Morteza Bakhtiari, Iran’s Minister of Justice, has announced that the judiciary should expedite the case against Saeed Mortazavi, the former Tehran prosecutor implicated in the torture and murder of detainees at Kahrizak Prison in 2009.
The Khaneh Mellat News Agency reports that Bakhtiari responded to questions from 16 MPs regarding the delays in the Mortazavi case, saying: “The judiciary is responsible for processing such cases and it should face questions about the current status of the case.”
Those 16 Iranian MPs called on the Minister of Justice on July 22 to speed up Mortazavi’s case.
In 2009, news broke that thee detainees had died under torture at Kahrizak Prison, despite efforts by the prison authorities and the Tehran Prosecutor at the time, Saeed Mortazavi, to cover it up.
Mortazavi and two other judges, Ali Akbar Heydarifar and Judge Haddad, were charged in the case following a parliamentary investigation.
Kahrizak was shut down by order of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei after the story broke.
Mortazavi was removed from his role as Tehran prosecutor; however, the Ahmadinejad administration immediately appointed him as the head of the task force against smuggling and later put him at the helm of the Social Security Fund.
