August 08, 2014
A mere six judges in the Iranian Judiciary handle most of the controversial political cases in the country, human rights specialists have told The Guardian of Britain.
Four judges in the Revolutionary Courts and two appeal judges have led numerous court sessions that activists say do not conform to fair trial principles laid out in Iran’s Constitution, and are in breach of international treaties to which Tehran is a signatory.
The six judges are accused of failing to exercise judicial impartiality while overseeing miscarriages of justice in trials in which scores of journalists, lawyers, political activists and members of Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities have been condemned to lengthy prison terms, lashes and even execution.
The six judges are Abol-Qassem Salavati and Moham-mad Moghiseh, former judges Yahya Pir-Abbasi and Hassan Zareh Dehnavi (known as judge Haddad), and appeal judges Hassan Babaee and Ahmad Zargar. The first two are well-known and have handled cases that garnered considerable media attention.
According to several former prisoners who spoke to The Guardian, and testimonies received by human rights groups, common violations by the judges include holding trials behind closed doors, lasting only a few minutes and without essential legal procedures, intimidating defendants, breaching judicial independence by acting as prosecutors themselves and depriving prisoners of access to lawyers.
“This group is among the most notorious judges in Iran,” said Mahmud Amiry-Mo-ghaddam, an Iranian human rights activist in Norway. “They are known for their politicized verdicts, unfair trials [and] sentencing prisoners based on confessions made under duress.”
Gissou Nia, of the US-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), said: “It seems that in the courtrooms of Salavati, Moghiseh and Pir-Abbasi, there is [something] counter-intuitive at play – that is, the shorter the hearing, the longer the sentence.”
The Revolutionary Court system was set up after the 1979 revolution to deal with cases of national security, and still exist three decades later despite disputes over their constitutional footing.
In their testimonies, many prisoners have accused the six judges of acting on the instructions of top security officials and prison interrogators, and operating under the wing of the country’s Intelligence Ministry and the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards).
Several prisoners said the sort of sentences they were threatened with in interrogation sessions were later handed down in their trials, which they say points to close collaboration between judges and the intelligence apparatus.
“While it is true that all the judges in the Iranian system are filtered and selected, it would be true to say that specific judges of the Revolutionary Courts are more trusted with sensitive cases,” said Iranian human rights lawyer Mohammad Nayyeri. “Their 100 percent loyalty is proven beyond any doubt and higher judicial authorities carefully select them on the basis of absolute loyalty and obedience. They work hand-in-hand with the intelligence service officers and to a great extent follow the instructions from them.”
According to Amiry-Moghaddam, Judge Salavati has handed down at least half a dozen death sentences since 2009. In that year, Salavati led an infamous televised group court at which those who protested the presidential election outcome were tried.
Amiry-Moghaddam said Babaee presided over the trial of the Kurdish political prisoner Habibollah Latifi, who was hanged in 2010 after a trial that lasted a few minutes.
Moghiseh led a court case against seven leaders of the Baha’i faith, who were kept for more than two years in solitary confinement without access to lawyers and later sentenced to 20 years each in prison. Moghiseh also sentenced the prominent student activist Bahareh Hedayat to nine years in jail, and is currently presiding over the case of imprisoned journalist Saba Azarpeik. Former prisoners told IHRDC that Moghiseh was “notorious for creating an atmosphere of rage and tension” in court.
Under Pir-Abbasi, the human rights lawyer Abdol-Fattah Soltani was sentenced to 18 years, the student activist Zia Nabavi to 15 years and 74 lashes, Hossain Ronaghi-Maleki to 15 years and lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to six years. Gholam-Reza Khosravi, who was put to death for allegedly having links with the Mojahedin-e Khalq, was sentenced by Pir-Abbasi.
Karim Lahidji, president of the League for the Defense of Human Rights in Iran, said the abuses were reminiscent of similar unfair trials held before the 1979 revolution. “Under the Shah, such trials were held in military courts, now they’re held in Revolutionary Courts,” he told The Guardian.