Soltani’s Detention Extended

Shervin Omidvar, RooZ Online:

Based on reports from Tehran, Abdol-Fattah Soltani the lawyer defending a group of student activists and family members of Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi who was killed in prison, shall continue to remain behind bars despite the efforts of many individuals and even organizations to free him from detention.

During the last weeks, more than 182 members of Iran’s bar association together and separately wrote letters to the judiciary and other senior Iranian officials requesting that Soltani be released from prison. But last week his wife announced that according to Soltani himself, his new prosecutor has extended his “temporary” detention for yet another two months. This appears to be a pattern for the prosecutor who has acted similarly in other cases. READ MORE

Soltani is one of the founders of Kanoone Modafeane Hogooge Bashar (Center for the Defence of Human Rights) who was arrested one month after the hardline government of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in June 2005.

Political observers believe that the project to confront human rights lawyers was launched with the publication of an article in hardline Kayhan newspaper. They believe that shortly after the victory of Ahmadinejad which brought a government that was ideologically in line with the other branches of government conservatives and hardliners initiated a new wave of crackdowns on human rights activists in Iran.

To achieve their goal they began to silence lawyers and human rights activists such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and Abdol-Fattah Soltani, both well-known human rights lawyers. In fact, by arresting, threatening and banning them from teaching in universities or leaving the country, hardliners had already been pressuring other lawyers such as Mohammad Sharif, Mohammad Seyfzadeh, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah. Shirin Ebadi had received numerous death threats and had been summoned to the judiciary. After repeated threats, the hardline judiciary finally arrested Soltani and charged him with very serious fake offences. None of the six lawyers pursuing the case have been able to meet him since his imprisonment.

The harassment and intimidation of human rights activists is not new. Mehrangiz Kar (see her article in this issue) who has been a women’s rights activist for years was arrested on her return from Germany where she attended a legal conference, along with other Iranians of journalistic, legal, literary backgrounds. She became a member of a file known as the Berlin Conference suit in which the government sued the participants for taking part in a forum that was allegedly against the Islamic state. Kar was temporarily released from prison, an opportunity she used to leave the country. Others have not been as fortunate. Siamak Poorzand, her husband remains in prison till today. Nasser Zarafashan another attorney defending the surviving members of Mokhtari and Pooyandeh families, both of whom were murdered on orders of the Ministry of Intelligence as confessed by officials themselves, continues to remain in prison for “disclosing state secrets”, which in fact were pages from public court files. Before his arrest, he also represented some of the student’s victims who had been beaten by the police during the student unrests of recent years. His charges include ownership of a weapon and use of alcoholic beverages which are banned in Iran. He was subsequently tried and sentenced to 6 years of prison. Shirin Ebadi and Mohsen Rahimi too had been harassed after they tried to represent some students that had been detained during the student unrest of 1999, which itself was sparked by the governments closure of a moderate liberal newspaper. Mohammad Ali Dadkhah is yet another attorney who was arrested in 2002 after he too took up the cases of some students who had been detained and also began representing the group of religious-political activists who had been arrested. He was tried and initially sentenced to 5 years of prison. Other lawyers that have been subjected to government harassment for their work in human rights are Mohammad Sharif and Seyed Mohammad Hashemi, among many others.

A human rights activist says that the method used by Iran’s judiciary to deal with Soltani and other human rights activists is an indication of the lawlessness within the judiciary. Especially as its officials continue to deny the widespread of inefficiency and mismanagement.

Some experts believe that the manner in which Soltani was arrested – carried out at his office at the bar association and in the presence of many of his colleagues- by itself indicated that the judiciary was sending a larger message to other lawyers critical of the government or representing cases against it. It was to show lawyers and other activists to take heed and alter their course. But have such practices in Iran or other countries really worked in the past for this one to be an exception?