IRAN Tehran Jails Lawyers, Including Lawyers of Christian Converts

More than 30 ended up arrested, three of them had defended recent converts who left the Islamic religion. The two journalists who first reported on the Mahsa Amini tragedy face five years in prison. So far, the ayatollahs’ repression has left 321 dead (including 50 children) and almost 15,000 arrested.

Tehran () – Lawyers are the last category – after students, activists and journalists – to be targeted by the ayatollahs’ repression. This is intended to punish the massive wave of protests triggered by the murder of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police. In recent weeks, more than 30 lawyers have been jailed, including at least three committed to defending Christian defendants arrested for converting from Islam. Meanwhile, thousands of people arrested in the last two months are awaiting trial. More than 200 parliamentarians call for harsh penalties against protesters, including the death penalty.

Hossein Ahmadiniaz, an Iranian activist now in the Netherlands, tells Article18 that many of the arrested lawyers are important figures, some of them have offered free legal assistance to the protesters. They have also called for a “commission to protect the rights of detainees, including access to legal assistance.” For 43 years, he continued, the Islamic Republic has been “hostile” towards the bar association and “hundreds of them have been arbitrarily detained, tortured or forced to leave Iran.”

Three of the arrested lawyers worked in the defense of Christians who were charged in trials for “illegal conversion.” They are Bahar Sahraian, Mustafa Nili and Babak Paknia (in the photo) . The first had among its clients the couple formed by Sam Khosravi and Maryam Fallahi, whose adopted daughter Lydia was taken from them by court order for having converted to Christianity, while the girl was considered Muslim by birth. And also, Sara Ahmadi and Homayoun Zhaveh, sentenced to 10 years and still in a cell evin prison despite his precarious state of health. The 64-year-old man suffers from advanced Parkinson’s disease.

Without going any further, last week Mustafa Nili had defended three converts, currently in prison for a five-year sentence: Ahmad Sarparast, Morteza Mashoodkari and Ayoob Poor-Rezazadeh. Babak Paknia, a colleague of Mustafa, has defended prosecuted Christians on several occasions and has supported the campaign in favor of his colleague Iman Soleimani, in the crosshairs of the authorities for his activism in favor of rights.

According to the latest information, six of the detained lawyers, including Paknia, were released after posting bail. However, the vast majority remain in pretrial detention. This and other cases of serious violations led 40 lawyers of Iranian origin, but living abroad, to sign an open letter against the judiciary, using a very harsh tone: from being an institution in charge of “protecting the rights of citizens”, the Iranian Justice has become a “despotic” and “corrupt” force, which takes advantage of “false accusations” in matters of “security” to perpetrate abuses and violations.

Meanwhile, the prosecution charged journalists Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi – the first to report on Mahsa Amini’s death and the initial protests at her funeral – with “collusion”. They are accused of undermining national security and spreading propaganda against Iran. The verdict is expected in the coming days and at the moment it is not clear if the hearing will be held behind closed doors. They are likely to be convicted, as the law provides sentences of up to five years for similar charges.

All in all, the repression of the ayatollahs, increasingly harsh, has not been able to stop the popular protests, the largest since the Islamic revolution of 1979. So far, 321 protesters have been killed, including 50 children (according to sources of Human Rights Activists News Agency, HRANA). It is estimated that there are almost 15,000 people detained, and at this time some university movements convene a day of memory to remember the victims of the repression.