Three Iranian Female Political Prisoners Sentenced 5 To 10 Years
Three female political detainees in the notorious Evin prison, were sentenced to five to 10 years while they did not have access to a lawyer during their trial.
Three female political detainees in the notorious Evin prison, were sentenced to five to 10 years while they did not have access to a lawyer during their trial.
Based on the ruling, Zainab Hamrang, 50, and Soudabeh Fakharzadeh, 65, were sentenced to five years in prison on charges of assembly and collusion against the government; and Shiva Esmaili, 58, was sentenced to 10 years on the same charge.
The three women were arrested by the security forces in Tehran on March 11 for protesting to harsh government policies and then were transferred to the women's ward of Evin prison.
Since their arrest, they did not have access to a lawyer and were tried on May 14.
They were kept in solitary confinement by the intelligence ministry and then were transferred to the public ward.
Hamrang suffers from high blood pressure, chronic headaches and depression. She is a retired teacher from Moghan in Ardabil province. She had previously been imprisoned for two years in Evin prison on another charge.
Mehdi Wafa, son of Shiva Esmaili, is also serving his six years term in Evin prison.
In recent months, following the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement, the regime has mounted pressure on protesting and imprisoned women.
On Sunday, Sepideh Rashno, an Iranian woman who refused to wear a headscarf and whose video of a quarrel with a hijab enforcer went viral last year, announced on Twitter that the government has filed a new case against her, and she must appear at the Evin courthouse in the next five days.
Hossein Mortazavi Zanjani said in a virtual meeting on Clubhouse that Raisi, who was the deputy prosecutor of Tehran, told him: "We went and got an order from Ayatollah Khomeini to execute the prisoners."
This is the first revelation by a former judiciary official about the direct involvement of the Iranian president in the killing of political prisoners in the 1980s.
The executions during the 1980s were carried out based on a fatwa by Iran's then supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, against the MEK (The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran) which carried out a wave of bombings in Iran and struck an alliance with Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 war.
“Showing mercy to those who take up arms against the Islamic government is being naïve,” Khomeini said in his fatwa.
Most victims were linked to the MEK but there were also others with links to leftist and secular groups such as Fadaiyan Khalq Organization (FKO) and the Tudeh Party as well as some Kurdish groups such as Komala and the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran.
The exact number of prisoners executed during the purge of prisoners is not known but according to Amnesty International, the Iranian authorities "forcibly disappeared" and "extrajudicially executed" around 5,000 between July and September 1988.
The former director of Evin prison, which has held some of the country’s most high profile cases and is famed for its brutalities to inmates, added that he witnessed the bodies of the executed prisoners thrown into trucks and taken from the prison.
Mortazavi claimed he resigned to what was known as ‘the death board’, the group of decision-makers deciding whether prisoners lived or died. He claims his resignation was met with a death threat by the deputy intelligence minister.
“Although I did not have a direct role in the execution of prisoners, I feel guilty because of my silence about the executions, and even if I repent, I will not be cleansed,” he said.
After his victory in the presidential election in 2021, in response to an Al-Jazeera reporter’s question, Ebrahim Raisi said he has been a "human rights defender" since the beginning of his tenure in the judicial system and "should be commended " for his actions.
Mortazavi further stated that female prisoners still virgins were forcibly married to jailers before the execution. According to the narrative of political prisoners, the clerics of the Islamic Republic believed if the virgin girls were executed, they would go to heaven, and for this reason, they raped them in the form of forced marriage so that they would not die virgins.
”The father of one of the executed virgin girls told me that after the execution of his daughter, the agents gave him money saying the money is for his daughter's marriage endowment."
In a report Friday, Dadban said the three young men – Milad Armoun, Mehdi Hosseini and Alireza Kafaei -- have been charged with Muhariba (pronounced moharebeh in Persian) for the killing of a 21-year-old Basiji militia member named Arman Aliverdi in Tehran’s Ekbatan neighborhood October 26 amid nationwide protests.
Muhariba is an Islamic-Arabic term that in the lexicon of the Iranian regime means bearing arms and “fighting God” or “waging war against God,” and carries the death penalty.
A video circulating on social media at the time showed Aliverdi bleeding from the face and head while a protester kicked him. He later died in hospital. Authorities claim protesters also stabbed him.
Defendants in the case have denied stabbing Aliverdi who the residents of Ekbatan say had been trying to infiltrate the protesters to identify their leaders.
A young woman, who identifies herself as Aidi and runs the neighborhood’s popular Twitter account, told Iran International that the case is still under investigation and the accused have not been sentenced yet.
According to Payam Dorfeshan who represents one of the defendants in the case, the accused were tortured to confess to Aliverdi’s killing and implicate each other, Dadban said.
It also reported three other defendants, Mehdi Hosseini, Hossein Nemati and another yet unnamed young man apparently arrested in Ahvaz recently, have been charged with “complicity in murder” and “propaganda against the regime”.
After the incident, security forces from various agencies carried out many raids in Ekbatan and arrested at least fifty young protesters. Fourteen of the detainees were eventually indicted but others were freed later for lack of any evidence of their involvement in Aliverdi’s killing.
Dadban quoted Dorfeshan as saying that security forces’ violent daytime and night raids in Ekbatan were meant to arrest defendants and other protesters and instill fear among the residents.
The west Tehran neighborhood was an epicenter of protests ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman who was fatally injured in September 2022 while in police custody following her arrest for not wearing “proper” hijab.
“These raids have seriously affected the mental health of the residents, particularly children.There are reliable reports about sleep disturbance and nightmares among children after these raids. Their drawings also show violent scenes as a result of [witnessing] the raids,” he said.
During the heat of the protests, Basij militiamen and officers of various intelligence and security forces in plainclothes attacked chanting young people who marched in small groups around the blocks of apartments in Ekbatan.
Basijis and other security forces on several occasions shot at people’s windows indiscriminately, rampaged the entrance lobbies in several blocks, broke the windows, and destroyed the lobby furniture and intercoms to give the residents a lesson.
The ever-present Basij have four bases within the five square kilometer complex which has 15,500 apartments and a population of around 45,000.
Regime forces often used tear gas, shot pellets at protesters for chanting “Death to Khamenei” and “Down with the Dictator” every night, and made arrests both outside and inside the buildings.
