Iranian Judiciary Closes Acid Attack Cases With No Convictions But Promises Victims Compensation
JULY
21, 2018
Nearly four years after a series of acid
attacks on women in the Iranian city of Isfahan,
the judiciary has closed the cases without any convictions while pledging to
compensate the victims.
“This was a public crime that does not go away with the passage of
time and therefore it makes no sense to close the case,” Iranian Canadian
attorney Hossein Raeesi told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) on July
19.
“If the private plaintiffs have agreed to stop pursuing the case,
that’s fine but if it means that the authorities are going to stop looking for
the perpetrators, that would be unlawful and unreasonable,” said Raeesi.
“The court and the police should keep the case open and the
judiciary and security agencies should seriously pursue it,” he added.
During the autumn of 2014, as many as 10
women were badly disfigured in Iran by men who
threw acid at them. According to eyewitnesses, the victims were attacked for
wearing what the men considered improper hijabs.
The attacks took place as Iran’s Parliament was debating the Plan
to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, which became law in June 2015. It allows citizens to “verbally” confront
people accused of committing vices.
Article 4 states, “Promoting virtue and preventing vice is carried
out verbally, in writing or by heartfelt action. The verbal and written aspect
is the responsibility of all people as well as the government, and the
actionable aspect is the sole responsibility of the government and carried out
within the parameters of the law.”
Article 6 states, “No person or group has the right to insult,
strike, injure or kill in the name of promoting virtue and preventing vice.
Violators will be punished according to the Islamic Penal Code.”
In October 2014, Isfahan’s Friday prayer leader Mohammad
Taghi Rahbar stated that women with “bad hijab” should be confronted by more
than just words. The words of Friday prayer leaders in Iran are often
considered by the faithful as equal to or more important than the law.
A year after the attacks, the mother of one of the victims told CHRI that the authorities had not publicly released any
information about the results of their investigations and warned families not
to speak to foreign media.
“Whenever we try to follow up on our daughter’s case, they say
they are working on it but so far they have not given any information. The
first few weeks they were very active on the case, but now they have slowed
down a lot. It seems like they have forgotten about it. We ran around a lot to
this and that ministry to be compensated for our daughter’s medical expenses.
Now our most important wish is that the perpetrators be punished for the acid
attacks,” she said.
Although no one has been convicted for illegally attacking the
women, a number of civil rights activists have been prosecuted for protesting
against the attacks including human rights activist Ali
Shariati, who served 16 months in prison before
he was released in February 2018.
Civil rights activist Mahdieh
Golru was also arrested in October 2014 a day
after she attended a rally to protest acid attacks on women in Iran’s Isfahan
Province.
She was held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison’s Ward 2-A,
under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), until her
release in January 2015.
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