Talk:SAVAK

Agree!

I agree with my two brothers (if not by the same person) that wrote the same thing below. If SAVAK was busy to torture everyone, kill, rape, destroy etc. Who kept Iran safe from Russia and the arab countries surronded? And USA etc. How did the revolution happen if they were busy doing that all the time? I am changing the article! // RUX

brutality

SAVAK was not as brutal as everybody thinks; if it was so violent as everybody suggests how could the revolution happen? wouldnt they kill those in favour of Khomeini? SAVAK certainly killed and tortured people but doesent all secret services in major countries practise illegal things (as bad as it is) it happens and SAVAK was not an Outstanding force of brutality in this morally corrupt world.

Bonyad-e Shahid

Since there is very little evidence to show that SAVAK is directly responsible for more than two thousand deaths, I edited out the reference for 20,000 murders. Refer to Mr. Emaddedin Baghi's article in - چهار‌شنبه ۸ مرداد ۱۳۸۲ in Iran News website. His reference is the records kept by the Foundation for the Martyrs (Bonyad-e Shahid).

violence

Brutality is a topic that many people have miscontrued ideas about. Brutality and repression doesn't necessarily equate into a win. In today's world with emphasis by the international community on human rights, brutality plays against the force or entity that imposes it. It could effect a counterinsurgent's government's wallet from a lack of financial support like in Nicaragua and the Carter administration's pull of US funds to Somoza government because of human rights abuses. The Japanese imposed brutality in its kill everything policy in China and lost miserably. More and more af revolutions, low-intensity conflicts, insurgencies, etc. have been decided by the "hearts and minds" aspect of war. Now governments and counterinsurgency doctrines in the world are changing to accomodate this. So, Savak's brutality is counter to its ability to hold power. Imagine a government that has alienated the majority of the population in this country. The question is, how many is the government willing to kill to impose order? And no, not all secret service , well in this case, secret police force are as repressive as Savak. Savak's jpb was not to protect the president but to infilitrate and neutralize suspected enemy without trial or formal charge.

It sounds as though the CIA has learnt a lot from SAVAK. Except that the CIA isn't as subtle.124.197.15.138 (talk) 09:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

additions

CIA analyst Jesse Leaf stated that senior agency [CIA] officials trained Savak in tactics used by World War II Nazis. Although, no Americans participated in tortures, they were present. The Shah responded in Le monde in an interview to international condemnation of Savak's human right's abuses: "Why should we not employ the same methods as you Europeans? We have learned sophisticated methods of torture from you. You use psychological methods to extract the truth: we do the same." Alfred McCoy "A quesion of torture: CIA interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" pg. 74. McCoy does a convincing job showing that the US has spread the teaching of torture from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. My only complaint is that he neglects the African theater :0 130.127.74.248 01:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Collective Conscious

VIVAK

I don't understand this:

The latter is also referred to as VEVAK, Vezarat-e Ettela'at va Amniat-e Keshvar, though Iranians and the Iranian press never employ this term, using instead the official Ministry title.

Clearly this is a Persian word: if Iranians don't use it, who does? And what does it mean? Presumably the Ettela'at va Amniat-e Keshvar bit means "Intelligence and National Security", though I don't know what Vezarat-e means. --Saforrest 19:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Post-Revolution

I have removed this phrase: However, since Iran has the world's seventh worst press freedom [1], there is no reliable allegation that the organization currently practices detention and torture on the same massive scale as SAVAK.

This statement is not substantiated. It infers that the current organization does practice dentention and torture on the same level as SAVAK, we simply don't hear about it. Regardless of what types of press freedoms exist - it would have to be shown that we do not know of the activity of this organization as a result of limited press freedoms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Criminoboy (talk • contribs) 05:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Try reading Tortured Confessions --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The level of torture and imprisonment carried out by SAVAK was vastly exaggerated. The Islamic Revolutionary regime killed and tortured thousands of times as many people as SAVAK ever did - and continues to do so. 124.197.15.138 (talk) 09:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

For the above person claiming that the crimes of the CIA, British, and Israeli Mossad trained and backed SAVAK were allegedly "vastly exaggerated"; care to offer any proof whatsoever for your claims?! Something must have angered pretty much the whole Iranian society enough that they all came out against the US and Western backed puppet dictator Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and his wealth stealing and wasting Western backed monarchy. People from all different viewpoints within Iranian society came out in the untold millions to overthrow the Shah, be they Iranians who were religious Muslims, Iranian Leftists, Iranian Secularists, and all other types of Iranians from any different ideologies you can think of. They again all came out to protest against the Shah, who was by this time in 1979 almost universally hated by Iranians as a corrupt Western puppet. This huge movement of almost all the Iranian people is why the Shah had to flee and the Pahlavi monarchy collapsed in the 1979 Revolution. That is pretty much why every Iranian, except for the very small minority of Monarchist supporters in the Shah's intelligence services and the minority of highly wealthy pro-Western elites that the Shah gave privileges, had hatred for the Shah and came out against the monarchy. As for your wild claims against the current Islamic Republic of Iran, no serious person (even those who protest President Ahmadinejad or call for changes to the current system or government) even attempt to compare the current Iranian government (and alleged human rights violations) to the huge amount of unspeakable crimes committed by the Western backed Pahlavi monarchy and their CIA and Mossad trained SAVAK torture forces.--Historylover4 (talk) 04:50, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Taleghani eylids being removed ?

From the article:
According to Polish author Ryszard Kapuściński, SAVAK was responsible for

• Ayatollah Saidi, death by torture (burning on a large griddle)
• Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani's death after the revolution in September 1979 due to complications of removal of eyelids while being forced to watch the rape of his daughter
• Execution of Khosrow Golsorkhi and his friend Keramat Daneshian (or Denachian)
• Banning of Shakespeare and Molière
• Censorship of press, books and films. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BoogaLouie (talk • contribs) 23:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

How reliable is this? I have read quite a few books on the Islamic Revolution. Nobody ever talked about Taleghani eylids being removed --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani's death was the responsibility of Khomeini, not SAVAK!124.197.15.138 (talk) 09:42, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

References

Edits by Transparagon

There have been a bunch of edits by an editor with no user page by the name of Transparagon that are ... not very good. --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:19, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum etc."

SAVAK's torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails. Many of these activities were carried out without any institutional checks. The source for this - Hossein Fardoust or allegedly Hussein Fardust - is not reliable. See the Hossein Fardoust article. --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:42, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

"BBC" story

Footnote titled USA Involvement With Torture, BBC.co.uk Retrieved on 2008-07-01 is NOT a BBC news story but a sort of blog called h2g2. "h2g2 is an unconventional guide to life, the universe and everything .... The Guide is written by visitors to the website - people like you - and already it has thousands of entries on all sorts of subjects."

i.e., not exactly passing the wikipedia criteria of notability. --BoogaLouie (talk) 18:01, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

"arresting, torturing, and executing many dissidents"

The cite for the claim that SAVAK protected the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing many dissidents is just a definition for the word intelligence in the Encyclopedia britanica. There is nothing specifically about SAVAK in it. This "citation" was added by an editor with no user page by the name of Transparagon. I'm taking it out. --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:53, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Jesse J. Lea

According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, Jesse J. Lea, SAVAK was trained in torture techniques by the CIA. There is no citation for this and zero information about Jesse J. Lea on the internet. --BoogaLouie (talk)

Sources - Chomsky

FYI Chomsky/Herman's "The washington connection and third world fascism" has lots of well-sourced material regarding the US involvement in the commission and management of SAVAK, much of which comes from Amnesty International. (20040302 (talk))

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