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October 8, 2018 \u2013 Five out of the eight environmentalists who have been detained in Iran since January 2018, including an Iranian-American dual national, have been issued preliminary indictments eight months into their imprisonment.<\/p>\nOctober 8, 2018 \u2013 Five out of the eight environmentalists who have been detained in Iran since January 2018, including an Iranian-American dual national, have been issued preliminary indictments eight months into their imprisonment.<\/p>\n
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) calls upon the authorities in Iran to immediately release all eight of the environmentalists, who have been imprisoned unjustly and denied their rights to due process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran\u2019s judiciary kept these individuals behind bars without access to counsel for eight months while the Revolutionary Guards cooked up charges against them,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, CHRI\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n
The detained environmentalists who have received preliminary indictments are Iranian-American dual national\u00a0Morad Tahbaz, Taher Ghadirian, Niloufar Bayani, Houman Jowkar and Sepideh Kashani.<\/p>\n
Those who have not yet been charged are Amir Hossein Khaleghi, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh and\u00a0Sam Rajabi<\/a>.<\/p>\n Attorney Mohammad Hossein Aghasi told CHRI on October 7, 2018, \u201cThe only charge mentioned so far is espionage.However, nobody except the judicial authorities has been able to see the indictments.\u201d<\/p>\n No trial dates have been scheduled.<\/p>\n Aghasi also told CHRI that he has not been officially allowed to represent Ghadirian and Rajabi but has been working on their cases. Since January, Iran\u2019s judiciary has\u00a0forced detainees<\/a>\u00a0held on national security-related charges to pick their counsel from a list of 20 lawyers\u00a0hand-picked<\/a>\u00a0by the judiciary.<\/p>\n The eight environmentalists were arrested on January 24 and 25, 2018, by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps\u2019 (IRGC) Intelligence Organization.<\/p>\n They are all former and current staff members of the Iran-based non-profit organization, the\u00a0Persian Heritage Wildlife Foundation<\/a>\u00a0(PHWF). The PHWF\u2019s Iranian Canadian chairman,\u00a0Kavous Seyed-Emami<\/a>, died in Evin Prison under highly suspicious circumstances two weeks after he was arrested.<\/p>\n Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei publicly claimed on February 15 that Seyed-Emami had committed suicide before there was an\u00a0autopsy report<\/a>. Despite calls for an investigation by the UN and Canada, no one has been held accountable for Seyed-Emami\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Instead, Iran has subjected Seyed-Emami\u2019s widow, Maryam Mobeini, to\u00a0home raids and interrogations<\/a>\u00a0and banned her from leaving the country.<\/p>\n The environmentalists have been kept behind bars in Iran with extremely limited access to counsel despite calls for their release from inside and outside the country.<\/p>\n In May 2018, the head of Iran\u2019s Department of Environment, Vice President Isa Kalantari,\u00a0refuted<\/a>\u00a0accusations that the environmentalists were spies,\u00a0pointing to the conclusions of Rouhani\u2019s own Intelligence Ministry and fact-finding committee.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been determined that these individuals were detained without doing anything,\u201d Kalantari\u00a0said<\/a>. \u201cThe Intelligence Ministry has concluded that there is no evidence that these individuals were spies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe [Rouhani] government\u2019s fact-finding committee [also] concluded that the detained activists should be released because there\u2019s no evidence to prove the accusations leveled against these individuals,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Kalantari went further in an interview with the\u00a0Islamic Republic News Agency<\/a>\u00a0 (IRNA) on August 13, 2018, saying, \u201cThe judiciary has ordered us not to get involved\u2026They told us this is none of our business and we shouldn\u2019t pursue it.\u201d<\/p>\n Kalantari added, \u201cThe esteemed intelligence minister has repeatedly said there is no evidence that the detainees had spied and yet the judiciary has still not resolved their situation. Almost all of our NGOs are at a standstill because they don\u2019t know to what extent they can operate without being accused of spying.\u201d<\/p>\n President Hassan Rouhani has remained silent on the imprisonment of the environmentalists, and he has not responded to a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0800 Iranian environmentalists<\/a>\u00a0calling for their detained colleagues\u2019 release.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Rouhani should join the chorus of voices from the UN, around the world, and inside Iran who have demanded the release of the environmentalists \u2014 yet he remains silent,\u201d noted Ghaemi.<\/p>\n In September 2018, the environmentalists\u2019 families sent a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei calling for their loved ones\u2019 freedom.<\/p>\n \u201cWe beseech you to immediately order the release of our loved ones and pave the way for a fair judicial process with access to legal counsel,\u201d said the letter\u00a0dated September 18, 2018.<\/p>\n In February 2018, shortly after Seyed-Emami\u2019s death, the UN issued a statement urging Iran to free the environmentalists and stop arbitrarily arresting them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe detention and punishment of environmentalists for their work to conserve and protect the natural environment cannot be justified,\u201d said several UN human rights experts in a joint in a February 2018\u00a0statement. \u201cNowhere in the world, including Iran, should conservation be equated to spying or regarded as a crime. Detention of human rights defenders for their work is arbitrary in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Dozens\u00a0of other environmentalists<\/a>\u00a0have been taken into custody throughout Iran since January but their conditions and judicial statuses are unknown.<\/p>\n \u201cIran recently took a\u00a0complaint<\/a>\u00a0to a UN court but has ignored the UN\u2019s calls for these environmentalists to be freed,\u201d said Ghaemi. \u201cThe rule of law means you can\u2019t have it both ways\u2014use the law when it suits you, trample it when it does not.\u201d<\/p>\n For interviews, contact:
\nHadi Ghaemi
\n+1-917-669-5996
\nhadighaemi@iranhumanrights.org<\/a><\/p>\n