{"id":494,"date":"2014-02-21T17:24:41","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T17:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=494"},"modified":"2014-02-21T17:31:24","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T17:31:24","slug":"stop-death-sentence-in-inquisition-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=494","title":{"rendered":"Stop Death Sentence in Inquisition Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rouhollah Tavana<\/p><\/div>\n

(February 20, 2014)\u2014The Iranian Judiciary must rescind the execution sentence of Rouhollah Tavana for trumped-up charges of \u201cinsulting the Prophet,\u201d and stop issuing death sentences for ever-expanding categories of crimes, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today.<\/p>\n

Mashhad Intelligence agents arrested Rouhollah Tavana, 34, at his home in Mashhad in October 2011. According to a court ruling the Campaign reviewed, Intelligence agents confiscated a private video recording of Tavana on his personal computer, in which while under the influence of alcohol he allegedly uttered a phrase the judge interpreted as insulting the Prophet of Islam, a crime under Iranian law. However, the same law explicitly notes that insulting the Prophet is not a crime punishable by death if the person is drunk.
\n\u201cIt is mind-boggling that in the 21st century, the Iranian Judiciary wants to hang a young man for uttering a random phrase during a video he shot of himself and kept it private. This is an unbelievable act of inquisition at its worst,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Campaign.
\n\u201cThe Iranian Judiciary\u2019s insistence on the death sentence calls into question whether these sentences are politically-motivated and intended to confront the wave of international protests against the trend of ever-increasing executions in Iran,\u201d he added.
\nSince Hassan Rouhani\u2019s election as president in 2013, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of executions in Iran. On February 19 alone, Iran carried out 12 executions in the cities of Kerman, Qazvin, Rasht, Shiraz, Roudbar, and Sowme\u2019eh Sara. Some of these executions were carried out in public.
\n\u201cWe have asked all authorities for a pardon and for forgiveness for him. My son has repented. My son wrote a letter in prison and expressed remorse, but nothing happened. We can\u2019t rely on anything. They are going to hang him just like that,\u201d Tavana\u2019s mother Fakhri Jamali told the Campaign.
\nIranian officials consistently claim that they only issue death sentences for dangerous criminals and drug traffickers. However, Campaign research indicates that many executions are carried out in the absence of fair trials, are disproportionate to the crimes, and are issued under the influence of security organizations.
\nBranch 5 of the Razavi Khorasan Province Criminal Court sentenced Rouhallah Tavana to death, and an appeals court later upheld his death sentence. On February 14, 2014, Branch 14 of the Iranian Supreme Court also upheld his death sentence, which can now be carried out at any time.
\nAccording to Article 262 of the new Islamic Penal Code, \u201cWhoever insults [the Prophet Mohammad] . . . shall be sentenced to death.\u201d However, Article 263 of the Code states, \u201cIf the individual accused of [insult] claims that his statements were made reluctantly, negligently, unintentionally, or while drunk, or angry, or were verbal blunders, or were said without attention to the meaning of the words, or were quoting another individual, he will not be considered a insulter of the Prophet.\u201d A note on this article further adds, \u201cIf the insult is uttered while drunk or angry or quoting someone else, and is considered an insult, it will be punishable by up to 74 lashes.\u201d
\nJamali said judicial authorities refused to accept a letter the family wrote requesting a retrial, saying that they only receive letters from families of those on death row for drug-related crimes, not for other crimes. She added that the basis for the death sentence is a private video Tavana recorded of himself at his home, joking privately with his brother while under the influence of alcohol. In addition to \u201cinsulting the Prophet,\u201d Rouhollah Tavana was charged with \u201cproducing alcoholic beverages.\u201d
\n\u201cWith this sentence, the Iranian Judiciary and security organizations aim to convey the message that Iranian citizens cannot say anything, even jokes, that are private even behind their own closed doors,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi. \u201cBefore another innocent individual loses his life, the Judiciary must stop this sentence from enforcement and allow the suspect to have a fair trial,\u201d he added.
\nIn an interview with the Campaign, Fakhri Jamali appealed for help to save her son\u2019s life. \u201cThey said they will serve my son with his death sentence ruling at Vakilabad Prison in Shiraz over the next two weeks. My son has no idea that the Supreme Court has confirmed his death sentence. He keeps calling from prison and asking about it, and all we do is to give him hope. We are now forced to give interviews to the media. Up until now, we were afraid my son\u2019s situation would worsen if we gave interviews, but we have no choice anymore. We ask everyone to help stop my son\u2019s death sentence,\u201d she said.
\nDescribing what led to her son\u2019s arrest and his death sentence, Tavana\u2019s mother told the Campaign, \u201cThree years ago, one of my son\u2019s friends called the Mashhad Intelligence Office and told them that my son had information at his home that was \u2018anti-revolutionary\u2019 and \u2018against the Supreme Leader.\u2019 Forces from the Mashhad Intelligence Office raided my son\u2019s home suddenly, searching through all his books, personal items, and his computer hard disk. On his computer there was a video that my son and one of his brothers had made of themselves on the night of his birthday.
\nAccording to Jamali, \u201cIn this video, my son, who was having a drink, said a sentence that cannot even be a direct insult to Prophet Mohammad. He was holding the knife he was going to cut the cake with and he said, \u2018Put this knife up your prophet\u2019s butt.\u2019 But this film was private and other than himself and his brother, there was no one else in it. My son was kept in solitary confinement inside the Intelligence Office for three-and-a-half months, and then they transferred him to Vakilabad Prison in Shiraz.\u201d
\nJudicial authorities leveled the charge of producing alcoholic beverages against Tavana based on another personal video confiscated from his home. Rouhollah Tavana did not share these videos with anyone else at any time. \u201cHe had a file on his computer which the Intelligence forces found. Rouhollah had videotaped himself when he was all alone, concocting an alcoholic beverage in a pressure cooker in the kitchen. [In the video] he was jokingly describing the directions for making the alcoholic drink. But all of these were private files. The Intelligence forces themselves took the files and put them on CDs and entered them into his case,\u201d Jamali said her son\u2019s other charges.
\nTavana\u2019s mother also told the Campaign that the family has a letter from the Medical Examiner\u2019s Office confirming that Rouhollah Tavana suffers from Cluster B Personality Disorders and needs treatment.
\nAfter his arrest, Tavana spent 3.5 months in a solitary cell inside the Mashhad Intelligence Office. He has expressed remorse for cursing. His family visits him once a week through a booth and has in-person visits with him every 45 days.
\n\u201cIt is an astonishing affront to human dignity to see a death sentence issued for Rouhollah Tavana for a video he made at his home and which no one even saw until forces from the Intelligence Ministry raided and searched his home. To see this sentence upheld in an appeals court and then confirmed at the Supreme Court raises serious concerns about the independence of the Iranian Judiciary and the total lack of due process,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi.
\nListen to the Campaign\u2019s Iran Rights Podcast\u2028\u2028For the latest human rights developments in Iran visit the Campaign\u2019s website
\nFor interviews, contact Hadi Ghaemi at +1-917-669-5996
\nFollow the\u00a0Campaign on Facebook and Twitter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(February 20, 2014)\u2014The Iranian Judiciary must rescind the execution sentence of Rouhollah Tavana for trumped-up charges of \u201cinsulting the Prophet,\u201d and stop issuing death sentences for ever-expanding categories of crimes,<\/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":[71,95],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-iran-executions","tag-rouhollah-tavana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","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=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}