Iran’s Cyber police culpable for blogger death: Lawmaker

Special representative of Iran Majlis (parliament) in the case of the suspicious death of an Iranian blogger says the country's cyber police violated the law after detaining the suspect, Press TV reported.

"The Judiciary's measure for arresting Sattar Beheshti (the deceased blogger) has been legal, but the violation by cyber police in this case is indisputable," said Mehdi Davatgari in a Monday interview.

"Unfortunately, the officers of the cyber police kept the suspect in their custody without court order for a whole night, which has been completely against the law," he added.


Beheshti was charged and arrested for cyber crime and later passed away in prison about three weeks ago.

His death sparked an outrage focused on the Iranian Judiciary, whose head, Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani, ordered an investigation into the case.

On November 11, Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee formed a subcommittee to probe the case.

The performance of the Judiciary in the case of Beheshti has been "highly remarkable both before and after his death and the recent announcement by Tehran Prosecutor [Abbas Ja'afari Dowlatabadi] fully conforms to realities and is confirmed," the Iranian legislator pointed out.

The Majlis representative called for the "resignation or dismissal of the cyber police chief," noting that this is the only way that the cyber police can make up for their mistake, which has cost the Islamic Republic quite dearly.

Davatgari pointed out that according to the coroner's office, physical blows have not caused the death or possible murder of Beheshti and, therefore, more thorough judicial investigation is still needed.