On January 22, a Belgian court is expected to hand down a sentence for an Iranian diplomat-terrorist Assadollah Assadi who is accused of taking advantage of his diplomatic privileges to bring explosives into Europe and hand-delivering them to two Iranian-Belgian operatives who planned to set them off at a gathering of Iranian expatriates outside Paris. His case is the first of this kind, even though he is far from the first Iranian diplomat to be identified as playing a role in the Iranian regime’s well-known terrorist activity.
To fend off any form of protest and uprisings, the Iranian regime issued unfair and heavy sentences to crackdown on protesters and dissidents. The regime also used vicious tortures as a means to silence any voice of dissent. The policy of “creating fear by use of heavy sentences” turned into the official policy of the Iranian Judiciary to counter likely protests in 2020. Ebrahim Raisi, a member of the Death Committees in the massacre of political prisoners in summer 1988, heads the Iranian Judiciary.
Exiled Iranian journalist and Amad News founder Ruhollah Zam was executed last month. Amad News became well-known in recent years for its exposure of the Iranian regime’s corruption and encouragement of the protests against it. Zam, born in 1978 in Tehran, was a partner in the widespread protests that erupted after the Iranian elections in 2009 (the “Green Movement”) and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned in the Evin Prison in Tehran. After his release, he received political asylum in France, which included extensive security protection from the French authorities out of fear for his safety.
An Iranian writer who produced a Farsi translation of a book praising Syrian Kurdish militias has been sentenced in Iran to an effective five-year prison term after a trial on security charges denounced as unjust by the man’s lawyer and by Iranian and American free speech advocates. In a December 30 interview with VOA Persian from Tehran, lawyer Nasser Zarafshan said he received a notification that day of the sentencing of his client Arash Ganji by a Revolutionary Court in the Iranian capital.
Referring to the increasing robbery cases in Iran, a member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly’s presidium has called for issuing verdicts to amputate petty thieves’ hands. “Sadly, we are nowadays witnessing an increase in the number of robberies in the community. The cases of petty thefts have particularly increased because there is heavy inflation in the country and the rate of unemployment has soared,” Nasser Mousavi Laregani said on Tuesday, January 5.
The death sentence of three Baluch political prisoners in southeastern Iran was carried out Sunday morning in Zahedan Prison. The men were identified as 28-year-old Hassan Dehvari, 21-year-old Elias Qalandarzehi, and Omid Mahmoudzehi. The three were transferred to solitary confinement in Zahedan Prison on January 1 to await their death sentence, according to the Baloch Campaign website.
Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran examined the case of political prisoner Kamran Rezaii-far on Monday, December 28, 2020. He was arraigned with the charge of Moharebeh (waging war on God). The judge presiding the case, Amouzad, threatened him with death penalty during the court session. Political prisoner Kamran Rezaii-far was arrested on charges of “propaganda against the state” and “having contact with the People’s Mojahedin Organization (PMOI/MEK),” but his indictment was subsequently changed from “propaganda against the state” to “sowing corruption on Earth” and “Moharebeh.”
Just a few months after Navid Afkari was executed by the Iranian regime on fabricated charges, the Greco-Roman wrestling champion’s family have also been arrested. According to reports emerging from Iran, Afkari’s father and brother were arrested by Iranian intelligence agents while “cleaning the area around Navid’s grave.” The two men were arrested on December 17 and have been taken to an undisclosed location. “The family had not been allowed to visit the cemetery or care for the headstone and the area around the grave,” IranWire reported.
Iran’s clerical regime on Monday temporarily released an Iranian Jewish woman who was arrested for her alleged visit to Israel. “Farahnaz Kohan, an Iranian Jewish woman was released from Evin prison. The 50-year old woman was detained for undisclosed period, due to alleged travel to Israel—a crime in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Alliance for Rights of All Minorities first reported in English.
Even before the Covid-19 outbreak, the unsanitary conditions of overcrowded prisons in Iran spread infectious diseases among inmates. Over the past year, as all signs indicated that the situation was going to be catastrophic, officials of the Iranian Judiciary did not take any measures to prevent the spread of the virus in prisons. So, the situation got out of control as the Coronavirus plagued all Iranian prisons. Overcrowding of prisons, lack of ventilation, lack of hygiene and medical equipment, and deliberate overlooking of prisoner’s medical problems, turned Iranian prisons into a hotbed of the deadly contagion.
As we enter 2021, it’s time to look back at human rights in Iran during the past year, with the help of the Iran Human Rights Monitor, and to describe the situation as bleak would be a horrific understatement. This article will focus solely on the staggering number of executions carried out in Iran, which is the world record holder for executions per capita, executions of juvenile offenders, and executions of women. While the death penalty can never be justified in human society for any reason, the Iranian government uses it for a variety of non-violent crimes, including using drugs, drinking alcohol, and intentionally vague ‘Muharebeh,’ waging war on God.
The regime in Tehran hanged three prisoners on Sunday, including two political prisoners, in Zahedan northeast Iran, bringing the number of executions in just twenty days to 30. On December 31, 2020, the regime hanged three Sunni prisoners, Hamid Rastbala, Kabir Sa’adat Jahani, and Mohammad Ali Arayesh, on the charge of being “outlaws” in Vakil-Abab Prison in Mashhad, northeast Iran. They had endured five-and-a-half years of imprisonment and torture. Tehran once again confirmed its disregard for international human rights standards.
کامیل احمدی، مردمشناس و پژوهشگر ایرانی کرد به اتهام آنچه که تحقیق «توطئهگرایانه» خوانده شده به گزارش خبرگزاری تسنیم، به ۹ سال حبس و ۵۴۵هزار پوند جریمه محکوم شده است. احمدی که در ایران ساکن بود تابستان ۹۸ بازداشت شد و سه ماه بعد با قرار وثیقه آزاد شده بود. هنوز مراجع رسمی قضایی خبر محکومیت او را تایید نکردهاند، اما خبرگزاری تسنیم، مدعی شد که او با تابعیت ایرانی-بریتانیایی «در پوشش پژوهشگر با موسسههای برانداز همکاری و تحصیل مال نامشروع کرده است.
آرش گنجی، مترجم و منشی هیئت دبیران کانون نویسندگان ایران، به ۱۱ سال زندان محکوم شد. ناصر زرافشان، وکیل مدافع آرش گنجی، در رابطه با حکم صادره به صدای آمریکا گفت که اتهامات عنوان شده در پرونده موکلش هیچ ارتباطی به مضمون پرونده ندارد. به گفته آقای زرافشان، حکم ۱۱ سال زندان آقای گنجی روز سهشنبه ۹ دی ماه توسط شعبه ۲۸ دادگاه انقلاب تهران به ریاست قاضی محمدرضا عموزاد به اتهام «اجتماع و تبانی علیه امنیت داخلی/ خارجی کشور»، «تبلیغ علیه نظام» و «عضویت و همکاری با یکی از گروههای مخالف نظام» صادر و روز چهارشنبه ۱۰ دی ماه ابلاغ شده است.
محمدحسن رضایی، کودک-مجرمی که در زمان وقوع جرم انتسابی ۱۶ سال سن داشت، سحرگاه روز پنجشنبه ۱۱ دی ماه ، پس از دستکم ۱۴ سال در زندان مرکزی رشت (لاکان) اعدام شد. رها بحرینی، پژوهشگر امور ایران در عفو بینالملل، با تایید این خبر در صفحه توئیتر خود نوشت: «دو هفته پیش با فشارهای بینالمللی و دیپلماتیک اعدام محمد حسن رضایی متوقف شد. اما فریب دادند و امروز، او را به صورت ناگهانی و در آخرین روز سال میلادی اعدام کردند. خانم بحرینی در ادامه این توئیت نوشته است: «از شکلگیری کمپینهای بینالمللی بزرگ میترسند. کشتن بی دردسر میخواهند..»