Iran has jailed the head of the Kahrizak detention center after at least three people died in custody in the southern Tehran prison and the judiciary held mass trials of detainees arrested over post-election unrest. “The head of the center has been sacked and jailed. Three policemen who beat detainees have been jailed as well,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran's police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam as saying. Kahrizak was built for jailing violators of Iran's vice laws. A police statement issued on Thursday confirmed that serious violations took place at Kahrizak. Ahmadi-Moghaddam also confirmed that some post-election detainees had been tortured in Kahrizak prison, which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered closed in July for “lack of necessary standards” to preserve rights of prisoners. He, however, said that the deaths of the inmates were caused by illness, not torture. State media say at least 26 people have been killed and hundreds arrested in post-election violence. Moderate websites reported the death of at least three protesters in Kahrizak, including the son of a top adviser to conservative defeated presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaie. After Mohsen Ruholamini's death in Kahrizak, Iran's top judge Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi ordered his envoys to visit all “prisons and detention centers”. The center became the source of even more controversy when two more Kahrizak detainees later died in a hospital. Authorities say the vote unrest detainees have been transferred to Tehran's notorious Evin prison. The authorities say some 200 protesters remain imprisoned. Iranian prosecutor Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi said all necessary legal steps would be taken against those “who had violated the law” in Kahrizak, the Etemad-e Melli newspaper reported. Leading moderates including Mir Hossein Mousavi and former president Mohammad Khatami have called for the immediate release of detainees, saying their confessions have been made under duress.
