Iran’s post-election death toll still unknown

No list of dead, arrested
The government has produced no list of dead or arrested. Independent efforts to track the numbers are made even harder by families' fears of talking about their killed or detained loved ones. Opposition Web sites report that families of slain protesters are given their loved ones' bodies for burial only after promising that the funerals will be discreet and will not feature political chants.

"Many people believe that countrywide the death toll is 100 or more. The trend coming to us is that it could be several times what the government has admitted," Ghaemi said. His organization is working on compiling a list of the dead from sources in Iran.

Another group, the International Committee Against Executions, has compiled a list of the names of 61 killed, with details of how and where they died and where they were buried.

For 25 of them, the list gave the number of the section where they are buried in Behesht-e-Zahra. Also on the list were protesters killed in other cities, including Kermanshah, Shiraz and Isfahan, which would not be included in the figure given by the Tehran police.

About a third of the names were confirmed by family members as dead, the rest by friends or activists on the ground, said Farshad Hoseini, the group's Netherlands-based director. The list could not be independently confirmed.

Among those on the list are Aarabi and Neda Agha Soltan, a 27-year-old woman whose dying moments after she was shot during a protest were captured on video, turning her into an icon for the movement. The list also includes three women and four men killed when Basijis stormed a Tehran University dormitory on June 14, as well as Kianoosh Asa, a chemistry student it said was abducted from another dorm and found dead in a morgue 10 days later.

Families search for answers
Meanwhile, relatives of many of those known to be imprisoned have been unable to find their loved ones, much less communicate with them. There are widespread fears that detainees held in special Revolutionary Guards facilities or other secret locations are being tortured or abused.

Mehdi Saharkhiz, who lives in the United States, said his family and friends in Tehran have been searching for his father — Isa Saharkhiz, a prominent journalist and a media adviser to defeated reformist presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi — since he was arrested on July 3.

"Absolutely nothing. We don't know where he's kept," the younger Saharkhiz, a 27-year-old graphic designer in Wayne, New Jersey, told AP.

Mehdi had been heading on a vacation on July 2, but before he left he called his father in Iran to check in on him. Isa Saharkhiz had been in hiding since security forces searched his Tehran home early on in the turmoil.

"He told me to go ahead, everything seemed to be calm. So we left (on vacation.) As soon as we landed, I got e-mails from friends telling me to call home. When I did they told me he'd been taken," Mehdi said.

The detainees include prominent figures from the 1997-2005 reform government, including former vide president Mohammad Ali Abtahi and numerous former cabinet officials. Also still in custody are Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari, who has Iranian and Canadian citizenship, and Iranian-American Kian Tajbakhsh. In one of the most recent arrests, prominent human rights lawyer Shamsoldeen Issaei was detained by men in plainclothes over the weekend from his Tehran office, his wife has told pro-opposition newspapers.

Dozens of relatives of detainees gathered Tuesday in office of a human rights group in Tehran to exchange news. The wives of two of the most prominent detained pro-reform politicians, Mohsen Mirdamadi and Mostafa Tajzadeh, said they like many others had been unable to get any information about their loved ones' whereabouts.

"No official responded to us over the fate of detainees, this is a sign of lawlessness in the country," said Mirdamadi's wife, Zahra Mojarradi. "We went to the prosecutor general, but they said the case is not in their hands. It is said arrests were done by the Revolutionary Guards."

More from msnbc.com Thanksgiving is about odd family dynamics Elkhart Project: Money pours in, pet adoptions increase Swine flu fears for hajj pilgrims First Read: Pardon my turkey, and other trivia 570,000 pager messages from 9/11 released   Silver Lining: Tales of struggle and hope On Twitter: Breaking news updates | Weird and wild

MORE FROM MIDEAST & N. AFRICA

Mideast & N. Africa Section Front

Israel approves 10-month settlement freeze Swine flu fears for hajj pilgrims Rains soak pilgrims at Islam’s hajj Iran’s leader makes inroads in Latin America 6 family members killed in Iraq Mideast & N. Africa Section Front   Add Mideast & N. Africa headlines to your news reader: