is refusing to return property deeds handed to the Judiciary as bail even when the accused has been acquitted.
Ahmad Shaheed of the Maldive Islands became the new Iranian human rights rapporteur at the UN August 1. He has now submitted an interim report in which he notes that the Islamic Republic has so far failed to have any dealings with him. That is no surprise as Iran has publicly said it would ignore him.
Shaheed’s report ignores those public comments and pleads with Iran to allow him to visit the country ”in order to develop his dialogue with the authorities and either substantiate or lay to rest allegations of human rights violations.”
The bulk of his 21-page report is a catalog of accusations submitted to him by Iranians charging human rights abuses of all sorts. Shaheed appears to be trying to convince Iran that it is to its benefit to host him and talk with him about the allegations because they will not otherwise have the opportunity to refute any of them.
Most of the allegations laid out by Shaheed are well-known—charges of torture to induce confessions, judicial procedures that fall far short of international standards for fairness and intimidation of critics.
One new charge is that the regime is effectively stealing from people it accuses of being dissidents even when the Judiciary finds that no crime has been committed against the regime.
Shaheed says the Islamic Republic routinely demands “exorbitant” bail from accused persons, sometimes as high as $500,000.
“Defendants and/or their guarantors must often furnish deeds or sign promissory notes that are later used to garnish wages of guarantors,” Shaheed wrote.
He then said that everyone he has interview on this issue—without exception—reported that the deeds submitted as bail to assure appearance in court “were never returned to the guarantors, even after acquittals or final convictions.”
Shaheed wrote, “Since these parties no longer possess the deeds to their properties, they are deprived of financial control of their assets, which produces a disturbing level of persistent punishment, even beyond the conclusion of the cases.”
In a number of cases, the deeds have been submitted as bail by aged parents of accused persons. For example, the 90-year-old mother of Iranian-American Haleh Esfandiari, who directs Middle East projects at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, had to deposit the deed to her apartment to win release for her daughter.
The UN had a human rights rapporteur for Iran for many years until dropping the post in 2002. Earlier this year, it decided to re-establish the position and picked Shaheed, who was the foreign minister of the Maldives Islands, a small Muslim-majority state in the Indian Ocean.
The full text of Shaheed’s interim report is available at: http://persian.iranhumanrights.org/wpcontent/uploads/SR_Report_14_Oct.pdf
