Kidnapped Iranian shows Red Cross 'US torture wounds'

April 11, 2007
Kidnapped Iranian shows Red Cross 'US torture wounds'

TEHRAN (AFP) - An Iranian diplomat held in captivity for two months in Iraq appeared in public Wednesday to display wounds he said were caused by "torture" from US agents who beat him and drilled holes into his legs.

An exhausted and clearly thin Jalal Sharafi, second secretary at Iran's embassy in Baghdad, gave a highly unusual press conference in which he appeared in a wheelchair and on a serum drip flanked by a group of his doctors.

"Then they brought on a machine to drill holes into my feet. But this happened 50 days ago so the wounds have partly healed," said Sharafi, who was whisked to the news conference in an ambulance.

Red Cross examines Iranian diplomat’s torture scars

April 11, 2007
Red Cross examines Iranian diplomat’s torture scars

TEHRAN, April 11 (MNA) -- On Tuesday, the Red Cross representative in Tehran examined the torture marks on the body of Jalal Sharafi, the Iranian diplomat who was kidnapped in Iraq on February 4 and released on April 3.

In a Tehran hospital, at which Iraq's ambassador to Tehran Mohamed Majid Al-Sheikh, was also present, the Red Cross official observed holes drilled in Sharafi's leg, fractures of the nose and neck, some deep injuries on his back, a tear to his ear and evidence of bleeding in the alimentary canal.

Sharafi, the second secretary at Iran's Baghdad embassy, was abducted in southeastern Baghdad on February 4 by a group connected to the Iraqi Defense Ministry which operates under the supervision of the U.S. forces in Iraq.