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Iran’s judiciary upholds death sentence for three November 2019 uprising arrestees

Reporting by PMOI/MEK

Iran, July 11, 2020—Despite constant denials by the Iranian regime’s judiciary for several days, the lawyer of three individuals arrested during the November 2019 nationwide uprising in Iran confirmed on Friday, July 10, that the regime’s judiciary has upheld the death sentences issued for his young clients.

“Unfortunately, the death sentences issued for my clients were upheld by the Supreme Court despite our appeals. To this day we have not been allowed access to the files and the case,” the lawyer wrote in a social media post.

Back in late June the regime’s Supreme Court first upheld death sentences issued for Amir Hossein Moradi, Saied Tamjidi and Mohammad Rajabi, three political prisoners arrested during Iran’s November 2019 nationwide uprising, according to a report published on June 24, on the Hrana website.

One of the lawyers of these three inmates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the report. It is worth noting that Amir Hossein Moradi, Saied Tamjidi, and Mohammad Rajabi were sentenced to death by Abolghasem Salavati in Branch 15 of the regime’s so-called Revolutionary Courts in Tehran. Salavati is known for his long history of issuing death sentences for political prisoners and other regime dissidents. In December 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Salavati for "censorship or other activities that prohibit, limit, or penalize the exercise of freedom of expression or assembly by citizens of Iran.

These three political prisoners have in all their court hearings protested being placed under vicious torture by regime authorities.

On February 18, 2020, the regime’s judiciary spokesperson accused the three of being “riot leaders” who had “set fire to banks and petrol stations during the nationwide protests and had filmed their acts and sent the videos to foreign media”. As a result, they were sentenced to between 11 and 16 years behind bars and flogging on a variety of charges.

The trial of the three men, which took place on 5-6 January 2020, was grossly unfair, according to Amnesty International.
The regime’s oppressive state security forces identified and arrested 25-year-old Moradi using CCTV footage obtained during the November 2019 protests. He was held for a week in a detention center of the Ministry of Intelligence & Security (MOIS) in Tehran before being transferred to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for a month. Moradi was then placed under torture and other ill-treatment, including beatings, electric shock treatment and even an interrogator standing on his chest.
Moradi said he only “confessed” after regime interrogators pledged to provide medical treatment for his injuries, which they later refused. He was also tortured and coerced to appear on state-run television to make “confessions” against himself. The televised confession was used as evidence by the regime’s prosecutor to convict the three in the kangaroo court hearings.
Mohammad Rajabi, 25, and Saeed Tamjidi, 27, were arrested on December 28, 2019 and held initially in an MOIS detention center located in Tehran. They have also said they were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including being kicked, beaten with batons and hung upside down while repeatedly receiving heavy blows to their legs and feet.
All three political prisoners have been denied access to a lawyer during the investigation phase of their case. This, as always, raises serious questions about the due process denied to defendants, especially political prisoners, in the so-called courts of the mullahs’ judiciary.

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According to the monthly report of the Iran Human Rights Monitor (Iran HRM) on June 30, the Iranian regime has executed 22 people last month.

“One of them was Hedayat Abdollahpour, a Kurdish political prisoner and father of two who was on death row based on false charges since 2018,” the report reads.

The family of Abdollahpour were informed in June that he was executed a few weeks before in secret.

Also, the Iranian regime’s Supreme Court has upheld death sentences issued for political prisoners Amir Hossein Moradi, 26, Saied Tamjidi, 28, and Mohammad Rajabi, 26, who were arrested, placed under horrific torture for taking part in the November 2019 uprising.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus in a tweet on June 25 strongly condemned the death sentence and called on the Iranian regime to “respect human rights and stop these executions”.

Also, Mohammed Reza Habibi, the Head of the Justice Department Isfahan Province warned Iranians that if major protesters such as in 2009, January 2018 and November 2019 erupt again, we will “deal decisively with rioters” and added that “eight trials have finished and those involved have been sentenced for corruption on earth”

According to the Iran HRM report, the Iranian regime flogged five political prisoners and dissidents in June. The flogging sentence for Mohamamd Bagher Souri, detained during the nationwide November 2019 protests, was carried out on June 8 in the Great Tehran Penitentiary, also known as Fashafuyeh Prison.

The Iranian regime’s courts continued to hand down flogging sentences for peaceful activism. Rasoul Taleb Moghadam, a Tehran bus driver, was lashed 74 times for taking part in a peaceful Labor Day gathering last year outside the regime’s Parliament on June 1.

Also, a court sentenced 42 workers in the western city of Arak to lashes and prison for demanding their unpaid wages in a protest.

At the same time a “Revolutionary Court” in southwestern Iran sentenced a student to eight years in prison and 74 lashes for protesting against the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane by the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). The 1st Branch of the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz sentenced Siavosh Nourozi Jafarlou to seven years in prison for “assembly and collusion with the intention of disrupting internal security” and “insulting the leader Ali Khamenei.”

Moreover, the Iran HRM also reported that at least two prisoners have been tortured to death in the month of June. According to this report, Iran’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded during the though coronavirus pandemic and in several prisons and jails, the virus has rapidly spread, and basic protocols to prevent the virus from spreading were ignored.

Some of the prisoners who have contracted COVID-19 complained that they were not getting enough food and water while quarantined and that they did not have access to doctors, temperature checks, basic medicine, regular showers, or sanitary supplies.

On Friday, July 10, the Iranian opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEKannounced that over 68,800 people have died of the novel coronavirus in 342 cities checkered across all of Iran’s 31 provinces

On June 15, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) called for an international fact-finding mission to visit Iran’s prisons and meet with the inmates, especially political prisoners, and called for immediate action by the United Nations Secretary-General, the Human Rights Council and Commissioner, and relevant special rapporteurs, along with international human rights organizations to save the lives of political prisoners in Iran.

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