Iranian filmmaker demands inquiry into alleged kidnapping

Jun 17, 2010, 15:43 GMT

Berlin - An Iranian filmmaker who lives in Berlin, Daryush Shokof, appealed Thursday to German police to take seriously his allegation that he was kidnapped by Arabic-speaking men for 12 days.

Shokof says the abductors freed him again, dazed and confused, in Cologne on June 5. Police have been wary about his story.

In his first news conference since the alleged incident, he said, 'I appeal to the German government to protect the lives of Iranian oppositionists better and with more commitment.'

German media reported his sudden disappearance, after his family said he vanished on May 24, and his equally mysterious re-appearance. Shokof said he was kept blindfolded and drugged till he was set free.

He repeated Thursday that the abductors spoke Arabic, not Farsi which is the language of Iran, but suggested they might have been employed by the Iranian government in a bid to silence him.

'I won't bow to the regime of the mullahs. I will keep on doing what I do,' he said.

He has made one film, Iran Zendan, never aired, which alleges abuse and rape in Iranian prisons.

Shokof said he wanted police to move the inquiry 'in the right direction.'

Opposition Iranian groups in Germany have adopted his case.

He said in Berlin he had been sitting on a public bench in Cologne when an Arabic-speaking man pushed a silverish object that might have been a gun against his ribs and told him to come along. Two young men, also speaking Arabic, then came in a car and took him away.

He said he was made to drink a bittersweet liquid and after that he could no longer distinguish the passage of time or his surroundings. He was found in a confused state near Cologne's river on June 5.

'I was in a kind of delirium,' he said, alleging the abductors urged him not to release any films criticizing Tehran and threatened him with death. He said he planned to release his film Iran Zendan via a website.