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“These are grossly unfair trials which are 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 dying penalty by the Islamic Republic as a device of political repression,” she stated.
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 costume 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 position 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 kids, regardless of having signed a number of U.N. conventions prohibiting the dying penalty for minors. Amnesty Worldwide stated it confirmed three juvenile executions this yr, unrelated to the latest protests.
Below Iranian legislation, the Revolutionary Court docket is technically barred from making an attempt 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 had been held Wednesday and Thursday in Karaj exterior Tehran. And on the trial, the presiding choose stated the three teenage boys — Arin Farzamnia, Amin Mehdi Shokrollahi and Amir Mehdi Jaffari — might be tried alongside the adults as a result of the choose was skilled for each legal and juvenile hearings, the state-run judicial information company Mizan reported.
That is “precisely towards the pursuits of the youngsters and Iranian procedural legislation,” stated Hossein Raisi, a former lawyer in Iran and now a professor at Carleton College in Ottawa.
The boys all pleaded responsible, based on Mizan, however rights teams say there’s little expectation of a good trial. Iranian officers often power political prisoners and their households to make false or incriminating statements.
In accordance with Hadi Ghaemi, govt director of the New York-based Heart for Human Rights in Iran, the defendants had been denied entry to their legal professionals and had been represented as a substitute by court-appointed counsel.
The boys’ fathers additionally spoke in courtroom, Mizan reported, asking the choose in close to related phrases to punish their sons appropriately — however with leniency. The daddy of Shokrollahi stated he informed 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 accordance with Bahreini, one of many boys’ grownup co-defendants was tortured whereas in jail and hospitalized with damaged ribs and respiration issues. She cited a medical be aware and first sources who spoke on the situation of anonymity due to security considerations. The defendant, Hamid Ghareh-Hassanlu, was not in courtroom Wednesday however was current and questioned by the choose on Thursday, based on 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 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, stated he was anxious 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. This can be a substantial enhance from a minimum of 330 and 276 executions in 2021 and 2020, respectively,” he informed a particular session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Nov. 24.
Youngsters had been among the many 1000’s 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 — had been discovered responsible of “waging conflict towards god” by the Revolutionary Court docket — however had their dying sentences overturned after a global outcry.
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