“These are grossly unfair trials which can be designed to instill worry among the many inhabitants,” Raha Bahreini, an Iran researcher at Amnesty Worldwide, stated of latest authorized proceedings involving protesters.
“That is additionally a mirrored image of the rising use of the loss of life penalty by the Islamic Republic as a instrument of political repression,” she stated.
For months, Iran has been gripped by anti-government protests, ignited in September by the violent loss of life of a younger lady, Mahsa “Jina” Amini, in police custody in Tehran. The demonstrations began as a motion in opposition to the Islamic Republic’s conservative gown code — Amini was detained for an alleged clothes violation — however has since morphed right into a nationwide revolt in opposition to Iran’s clerical rulers.
Younger individuals have performed a outstanding function within the protests, however they’ve additionally suffered within the ensuing crackdown. Greater than 400 Iranians, together with 60 minors, have been killed within the unrest, the activist information company Hrana reported.
Iran ranks among the many prime international locations for executions, together with executions of youngsters, regardless of having signed a number of U.N. conventions prohibiting the loss of life penalty for minors. Amnesty Worldwide stated it confirmed three juvenile executions this yr, unrelated to the latest protests.
Beneath Iranian regulation, the Revolutionary Courtroom is technically barred from attempting minors. However authorities have accused the three juvenile defendants, together with the others, of utilizing knives, rocks, and boxing gloves to kill a volunteer member of Iran’s Basij paramilitary pressure on Nov. 3.
Hearings have been held Wednesday and Thursday in Karaj outdoors Tehran. And on the trial, the presiding decide stated the three teenage boys — Arin Farzamnia, Amin Mehdi Shokrollahi and Amir Mehdi Jaffari — may very well be tried alongside the adults as a result of the decide was educated for each prison and juvenile hearings, the state-run judicial information company Mizan reported.
That is “precisely in opposition to the pursuits of the youngsters and Iranian procedural regulation,” stated Hossein Raisi, a former lawyer in Iran and now a professor at Carleton College in Ottawa.
The boys all pleaded responsible, in line with Mizan, however rights teams say there’s little expectation of a good trial. Iranian officers continuously pressure political prisoners and their households to make false or incriminating statements.
Based on Hadi Ghaemi, government director of the New York-based Middle for Human Rights in Iran, the defendants have been denied entry to their legal professionals and have been represented as a substitute by court-appointed counsel.
The boys’ fathers additionally spoke in court docket, Mizan reported, asking the decide in close to comparable phrases to punish their sons appropriately — however with leniency. The daddy of Shokrollahi stated he instructed his son to not go to protests deliberate by “enemies,” echoing the state narrative that claims Western media and intelligence businesses fomented the unrest.
Based on Bahreini, one of many boys’ grownup co-defendants was tortured whereas in jail and hospitalized with damaged ribs and respiratory issues. She cited a medical word and first sources who spoke on the situation of anonymity due to security issues. The defendant, Hamid Ghareh-Hassanlu, was not in court docket Wednesday however was current and questioned by the decide on Thursday, in line with Mizan.
About 18,000 individuals have been arrested since September, and a minimum of 36 of them have been charged with capital crimes, Ghaemi stated. Some loss of life sentences have already been issued, although none have been carried out.
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, the U.N. particular rapporteur on Iran, Javaid Rehman, stated he was frightened by the “marketing campaign” of loss of life sentences that has accompanied the crackdown.
Final month, Volker Türk, the U.N. excessive commissioner for human rights, additionally expressed alarm on the rising variety of executions in Iran.
“As of September 2022, the general variety of executions had reportedly handed 400 for the yr, for the primary time in 5 years. It is a substantial enhance from a minimum of 330 and 276 executions in 2021 and 2020, respectively,” he instructed a particular session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Nov. 24.
Kids have been among the many hundreds killed throughout political purges within the decade after the 1979 revolution. In latest a long time, minors haven’t been executed on prices stemming from periodic anti-government protests, although they’ve been for primarily alleged drug-related and homicide prices.
In recent times two Iranian Kurdish teenagers — Saman Naseem in 2015 and Barzan Nasrollahzadeh in 2019 — have been discovered responsible of “waging battle in opposition to god” by the Revolutionary Courtroom — however had their loss of life sentences overturned after a world outcry.