[ADN Kronos] Iran's most senior dissident cleric, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, has compared the mass trials of government opponents and public confessions to the tactics of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and other authoritarian rulers.
Hossein Ali Montazeri, an historic figure in Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979, was once the designated successor to the revolution's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini but fell out with Khomeini in 1989 over government policies, which he believed challenged human rights.
The Islamic scholar is now making headlines again, amid claims that protesters have been tortured, even killed in prison. Others have claimed that confessions were extracted under torture.
Montazeri currently lives in the holy city of Qom, and remains politically influential in Iran, especially upon reformist politics at a time of unusual upheaval in the country.
They say that history never repeats itself, but the similarities between what happened in Moscow's courts in the third decade of the 20th century and what is happening today in the courts of Tehran suggest a grotesque similarity.
Police and judiciary officials on Sunday tried to calm the outrage in Iran over the deaths of detained protesters in prison, by acknowledging abuses and calling for those responsible to be punished.
Iran's prosecutor-general Ghorban Ali Dorri Najafabadi called for those responsible for mistreating detainees to be punished and said that the protesters were never meant to be taken to Kahrizak prison which has been at the centre of abuse claims.
"Unfortunately, negligence and carelessness by some officials caused the Kahrizak incident, which is not defendable," he told the state news agency.
"During early days, it is possible there were mistakes and mistreatment due to overcrowding in the prison."
But a senior commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guard, which led the crackdown after thousands took to the streets to protest the June 12 election, was unrepentant and said that the three top opposition figures instead should be put on trial.
Lubyanka was the home of the first Soviet secret service Ceka created in 1918. This is where enemies of the state were taken and became synonymous with torture and severe interrogation methods which identified spies, enemies of the state, economic sabotage and other so called crimes.
Now in Iran there are three trials underway and it appears that confessions have been extracted from the accused inside Kahrizak prison, methods that are once again reminiscent of the "Stalinist" regime.
Police chief General Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam acknowledged protesters were beaten by their jailers at the same facility and that the prison has since been closed down.
However he maintained that the deaths in the prison were not caused by abuse.
"This detention centre was built to house dangerous criminals. Housing people related to recent riots caused an outbreak of disease," the official news agency quoted Moghaddam as saying. Protesters "died of viral illness and not as a result of beating."
But outrage about what happened at Kahrizak has extended far beyond the political opposition, and influential figures in the clerical hierarchy have condemned the abuse of detainees and the three deaths known to have taken place there.
On Monday a defeated opposition candidate in Iran's presidential election called for an investigation into allegations some protesters were raped in prison.
In a letter to former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mehdi Karroubi said senior officials had informed him of the "shameful behaviour" occurring in prisons.
Karroubi wrote that both male and female detainees had been raped, with some suffering serious injuries.
About 200 people arrested during the mass protests provoked by June's disputed election, which saw president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returned by a huge margin, are still in detention.
Four deputy ministers were dismissed by Ahmadinejad on Monday for allegedly sympathising with election protesters.