APPEAL FOR IRANIAN MAN REJECTED
Further information on UA: 102/10 Index: MDE 13/081/2010 Iran Date: 05 August 2010
Iran's Supreme Court has rejected Ja'far Kazemi's request to appeal against his death sentence. The sentence was imposed for his alleged participation in anti-government demonstrations and links with a banned organization. His sentence may be carried out at any time. Six other people with alleged links to the same organization are said to be under sentence of death.
Ja’far Kazemi was arrested on 18 September 2009 and interrogated and possibly tortured for months in Evin prison in Tehran.
He was accused of participating in protests which followed the disputed outcome of Iran’s presidential election in June 2009, but was not accused of committing any violent acts; and for his alleged contact with banned opposition group the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).
He was sentenced to death for "enmity against God", and is also believed to have been convicted of “propaganda against the system”. On 26 April, he learned that his death sentence had been confirmed by an appeal court. A further appeal was apparently rejected in late July.
Amnesty International is aware of six other men sentenced to death in Iran for alleged links to the PMOI. Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei ,Ali Saremi (or Sarami), Abdolreza Ghanbari, Ahmad Daneshpour Moghaddam and Mohsen Daneshpour Moghaddam were reportedly also found guilty of "enmity against God", possibly in the same case as Ja'far Kazemi.
Information received on 4 August indicated that another man, Javad Lari, a merchant in the Tehran bazaar, had been sentenced to "death, without pardon" for "enmity against God".
He is also held in Evin prison, where he was reportedly tortured and forced to ‘confess’.
