TEHRAN -- Iran’s top human rights official on Monday said the country will prosecute the former deputy chief of SAVAK, the so-called “secret police” during the Pahlavi regime, for his complicity in human rights abuses against the people of Iran.
Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights and the judiciary chief’s deputy for international affairs, in a letter to the country’s attorney general, demanded the SAVAK chief torturer’s prosecution, the judiciary-affiliated Mizan News Agency said.
In the letter, Gharibabadi asked the attorney general “to collect evidence of crimes committed by Sabeti and to identify the victims of these crimes, and to take the necessary measures to file a complaint against him.”
The notorious former deputy SAVAK chief was recently spotted with his family at the gathering of “regime change” proponents in downtown Los Angeles.
SAVAK was established in 1957 with the assistance of America’s CIA and Israel’s Mossad. The agency was vested with far-ranging powers to use torture against those who expressed dissent against the West-backed Pahlavi regime.
There is ample evidence of how undercover SAVAK agents – working directly on the orders of Sabeti – would intimidate, arrest, torture, rape and kill women during the Pahlavi dictatorship, which has been widely documented.
Sabeti escaped Iran before Imam Khomeini returned in February 1979 and the Islamic Republic replaced the West-backed Pahlavi family’s dictatorship.
Sabeti’s participation in anti-Iran protests in the United States recently prompted many people in and outside Iran to demand his prosecution for crimes committed during the Pahlavi dictatorship.
“It is strange that in these years, no special legal action has been taken against Parviz Sabeti by the victims of SAVAK torture who are now living in America and Europe,” foreign policy analyst and lawyer Reza Nasri, said in a tweet, adding that “necessary legal basis” exists for his prosecution.
“Sabeti was a SAVAK deputy, overseeing torture, abduction, & killing of the then opposition members. Sabeti’s name “was synonymous with death and torture” for many Iranians,” tweeted Setareh Sadeqi, a political commentator and podcast host. “We have not forgotten.”