TEHRAN – Morteza Bashiri, an investigator of Iraqi prisoners of war in Iran during the 1980s, has published his memoirs in a book named “The People with Red Boots”.

Bashiri was also the commander of the Psychological Warfare Department at the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the unified combatant command headquarters of Iranian Armed Forces during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

“The People with Red Boots” comprises 36 chapters and the inquiry from Mohammad Reza Jaafar Abbas al-Jashaami, an Iraqi senior commander, is one of the highlights of the book published by Sureh-Mehr, a publishing house affiliated with the Art Bureau.

The book has been published based on several extensive interviews conducted by Fatemeh Behbudi with Bashiri, who gives deeper insights into his activities as a commander of psychological warfare in the POW camps in Iran.

The Psychological Warfare Department’s activities encouraged many Iraq soldiers to surrender themselves to Iranian forces during the war.

In a chapter, the book discusses “Sweet and Barbaric”, a fake documentary that Italian companies Racing Film and Titanus Film made in 1983 based on a commission from Iraq to counter Iran’s psychological warfare.

The film was widely publicized for a scene, in which Iranian soldiers used two Jeeps to pull the arms off an Iraqi prisoner of war. Another scene showed a close-up of an Iraqi prisoner being executed by an Iranian soldier with a pistol shot in the neck.

Iraqi officials produced stills from the film, which were widely used by newspapers and magazines around the world, as evidence that the Iranians were maltreating their prisoners of war.

In 1984, soon after the false documentary was screened in Italy, Judge Roberto Preden of Rome, acting on a complaint by the Iranian ambassador, prohibited showings of the film, Chicago Tribune announced in a report published in January 1989.

The Italian companies were ordered to pay $400,000 to the government of Iran after a local court found that film sequences were fakes.

Photo: A poster for the Persian book “The People with Red Boots”.

MMS/YAW