Iran prosecutes jailers over protester abuse

Iranian police acknowledged Thursday that some demonstrators arrested during protests over June's disputed presidential election had been mistreated and said several prison warders face punishment.

The abuses took place in the Kahrizak detention center in south Tehran originally built for suspected violators of Iran's vice laws, a police statement carried by the ISNA news agency said, adding that the detained protesters should have been held in the capital's main Evin prison.

"There were breaches of the rules and negligence by several managers and staff of the Kahrizak detention center," the statement said.

"Two officers have been punished for beating prisoners."

Several managers and employees have been "sacked and face other sanctions for having received more prisoners than the center was intended to accommodate, for not reporting the problems encountered and for failing to check on the prison conditions of the detainees," it added.

Two officers have been punished for beating prisoners

Police statement

End of July prison closures

At the end of July, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the closure of Kahrizak, saying that its facilities failed to safeguard prisoners' rights after it was reported that two prisoners had died from jailers' beatings.

The head of Tehran prisons, Sohrab Soleimani, had denied that the detainees had died from prison beatings, insisting they had been struck down by meningitis.

But opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi had replied that if one of the protesters had died of meningitis, "how come his teeth were broken?"

Some 2,000 prisoners were detained during the protests that followed the controversial June 12 re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Most have since been released but more than 100 are now on trial.

How come his teeth were broken?

Mir Hossein Mousavi