authorities denied his death at first, but told his family two days later that he had committed suicide in prison. 

According to available information, more than two thousand people attended Mr. Rigi’s burial, and many people, including his family and relatives, saw his body and witnessed that his head had been fractured and had bled, and that there were bruises on his back as a result of numerous blows. According to information obtained from witnesses, blood was still coming out of Mr. Rigi’s head while his body was being washed [in accordance with Islamic burial rituals]. Based on available information, Mr. Rigi’s family and relatives did not accept the Coroner’s report that he had committed suicide, and stated that it was inaccurate.

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