Five sentenced to death
NCRI – Punishments for 89 protesters who had been detained during nationwide uprisings were announced by Tehran province’s justice department after 180 days on November 17. Five have been sentenced to death, two of them for having links with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). 81 others were sentenced to prison terms ranging between 6 months to 15 years. The regime has accused them of, ‘acting against national security,’ ‘spreading anti-regime propaganda,’ ‘disrupting public order,’ and ‘waging war on God and spreading corruption on earth.’
Charges against the 89 were made solely due to the fact that they took part in protest demonstrations. The regime is also planning to use these sentences as a pretext to further suppress the nation and prevent families of political prisoners from staging protests.
The Iranian Resistance calls on all international human rights organizations, in particular the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, working groups on Arbitrary Detention and Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, and special rapporteurs on torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, to take urgent measures to stop implementation of the sentences, especially death sentences. It also calls for dispatch of international fact finding missions to Iran to investigate the state of thousands of young people and women arbitrarily arrested over the past five months and pave the way for their immediate release.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
November 18, 2009
