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“These are grossly unfair trials which might be designed to instill worry among the many inhabitants,” Raha Bahreini, an Iran researcher at Amnesty Worldwide, mentioned of latest authorized proceedings involving protesters.
“That is additionally a mirrored image of the rising use of the dying penalty by the Islamic Republic as a instrument of political repression,” she mentioned.
For months, Iran has been gripped by anti-government protests, ignited in September by the violent dying of a younger girl, Mahsa “Jina” Amini, in police custody in Tehran. The demonstrations began as a motion towards the Islamic Republic’s conservative gown code — Amini was detained for an alleged clothes violation — however has since morphed right into a nationwide revolt towards Iran’s clerical rulers.
Younger individuals have performed a distinguished 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 high nations for executions, together with executions of youngsters, regardless of having signed a number of U.N. conventions prohibiting the dying penalty for minors. Amnesty Worldwide mentioned it confirmed three juvenile executions this yr, unrelated to the latest protests.
Below Iranian legislation, the Revolutionary Court docket 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 power on Nov. 3.
Hearings have been held Wednesday and Thursday in Karaj outdoors Tehran. And on the trial, the presiding decide mentioned the three teenage boys — Arin Farzamnia, Amin Mehdi Shokrollahi and Amir Mehdi Jaffari — might be tried alongside the adults as a result of the decide was skilled for each legal and juvenile hearings, the state-run judicial information company Mizan reported.
That is “precisely towards the pursuits of the kids and Iranian procedural legislation,” mentioned Hossein Raisi, a former lawyer in Iran and now a professor at Carleton College in Ottawa.
The boys all pleaded responsible, in keeping with Mizan, however rights teams say there may be little expectation of a good trial. Iranian officers steadily power political prisoners and their households to make false or incriminating statements.
In response to Hadi Ghaemi, govt 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 an alternative by court-appointed counsel.
The boys’ fathers additionally spoke in courtroom, Mizan reported, asking the decide in close to comparable phrases to punish their sons appropriately — however with leniency. The daddy of Shokrollahi mentioned he instructed his son to not go to protests deliberate by “enemies,” echoing the state narrative that claims Western media and intelligence companies fomented the unrest.
In response to 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 courtroom Wednesday however was current and questioned by the decide on Thursday, in keeping with Mizan.
About 18,000 individuals have been arrested since September, and at the least 36 of them have been charged with capital crimes, Ghaemi mentioned. Some dying 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, mentioned he was fearful by the “marketing campaign” of dying 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 at the least 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 many years, minors haven’t been executed on costs stemming from periodic anti-government protests, although they’ve been for primarily alleged drug-related and homicide costs.
Lately two Iranian Kurdish teenagers — Saman Naseem in 2015 and Barzan Nasrollahzadeh in 2019 — have been discovered responsible of “waging battle towards god” by the Revolutionary Court docket — however had their dying sentences overturned after a world outcry.
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