Doctor Soudbakhsh: A Medical Examiner’s Office Expert Who Resisted Mortazavi’s Orders

(Jaras) According to the latest news received related to Dr. Abdolreza Soudbakhsh, Associate Professor at the University of Tehran and target of an armed assassination attempt last week and lost his life, Dr. Soudbakhsh was a Medical Examiner’s Office (MEO) expert who also treated and examined abused prisoners at the Kahrizak Detention Center. Although the MEO had ordered him to announce that the prisoners died from “meningitis,” Dr. Soudbakhsh was not ready to violate his Hippocratic Oath and mirrored the reality in official reports.

It is said that last year, during the post-election events and the uproar over the Kahrizak Detention Center, the MEO noted that the prisoners died not due to “meningitis” but from “severe beating and injury to the body”—contrary to the claims and emphasis made by Saeed Mortazavi, the Tehran Public Prosecutor at the time.

Ramin Pourandarjani, a young doctor on duty at the Kahrizak Detention Center, mysteriously died around November 2009, and superiors immediately announced his death as a “suicide.”

Based on reports from Jaras News sources, Ahmad Shojaei became head of the MEO, his job being to survey medical reports in tandem with the IRGC’s head commanders and security circles. The head of the MEO is appointed by the head of the judiciary.

It is said that Iran’s Chief of Security Forces, Commander Ahmadi Moghadam, was the first person to announce that the Kahrizak prisoners died due to “meningitis,” and in his latest statement, he announced that the murder of Dr. Soudbakhsh is in no way connected to the Kahrizak tragedy.

Ahmadi Moghadam, along with General Radan and Judge Mortazavi, the masterminds and culprits behind the Kahrizak tragedy, had a role in last year’s replacement of the Behesht Zahra Cemetary Organization’s president. In the time leading up to the government’s operation to torture and bury a group comprised mostly of political prisoners, his [Moghadam’s] role was not known.

In recent days, a Jaras News source pointed out that, “Soudbakhsh recently felt mounting pressure from security forces and saw his life in danger. Days before his murder, he purchased a September 22 ticket for abroad to see his child in college. One day before leaving the country, he was fatally shot and killed by an assassin’s bullet outside his clinic in Kesharvarz Boulevard in Tehran.”

Latest news
Related news