An Iranian student facing execution for his part in...

An Iranian student facing execution for his part in the violent unrest of last July claimed he had been tortured and ill-treated in prison since his arrest. "I was hit with an electric cable, hung up by a rope and violently beaten," Akbar Mohammadi said in a letter to judiciary chief Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi published in a number of reformist newspapers. Mohammadi also said he had gone deaf in his right ear, lost two nails on his left foot and suffered from kidney pain. "The prison doctor ordered me to hospital but up until now I have not been taken there and I continue to suffer," he said. The press reports said the undated letter was written from cell 93 of block 209 in Tehran's notorious Evin jail and sent to Mohammadi's family at Amol in northern Iran, who decided to make it public.