Save Hadi

Re: REMOVED

Dear UNHCR officer,

As a human rights activist, I am writing to express my deepest concerns regarding the status of the above-named asylum seeker whose application is currently under consideration in Turkey while he is waiting for his substantive interview to take place.

Whilst in Iran, due to his, and his father’s activities against the current regime, Hadi has been subject to such various ill-treatments as torture, rape, imprisonment and other forms of discriminatory behaviours, for which visual and medical evidences are available.

Hadi was the designer of two well-known websites both of which were later used to spread anti-regime materials. Evidence is accordingly available on the internet and shall be submitted to your office, too. Mr Abdollahian’s father, who was a senior airforce pilot during the previous regime of Iran, was killed in a suspicious road incident in Iran in 2008 following which the authorities refused to further pursue the case.

A brief summary of one of the events Hadi has be gone through would be as follows:

After the death his father, Hadi was contacted by the Intelligent Services agents, accused to be doing what his father was doing, and to be a Pan Azeri, and was thus forced to cooperate with them. During a meeting, he was told that those responsible for his father’s death will only be found if he accepts the cooperation. He was thereby forced by the agents to cooperate in Computer and IT related matters. Following the 2009 election and the Green Movement in Iran, and after observing what was being done to people, he decided to upload the clips taken from the event onto the internet, that is, to one of his well-known websites. This was action was perceived by the agents of the regime, upon which he gets summoned to the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tabriz, East Azerbaijan. Once he returns home from a short holiday, he gets beaten up very badly in front of their house by several members of the Basij force, following which he makes a note on his website describing the event. The next day, he gets arrested and blindfolded, and was taken to place that he describes as a “smelly basement”, where he was severely tortured, hit with pipes and thick sticks, sexually raped, abused, humiliated, and said that the next time he will end up dead. He is thereafter blindfolded again, and thrown out of a car in the countryside of his city, Ahar.

As a result of the aforementioned events, and various other incidents faced by Hadi, he is now suffering from severe Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), insomnia, nightmares, and is highly suicidal. He is also suffering from various physical difficulties such as constant backaches, headaches, heartburns, and is in serious need of medical investigation, hospitalisation and treatment.