{"id":1587,"date":"2020-02-19T18:51:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T18:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1587"},"modified":"2020-02-19T18:51:04","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T18:51:04","slug":"appeals-court-upholds-baseless-prison-sentences-against-wildlife-conservationists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1587","title":{"rendered":"Appeals Court Upholds Baseless Prison Sentences Against Wildlife Conservationists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prison Terms Range from 4-10 Years Based on No Evidence and False “Confessions”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

February 18, 2020 \u2013 The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) condemns the Iranian appeals court\u2019s decision to uphold lengthy prison sentences against eight\u00a0wildlife conservationists\u00a0detained since January 2018 without due process on charges that were\u00a0refuted\u00a0by three major Iranian state agencies including the Intelligence Ministry.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cIran\u2019s judiciary and Revolutionary Guards have declared conservation a crime by sentencing these peaceful wildlife conservationists to lengthy prison terms for doing their jobs,\u201d said CHRI Executive Director Hadi Ghaemi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese sentences followed sham prosecutions that proceeded without any evidence of wrongdoing and were based on false \u2018confessions\u2019 extracted under torture,\u201d Ghaemi said. \u201cThe appeals court’s decision to uphold these sentences makes a mockery of the Iranian justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese sentences are also a blow to wildlife conservation at a time when Iran desperately needs wildlife and climate experts to help guide the government out of the country\u2019s environmental crisis that mismanagement and climate change have produced,\u201d Ghaemi added.<\/p>\n

The sentences announced by Judiciary Spokesman Gholam-Hossein\u00a0Esmaili\u00a0at a\u00a0press\u00a0conference\u00a0in Tehran on February 18, 2020, are as follows:<\/p>\n

Amir Hossein Khaleghi: 6 Years<\/p>\n

Abdolreza Kouhpayeh: 4 Years<\/p>\n

Houman Jowkar: 8 Years<\/p>\n

Morad Tahbaz: 10 Years<\/p>\n

Niloufar Bayani: 10 Years<\/p>\n

Sam Rajabi: 6 Years<\/p>\n

Sepideh Kashani: 6 Years<\/p>\n

Taher Ghadirian: 8 Years<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of jailing peaceful conservationists, Iran\u2019s government should be putting resources into saving its endangered species,\u201d said Ghaemi.<\/p>\n

Background Info:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In January 2018, nine conservationists, all current and former staff members of the Tehran-based Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF), were imprisoned by the IRGC\u2019s Intelligence Organization.<\/p>\n

The conservationists\u2019 imprisonment on charges brought by the IRGC\u2019s intelligence organization has been widely condemned by international environmentalist and human rights organizations including the UN and renowned primatologist\u00a0Jane Goodall\u00a0among 131 other conservationists.<\/p>\n

Their cases has been marked by documented\u00a0denials of due process\u00a0including\u00a0denial of access to lawyers\u00a0of their choice,\u00a0forced false \u201cconfessions,\u201d\u00a0as well as\u00a0prolonged interrogations\u00a0and\u00a0solitary confinement.<\/p>\n

In November 2019, the United Nations Environment Program\u00a0strongly criticized\u00a0the Iranian authorities\u2019 decision to respond to \u201clegitimate conservation efforts of environmentalists by criminalizing their actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less than three weeks after being detained, PWHF managing director\u00a0Kavous Seyed-Emami, a professor of sociology and war veteran who was also a Canadian citizen, died under suspicious circumstances while held for interrogations in Evin Prison. The Iranian authorities have never allowed an independent investigation into his death, which they claimed was a suicide after\u00a0barring his family\u00a0from conducting an independent autopsy.<\/p>\n

Seyed-Emami\u2019s PWHF colleagues remained imprisoned for two years\u2014and his widow\u00a0banned\u00a0from leaving Iran until October 2019\u2014while the IRGC and prosecution pursued a case against the conservationists on trumped-up espionage charges.<\/p>\n

The prosecution continued even after the country\u2019s Intelligence Ministry and Supreme National Security Council publicly\u00a0refuted\u00a0the IRGC\u2019s claim that the conservationists had committed espionage.<\/p>\n

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

Prison Terms Range from 4-10 Years Based on No Evidence and False “Confessions” February 18, 2020 \u2013 The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) condemns the Iranian appeals court\u2019s<\/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":[423,422,420,417,419,424,421,418,494],"class_list":["post-1587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-abdolreza-kouhpayeh","tag-amir-hossein-khaleghi","tag-houman-jowkar","tag-morad-tahbaz","tag-niloufar-bayani","tag-sam-rajabi","tag-sepideh-kashani","tag-taher-ghadirian","tag-wildlife-activist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587","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=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1588,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions\/1588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}