as practicing Muslims—were given another 'opportunity' to recant their 'apostasy.' "After the investigation, leftist women began to receive five lashes every day -- one for each of the five daily prayers missed that day, half the punishment meted out to the men. After a while, many agreed to pray, but some went on hunger strike, refusing even water. One died after 22 days and 550 lashes, and the authorities certified her death as suicide because it was 'she who had made the decision not to pray.'" Families According to Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, executed prisoner's families were told that they would not be permitted to hold a funeral or mourn publicly for one year. After that time, if their conduct was deemed acceptable by the authorities, they would be told the place of burial. The justification given to these families for the execution of their loved ones was that the prisoner's name had appeared on notes pinned to PMOI members killed in the Mersad attack whose bodies had been recovered by Iranian Islamic officials. The notes listing the PMOI's supporters' in prison so the prisoners had been guilty of aiding the attack. Ebadi complained that aside from being improbable, this did not explain why the prisoners had not received a trial for the charge of giving support to the enemy. In 2009, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center commissioned Geoffrey Robertson QC to write a legal opinion based on evidence and witness testimonies gathered by the center. Robertson's final report accused Tehran of continuing to deny relatives of the victims their right to know where their loved ones are buried. Estimates of the number of fatalities One anonymous ex-prisoner places the death toll in the 'thousands.' Another eyewitness estimates that between 5,000 and 6,000 individuals were killed – 1,000 of them were leftists and the rest of them were Mojahedin. Yet another estimate it in the 'thousands', with as many as 1,500 killed at Gohar Dasht prison alone. A recent study using scattered information from the provinces places the figure at 12,000. Amnesty International estimates that the national total is more than 2,500 and describes the vast majority of the victims as 'prisoners of conscience' as they had not been charged with actual deeds or plans of deeds against the state. It is extremely difficult to estimate an accurate death toll because many of the killings were carried out in