Iranian Regime Punishing Lawyers For Supporting Protesters
Maryam Sinaiee
Iran International
Iran's judiciary has been building cases against dozens of independent lawyers for representing dissidents and supporting the Women, Life, Freedom movement.
Iran International
Iran's judiciary has been building cases against dozens of independent lawyers for representing dissidents and supporting the Women, Life, Freedom movement.
Iran International has learned that summoning lawyers to the Prosecutor’s Office in Tehran, which started in March, resumed last week after a pause due to the relocation of the prosecutor in charge.
The judiciary’s intelligence organization, sources in Iran said, is behind the prosecution of these lawyers most of whom had expressed their support for the Women, Life, Freedom movement on social media.
The case involves 170 lawyers of whom, sources told Iran International, 27 individuals from different parts of the country have already been summoned by the Evin prison prosecutor on charges of “propaganda against the regime” and “assembly and collusion with the intention of acting against [national] security”.
Iran International has also learned that lawyers who were summoned were forced to sign a pledge that implies acceptance of the charges. One of the two lawyers who refused to sign the pledge was detained for a few hours and another one for a few days.
UK-based lawyer and women’s rights activist Samaneh Savadi told Iran International that the regime is taking revenge on lawyers, many among whom volunteered to represent protesters. She said that the attorneys are being punished “for standing beside the people”.
Ali Mojtahedzadeh, one of the summoned lawyers, told Etemad newspaper Sunday that most of these lawyers had participated in the protests or voiced support on social media. He said he and some of his colleagues had received the letter to present themselves to the prosecutor in the past few days.
He pointed out that the cases against most of these lawyers were dropped following Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s “amnesty”, but now new charges have been brought against them.
In February, Khamenei agreed to a proposal by Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei to pardon some prisoners and reduce sentences for those arrested during antigovernment protests last year. The move appeared to be designed to show clemency after hundreds were killed and around 20,000 arrested, and to rescue the image of the regime amid a grim economic crisis and mass public rejection of Khamenei’s rule.
Another lawyer, Mitra Izadifar, told Etemad that she is being prosecuted again, after being pardoned earlier. She added that she has been summoned to Tehran although she lives and practices in Mashhad.
Mohammad-Hadi Jafarpour who practices law in Shiraz also told Etemad “I was once arrested on November 2 on charges of ‘propaganda against the regime’ and ‘assembly and collusion with the intention of acting against [national] security. At the time, I was mostly questioned by prosecutors about my media commentaries, [Instagram] posts, and tweets… I had to sign a pledge in order to be pardoned [by Khamenei].”
He added that he has also been summoned to Tehran by the Evin prosecutor although despite a legal requirement that says he should be prosecuted in his own city. Jafarpour pointed out that the summons letter he received did not mention the charges.
Earlier in March a Revolutionary court permanently deprived prominent lawyer Nemat Ahmadi, a member of the Union Internationale des Avocats or International Association of Lawyers, from practicing law in Iran.
Ahmadi, a former professor of law sacked from Azad University for his political activities and representing political prisoners, was sued by the intelligence ministry for the same reason.
Dissidents and protesters are often deprived of their right to choose their own lawyers and must accept defense attorneys the judiciary appoints from a government-trusted list.
Dr. Mohsen Asadi-Lari, a former high-ranking health ministry official who lost both his children, Mohammad-Hossein and Zeinab, in the downing of the Ukrainian plane on January 8, 2020,told Didbaniran website Sunday that there is evidence the shooting was intentional, but the authorities would not release the evidence.
Iranian authorities who first claimed it was air crash due to a mechanical problem, three days after the incident admitted the plane was shot down with 176 people onboard, but insisted that it was due to human error.
Asadi-Lari said they asked the court to investigate the evidence proving that firing of two anti-air missiles at he plane was intentional and also demanded that the data to be released to them, but the court did not pay attention. He said that the information recorded on the plane’s flight recorder – known as the black box -- would definitively impact the final rulings.
He added that the conversations between the plane and the control tower can shed light on the circumstances of the missile attack. “We are sure that he deliberately triggered the attack and we have raised this in the court in different ways," he said about the missile operator.
Asadi-Lari added that the prime suspect in the case, identified as a Major Mehdi Khosravi, will be released in the near future because according to Iran’s laws he has spent about a third of his sentence. More than three years have passed since the incident and Khosravi was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
He claimed that Khosravi has been kept in solitary confinement since January 2020, saying, “Anyone familiar with Iran’s prison and judicial matters knows what it means to be in solitary confinement.” His remarks implicitly pointed to the fact that the regime does not want him to talk about the details of the incident.
“Compare the case of this plane with the case of the executed protestors, who were hanged for blocking a street or setting fire to a trash bin,” he said, adding that 176 innocent people were killed, and the culprit can go free after 40 months in prison.
Asadi-Lari clarified that the family do not seek execution for the officer because he was a service member and was doing his job, but they want the truth to be revealed.
Asadi-Lari and his wife Dr. Zahra Majd earlier insisted that the ten low-ranking military personnel on trial are not the real culprits. They claimed Khosravi was an expert in the Tor-M1 surface-to-air system that shot down the plane and that it was unbelievable that he had made the decision based by error.
Ukraine's flight PS752 was shot down on January 8, 2020, as it took off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. Only hours earlier, the IRGC had fired more than a dozen missiles at Iraqi bases hosting US troops in retaliation for the killing of the IRGC Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani by a targeted US drone strike just five days earlier.
Despite expecting retaliation from the US, the IRGC which is responsible for air defense of the capital did not close the civilian airspace in the early morning hours of January 8.
Asadi-Lari and his wife, both professors at Iran Medical Sciences University, say the whole family, including their two children who were students in Canadian universities, were devastated by Soleimani's killing and were very worried about a US retaliation for Iran's missile attack while the family was on their way to the airport. Before the flight took off, their son Mohammad-Hossein had been praying for Soleimani who was buried the day before.
Unlike parents and family members of many other victims of the tragedy, the Asadi-Lari family are not members of the Canada-based association representing victims' families. The association does not recognize the eligibility of the Islamic Republic's Judiciary for investigating the incident and has repeatedly called for top Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, to be held responsible.
Mohammad Javad Haghshenas, a prominent member of the reformist National Trust Party says the situation is like a fire under the ashes. Decision-makers in the Iranian government simply ignore the underlying reasons for last year's nationwide protests and attribute the crisis to the "enemies."
He also suggested that President Raisi should resign and call for early elections.
Haghshenas warned that "any moment, another mistake like what happened in September and led to the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, or a new problematic policy can lead to a new crisis and new waves of protest."
He pointed out that ignoring popular demands and the protests that are still continuing, as well as problems such as inflation, financial corruption, economic problems, red tape, government's intervention in people's private lives and the inefficiency of the government bureaucracy can deepen the ongoing crises.
He added that one of the ways out is returning to the Constitution, which is a document the nation agrees on. However, a major part of the Iranian opposition, and even former high-ranking officials, believe that the current Constitution, designating clerical rule, is one of the root causes of Iran's problems. Many among the opposition want a return to the 1905 constitutional monarchy and others want a secular, democratic republic.
However, Haghshenas says the hard core of political power in Iran [meaning Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei] should pave the way for upholding the Constitution by September particularly because a parliamentary election is going to be held in March next year. He also pointed out that none of the crises that have led to major protests since 2019 have been resolved. Meanwhile, he suggested that Raisi should resign and call for an early Presidential election.
He also suggested that the Guardian Council should do away with its selective supervision of vetting candidates before elections. The Council, a constitutional body indirectly controlled by the Supreme Leader, has the power to disqualify candidates for no clear reason. It used its power in the 2020 parliamentary and 2021 presidential elections to bar hundreds of candidates many of whom had previously served as lawmakers or as senior officials. The result was a massive rejection of ‘reformist’ candidates and handing full control to hardliners.
Meanwhile, Mansoor Haghighatpur, a moderate conservative lawmaker close to Ali Larijani the former Speaker of the parliament charged that a certain political group [meaning the ultraconservatives] want to run the country with a team of only 30 to 40 individuals.
Haghighatpur further charged that the ruling group only believes in its own members and considers other politicians as traitors and spies. His comment followed accusations of espionage against former President Hassan Rouhani and his aides and IRGC figurehead Hossein Taeb's call for putting Rouhani on trial.
He said that this group of 30 to 40 ultraconservatives came to the forefront of political leadership since former populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 and lately took over the entire political establishment after the 2020 and 2021 elections.
In another development, Iranian traditional conservatives flagship daily newspaper Resalat wrote on Saturday that President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration does not understand concepts such as inflation and repayment of loans. The daily told Raisi and his ministers: "Your daily journey starts from the parking at your home and ends in the parking lot of your office and you do not know anything about the people's problems."
Resalat added: "As a result, you constantly ridicule the people and subsequently the people turn their backs on you." The daily was referring to a statement by Raisi's Welfare Minister Solat Mortazavi who when asked last week how low-paid workers can make ends meet, he replied: “They should save!" Resalat called the minister's reaction "an outcome of ignorance."