Iran detaining protesters being treated in hospitals as part of crackdown, says UN expert

By Olivia Le Poidevin and Parisa Hafezi

GENEVA/DUBAI, Jan 26 (Reuters) - A U.N. expert on Iran said on Monday she had received reports of protesters linked to nationwide demonstrations being removed from hospitals and detained by Iranian security forces - a major violation of the right to medical care under international law.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, also told Reuters in an interview via video link that families were facing demands for ransoms of $5,000 to $7,000 to retrieve the bodies of loved ones, a crushing burden amid Iran's mounting economic woes.

Anti-government protests that swept across Iran since December have triggered the bloodiest crackdown by authorities since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, drawing international condemnation. Iran has blocked internet access since January 8.

U.S.-based rights group HRANA has put the unrest-related death toll at 5,937, including 214 security personnel, while official figures put the death toll at 3,117. Reuters has been unable to independently verify the numbers.

Sato, who is also a professor at Birkbeck University in London, said she too could not independently verify the death toll but believed casualties far exceeded official figures.

"There's been many reports of hospital staff (from multiple provinces across Iran) reporting that the security forces have raided their hospital," she said, as well as families showing up the next day and their loved ones no longer being there.

The Iranian mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the reports.

Medical staff in Iran who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity confirmed some of the reports to which Sato referred.

"Dozens of patients were in our hospital with gunshot wounds. They had undergone surgery, and then the Revolutionary Guards came and took them all away. We don’t know what happened to them," said one doctor in the northern city of Rasht.

One nurse and two doctors at hospitals in Tehran also told Reuters that members of the Revolutionary Guards and police had visited their facilities seeking records of protesters who had been hospitalised and then discharged, in order to arrest them.

"They even checked every room in the hospital, looking for wounded protesters,” said the nurse.

PEOPLE DETERRED FROM SEEKING MEDICAL HELP FOR FEAR OF ARREST

Such actions create a chilling effect, deterring people from seeking medical care and risking death or a worsening of their health condition due to fears of detention, Sato said.

Such behaviour is also a serious violation of medical neutrality, she added. Under the Geneva Conventions, doctors, hospitals and patients must be protected to ensure impartial care.

Unarmed protesters across Iran's 31 provinces have been shot in the chest and head - targeting vital organs - in a sign of lethal force used indiscriminately by security forces, Sato said, citing reports. International law permits such force only as a last resort, proportionately.

"In those incidents, that would indicate that they are unlawful deaths and arbitrary killings," she said, adding that recent reports had also documented a surge in eye injuries caused by pellets.

Of the reported demands from Iranian authorities for ransom money, Sato said: "This practice really compounds grief with extortion."

Sato said Iranian attempts to label the protesters as "terrorists" or "rioters" was deeply problematic and was intended to justify a brutal crackdown on what she described as a local, organic movement.

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva, additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in DubaiEditing by Gareth Jones)