Document - Iran: Halt Execution of Arab Minority Men. Four Ahwazi Arabs Sentenced to Hang After Unfair Trials
JOINT PUBLIC STATEMENT
AI Index: MDE 13/031/2013
26 July 2013��Iran: Halt Execution of Arab Minority Men
Four Ahwazi Arabs Sentenced to Hang After Unfair Trials ��(London,
July 26, 2013) – Iran’s judiciary should stop the executions of four
members of Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority because of grave violations of
due process, Amnesty International, the Iran Human Rights Documentation
Center, and Human Rights Watch said today. The judiciary should order a
new trial according to international fair trial standards in which the
death penalty is not an option. Family members and Ahwazi Arab rights
activists have told human rights groups that the detainees contacted
their families on July 16, 2013 and said they feared that authorities
were planning to carry out the execution orders any day now.
According to information gathered by the
rights groups, authorities kept the defendants, including three others
who have received unfair prison sentences, in incommunicado pretrial
detention for months. The authorities denied them access to a lawyer and
harassed and detained their family members. The trial suffered from
procedural irregularities and the convictions were based on
“confessions” that defendants said had been obtained by torture. There
is no record the trial court investigated their torture allegations.
“The absence of lawyers at key stages in the
proceedings and the credible allegations of coerced “confessions” cast
strong doubts on the legitimacy of the Ahwazi Arabs’ trial, let alone
the death sentences,” said Tamara Alrifai, Middle East advocacy director
at Human Rights Watch. “The fact that the government has an appalling
rights record against Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority only makes the case
for the need for a fair trial stronger.”
The court sentenced Ghazi Abbasi, Abdul-Reza
Amir-Khanafereh, Abdul-Amir Mojaddami, and Jasim Moghaddam Payam to
death for the vaguely-defined “crimes” of moharebeh (“enmity against God”) and ifsad fil-arz
(“corruption on earth”). These charges related to a series of shootings
that allegedly led to the death of a police officer and a soldier. The
court sentenced three other defendants --Shahab Abbasi, Sami
Jadmavinejad, and Hadi Albokhanfarnejad -- to three years in prison in
the northwestern city of Ardebil for lower-level involvement in the
shootings. The lower court issued its judgment a week after a trial that
lasted approximately two hours, said letters to Ahwazi Arab rights
groups allegedly written by the defendants.
Security and intelligence forces have
targeted Arab activists since April 2005 after reports that Iran’s
government planned to disperse Ahwazi Arabs from the area and to attempt
to make them to lose their identity as Ahwazi Arabs.
The Iranian authorities have executed dozens
of people since the disputed 2009 presidential election, many of them
from ethnic minorities, for alleged ties to armed or “terrorist” groups.
Following unrest in Khuzestan in April 2011, the human rights groups
received unconfirmed reports of up to nine executions of members of the
Arab minority. In June 2012, a further four were executed and reports
suggest that five were executed in April 2013.
Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Ahvaz, the capital of
Khuzestan province, issued the sentences on August 15, 2012. Branch 32
of Iran’s Supreme Court affirmed the sentences in February 2013.
Revolutionary courts are authorized to try cases classified by the
judiciary as pertinent to political and national security matters. Their
trials take place behind closed doors, and revolutionary court
prosecutors and judges are allowed, under longstanding legislation,
extraordinary discretionary powers, especially during the pretrial
investigation phase, to limit or effectively prevent the involvement of
defense lawyers.
The revolutionary court’s judgment, a copy
of which the human rights groups reviewed, said the court convicted the
seven men for the vaguely-defined “crimes” of moharebeh (“enmity against God”) and ifsad fil-arz
(“corruption on earth”). The court found that the defendants had
established a “separatist ethnic” group that “used weapons and engaged
in shooting in order to create fear and panic and disrupt public
security.”
None of the defendants had a prior criminal
record, the judgment says. All seven are residents of Shadegan (also
known as Fallahiya in Arabic), approximately 100 kilometers south of
Ahvaz.
In several of the letters, the writers said
that security and intelligence forces had held the seven men in
incommunicado detention for months, subjected them and their family
members to detention and ill-treatment to secure “confessions”, and
tried them simultaneously in one session that lasted less than two
hours. The letters said that none of the six lawyers present had an
opportunity to present an adequate defense of their clients.
In one letter, the defendant alleges that
despite the lack of evidence, intelligence agents pressed the
revolutionary court to convict the men of moharebeh and ifsad fil-arz
and to sentence them to death. In another letter, the defendants allege
that none were questioned during pretrial interrogations about the
supposed armed group – Kita’eb Al-Ahrar to which authorities say they
belong, even though their alleged membership was used by the judiciary
as the basis for their death sentences.
In a defense pleading criticizing the lower
court’s ruling, a copy of which the rights groups reviewed, one of the
lawyers criticizes the lower court’s ruling on several grounds,
including the court’s failure to look into the defendants’ allegations
that their “confessions” were extracted under torture.
The rights groups could not independently verify the authenticity of the letters or the defense pleading.
A former detainee who spoke to the human
rights groups on condition of anonymity said that for about two weeks in
2011 he was in the same ward of Karun prison as the four men sentenced
to death. He said that both Amir-Khanafereh and Ghazi Abbasi told him
that during their time at the Intelligence Ministry detention facility
in Ahvaz agents blindfolded them, strapped them to a bed on their
stomachs, and beat them with cables on their backs and feet to get them
to confess to using firearms.
The source also said that he observed
black marks around the legs and ankles of Amir-Khanafereh and Abbasi,
and that the two said the marks were caused by an electric shock device
used at the Intelligence Ministry detention facility. The source said he
had seen similar black marks on the legs of other Arab activists during
his time in Karun prison. The former detainee said that Amir-Khanafereh
and Abbasi told him that they were not allowed any visits and were held
incommunicado by Intelligence Ministry officials for months.
�The judgment, which primarily relied on the
alleged “confessions” of the defendants and circumstantial evidence,
stated that the members of this group were involved, among other things,
in several shootings at police officers and their property, and that
the shootings led to the deaths of at least two officers.
The Supreme Court judgment, a copy of which
the rights groups reviewed, affirmed the lower court’s ruling and
identified the victims as a police officer, Behrouz Taghavi, shot and
killed in front of a bank on February 26, 2009, and Habib Jadhani, a
conscripted soldier, who was shot and killed in spring 2008. Both the
lower court and Supreme Court judgements acknowledge that some of the
defendants retracted their confessions at trial saying they were
extracted under physical and psychological torture, but refused to
acknowledge the validity of those retractions. There is no record of any
investigation by either court into the allegations of torture.
Under articles 183 and 190-91
of Iran’s penal code, anyone found to have used “weapons to cause
terror and fear or breach public security and freedom” may be convicted
of moharebeh or ifsad fil-arz. Punishment for these charges includes execution by hanging.
“Considering putting to death the four
Ahwazis after a fundamentally flawed trial during which basic safeguards
such as rights of defense were blatantly disregarded and allegations of
torture and ill-treatment dismissed is abhorrent, said Hassiba Hadj
Sahraoui, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and
North Africa Program. “At the very least, the defendants should be
granted a new trial and the ability to properly defend themselves in
court. Anything less would risk that these men be executed for a crime
they may very well have not committed.”
The ICCPR fair trial provisions also require Iran to guarantee that all defendants should have adequate time and facilities to prepare their defense and to communicate with counsel of their own choosing. The UN Human Rights Committee has said that: “In cases of trials leading to the imposition of the death penalty scrupulous respect of the guarantees of fair trial is particularly important.”��Since June 14, the date of the recent presidential and local elections, unofficial and official sources have reported at least 71 executions. In 2012 Iran was one of the world’s foremost executioners, with more than 500 prisoners hanged either in prisons or in public.
“Four men are facing the gallows after a judge brushed aside their statement that their confessions were coerced,” said Gissou Nia, Executive Director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. “At the very least, they deserve a fair trial and an impartial investigation of the abuse they say was used to force them to confess.”
�For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Iran, please visit:�http://www.hrw.org/en/middle-eastn-africa/iran�
For more Amnesty International reporting on Iran, please visit:
http://amnesty.org/en/region/iran
�For more information, please contact:
�In London, for Amnesty International, Sara Hashash (English, Arabic): +447831640170 or +44-20-7413-5566; or press@amnesty.org and Drewery Dyke (English, French, Persian) +447535587297; or ddyke@amnesty.org
In New Haven, for the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Gissou Nia (English, Persian): _+1 203 772 2218; +1 203 654 9342 (mobile); or gnia@iranhrdc.org
�In New York, for Human Rights Watch, Faraz Sanei (English, Persian): +1-212-216-1290; or +1-310-428-0153 (mobile); or saneif@hrw.org
�In New York, for Human Rights Watch, Tamara Alrifai (English, Arabic, French, Spanish): +1-646-309-8896 (mobile); or alrifat@hrw.org
�In Beirut, for Human Rights Watch, Nadim Houry (English, Arabic, French): +961-3-639244; or houryn@hrw.org
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