Crackdown Aimed at Destroying Any Chance of Fair Trials for Protesters
Detainees Forced to Use Court-Appointed Lawyers
January 10, 2023 – While the Islamic Republic has been gunning down and executing street protesters, it has also been arresting defense attorneys—at least 44 since September—to block their ability to seek justice for arbitrarily arrested activists and street protesters, according to research by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
At Least Nine Defense Attorneys Sentenced to Prison Since 2018
June 23, 2020 – Two years after the prominent human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested and imprisoned in Tehran, the Iranian judiciary’s continuing prosecution of independent lawyers under manufactured charges is laying bare the state’s disregard for international standards of law and due process. Read more
Three Major State Agencies Rejected Charges of Espionage, Indictment Based on Retracted False “Confessions”
February 11, 2019 – Amid eight conservationists’ closed-door trial in Iran’s revolutionary court system, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has been informed that agents staged scenes around at least two of the detainees with the intent of implicating them in a false narrative.
Mohammad Najafi is the Seventh Attorney to Be Sent to Prison in Last Six Months, Six Remain Behind Bars
October 30, 2018—Iran’s sentencing of attorney Mohammad Najafi to three years in prison and 74 lashes for “disturbing the state” and “publishing falsehoods” after he advocated for a young client who died under suspicious circumstances in an Iranian detention center is a flagrant violation of the right to counsel and a continuation of the unlawful assault on the legal profession in Iran that has left a half dozen attorneys behind bars for doing their job.
Seven Lawyers Now Behind Bars with More Summoned or Banned from Work
September 5, 2018—The arrest of three more lawyers in Iran, Payam Derafshan, Farrokh Forouzan and Hoda Amid, represents the continuing escalation of Iran’s assault against its own legal profession and a flagrant violation of these individuals’ basic rights to freedom of expression and due process, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said in a statement today.
Association Notes Iran’s “Unacceptable Intrusion on the Independence of the Legal Profession Which Undermines the Rule of Law”
August 14, 2018—An intensifying state crackdown on human rights defenders in Iran, in which the authorities have denied attorneys the ability to represent their clients and jailed them for attempting to do so, violates Iran’s domestic laws and international obligations and must end, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said in a statement today.
