Suspicious Trials in Iran
To the Editor:
The conditions for the Iranian trial of Jews accused of spying (front
page, May 2) are indicative of a process in which any confession
by those accused has to be considered coerced. Keeping the accused
isolated, denying them the presence of a lawyer during interrogation
and then staging a media show trial of members of a minority group
are age-old methods of coercion and domination by totalitarian regimes.
As a forensic psychiatrist who has occasion to examine torture victims
of dictatorships who eventually become asylum seekers in the United
States, and as a treating clinician for such victims, I find the
current conduct of the Iranian proceedings all too painfully familiar.
HAROLD J. BURSZTAJN, M.D.
Cambridge, Mass., May 8, 2000
The writer is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical
School.
