{"id":1319,"date":"2018-10-24T15:44:40","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T15:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2018-10-24T15:44:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T15:44:40","slug":"iran-charges-environmentalists-with-national-security-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1319","title":{"rendered":"Iran Charges Environmentalists With National Security Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prosecutions Lacking Due Process Aimed at Deflecting Attention from Death of One of the Detainees<\/p><\/div>\n

October 23, 2018 \u2013 Nine months after a group of environmentalists were imprisoned in Iran without any evidence of wrongdoing and denied due process\u2014and after the death of one them in state custody\u2014five of them have been charged with a serious national security crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of investigating the death in state custody of\u00a0Kavous Seyed-Emami, Iranian authorities have spent the past nine months cooking up cases against his colleagues,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Iranian judiciary should correct these egregious abuses of detainee and due process rights and allow an impartial and independent investigation into the unexplained death of Dr. Seyed-Emami,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Attorney Mohammad Hossein Aghasi, who has been officially allowed to represent one of the detainees,\u00a0Sam Rajabi, and is trying to get permission to represent Taher Ghadirian, told CHRI on October 22, 2018, that five of the eight detainees have been charged with \u201ccorruption on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The detainees charged with \u201ccorruption on earth\u201d are Houman Jowkar, Taher Ghadirian, Morad Tahbaz, Sepideh Kashani and Niloufar Bayani.<\/p>\n

Three others\u2014Amir Hossein Khaleghi, Sam Rajabi and Abdolreza Kouhpayeh\u2014have still not been charged. All eight of them are being held in Evin Prison\u2019s Ward 2-A which is under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).<\/p>\n

Aghasi added that Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi had changed the charge from \u201cespionage\u201d to \u201ccorruption on earth\u201d after he allegedly received a letter from \u201cthe army.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aghasi said he is unaware of the contents of the letter in question. He added that the charges were issued to the detainees on October 6, 2018, by Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Magistrate in the presence of lawyers appointed to the detainees by the court.<\/p>\n

The eight detainees have only occasionally been allowed to call their families or receive family visits. They were denied access to legal counsel for nine months until October, when some of them were told to choose their lawyers from a list approved by the judiciary.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0Note to Article 48\u00a0of Iran\u2019s Criminal Procedures Regulations, detainees accused of national security charges can be stripped of their due process and prisoners\u2019 rights, including the right to choose their own lawyer.<\/p>\n

It is unclear why some of the detainees have been allowed to choose their own lawyer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Iranian judiciary should allow all detainees unrestricted access to lawyers of their choice in accordance with Iran\u2019s international obligations,\u201d said Ghaemi.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights\u00a0(ICCPR), which Iran is a signatory to, recognizes in Article 14, subsection (3)(d), the right of an accused in criminal proceedings to be represented by legal counsel of his or her choice.<\/p>\n

Aghasi told CHRI he doesn\u2019t understand why the original charge was changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are dealing with a very strange accusation,\u201d said Aghasi. \u201cI completely object to this charge,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Corruption on earth is an extremely serious charge in the Iranian penal code that pertains to national security. The maximum penalty for this charge is death.<\/p>\n

\u201cPreviously, the authorities were accusing [the detainees of] cooperation with foreign governments and agencies, so I don\u2019t know how that has now changed to \u2018corruption on earth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

No Accountability for Kavous Seyed-Emami\u2019s Death<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nine environmentalists were detained in Iran between January 24 and 25, 2018, after being arrested by agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps\u2019 (IRGC) Intelligence Organization.<\/p>\n

One of them, Iranian Canadian sociologist Kavous Seyed-Emami, was pronounced dead to his wife by security agents on February 9, 2018.<\/p>\n

No one has been held accountable for Seyed-Emami\u2019s death, which a judicial official claimed was a suicide, before there was an\u00a0autopsy. A so-called\u00a0\u201cfact-finding\u201d commission\u00a0set up by President Hassan Rouhani to investigate the deaths of\u00a0at least five detainees, including Seyed-Emami, in state custody this year has also failed to announce any findings eight months after its creation.<\/p>\n

Instead, Iranian authorities have harassed Seyed-Emami\u2019s widow,\u00a0Maryam Mombeini, including by banning her from leaving the country, raiding her home and repeatedly interrogating her.<\/p>\n

They have also kept eight of Seyed-Emami\u2019s colleagues behind bars despite the country\u2019s own Intelligence Ministry asserting that there is\u00a0no evidence\u00a0to justify their continued incarceration and calls for their release by\u00a0Iranian officials\u00a0and the\u00a0UN.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Evidence That These Individuals Were Spies\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In May 2018, the head of Iran\u2019s Department of Environment, Vice President Isa Kalantari,\u00a0refutedaccusations 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. \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\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

On October 22, Mohammad Reza Tabesh, the leader of the environmentalist faction in Iran\u2019s Parliament, said he was shocked by the new charge against the environmentalists and\u00a0demanded\u00a0the detainees be given access to lawyers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe pushed for the case against the environmentalists to be sent to the judiciary. Last week we met with [Judiciary Chief Sadegh] Larijani and he had a talk with Dowlatabadi and eventually Mr. Dowlatabadi promised to submit the case to judicial authorities,\u201d he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope this will happen as soon as possible and these individuals will be able to exercise their rights, including having a lawyer,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Tabesh also urged President Rouhani\u2019s fact-finding commission to investigate the new charge.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on the information that has been made public by the Iranian authorities, nothing justifies the continued incarceration of these eight environmentalists, let alone charges levelled against them that could carry the death sentence,\u201d said Ghaemi.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne detainee has already lost his life during this travesty of justice,\u201d said Ghaemi. \u201cIran should immediately release the remaining detainees to prevent further loss of innocent life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 23, 2018 \u2013 Nine months after a group of environmentalists were imprisoned in Iran without any evidence of wrongdoing and denied due process\u2014and after the death of one them<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[280,423,422,420,383,426,417,419,424,421,418],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-abbas-jafari-dolatabadi","tag-abdolreza-kouhpayeh","tag-amir-hossein-khaleghi","tag-houman-jowkar","tag-kavous-seyed-emami","tag-mohammad-hossein-aghasi","tag-morad-tahbaz","tag-niloufar-bayani","tag-sam-rajabi","tag-sepideh-kashani","tag-taher-ghadirian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1320,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}