Iran Sentences Men Who Supported Women’s Protests Against Compulsory Hijab to Six Years Prison
JANUARY
22, 2019
Reza Khandan and Farhad
Meysami Denied Right to a Public Trial
January 22, 2019 – Reza Khandan and Farhad Meysami have both been sentenced to six
years imprisonment in Iran and banned from leaving the country or engaging in
online activities for two years for peacefully protesting the country’s
compulsory hijab law.
“Iran wants to silence
these men by jailing them for standing by women who want the hijab to be a
choice, not a requirement,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the
Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
“The only crime they
committed is peacefully exercising their rights of freedom of speech and
expression,” said Ghaemi. “Iran’s judiciary should heed their calls for a fair
and public trial and release them.”
In an interview with CHRI,
Khandan, the husband of imprisoned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, said he was unlawfully denied a public
trial.
On January 22, 2019, he
and Meysami were both convicted of “assembly and collusion against national
security” and “propaganda against the state” at Branch 15 of the Revolutionary
Court in Tehran presided by Judge Abolqasem Salavati—notorious in Iran for
bending to the wishes of security agencies.
“The law says that
political cases should be tried publicly in a criminal court in the presence of
a jury,” said Khandan. “But for years the judiciary has turned political cases
into national security ones in order to try them through the revolutionary
court system.”
According to Article 168
of Iran’s Constitution, “Political and press offenses will be
tried openly and in the presence of a jury, in courts of justice.”
But countless activists,
dissidents and other detainees held on politically motivated charges have been
sentenced to prison without due process in sessions as brief as 10 minutes in Iran’s revolutionary court system.
After posting several
updates about his wife’s June 2018 arrest online, Khandan was also arrested on September 4, 2018, and transported to
Evin Prison and Tehran. He was released on bail on December 24.
Sotoudeh, one of the
country’s top defense attorneys and human rights advocates, was arrested
after defending women who were being being prosecuted
for peacefully protesting Iran’s compulsory hijab law by removing it in public.
She is facing multiple charges.
Meysami remains in Evin
Prison where he has been held since his arrest on July 31, 2018. The agents who
raided his home confiscated badges that said, “I am against compulsory hijab,”
which were then used to convict him in court.
“In addition to the
six-year prison sentence, I have been banned from carrying out any online
activity for two years,” Khandan told CHRI. “That means I won’t be able to
inform the public about my wife’s situation or even exchange greeting messages
with a friend or purchase things online.”
Khandan and Meysami had
protested against being denied a public trial by refusing to show up to three
of their four court sessions.
“They told me if I
appeared at the last court session, I would be granted bail,” Khandan said. “So
I attended because of my circumstances and my kids’ situation, even though I
didn’t believe in the court’s legitimacy. Mr. Meysami attended, too.”
Khandan and Sotoudeh
have two children, one of whom is in grade school. Prison
officials have repeatedly denied Sotoudeh opportunities to see
her children.
It remains to be seen what
will happen to the children if both their parents are imprisoned at the same
time.
Meysami, who is also a
physician, was forcibly kept in the prison clinic and put on an IV drip in August 2018 after he went on a
prolonged hunger strike to demand justice for himself as well as Sotoudeh and
Khandan.
Highlighting the cases of
the three activists, UN human rights experts have called on Iran to guarantee the rights of human
rights defenders and lawyers who have been jailed for publicly supporting
protests against the mandatory hijab.
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