On Sunday November 14, the Iranian regime’s Public Prosecutor in Tehran, Abbas Jafari Dowlat Abadi, announced the arrest of five lawyers on charges of “committing security-related offences and acting contrary to the Islamic Republic’s dignity abroad.”
A day earlier, the mullahs’ Judiciary Chief ,Sadeq Larijani addressed the Chairman and members of the Executive Council of the Tehran Judiciary Bar Association and complained about ” the tarnishing of the image of the legal profession” by the lawyers themselves. He added that the interviews of lawyers with foreign media have resulted in the “weakening” of the society of lawyers. Larijani then called on the lawyers to tow the line of the Iranian regime’s Judiciary.
Previously, lawyers had announced plans to hold a meeting on Sunday, 14 November, to review conditions for law practice over the past year. But, following Larijani’s attacks against the lawyers, the session was cancelled.
There are also reports about Ms. Nasrin Sotoudeh, a female imprisoned lawyer, who is now in critical condition after launching a hunger strike in protest to her arrest and the regime’s abuses in prison.
Other jailed lawyers have also recently received long-term prison sentences.
These are only examples of the situation of lawyers in Iran, who generally attempt to work within the confines of the regime’s constitution and regulations.
Mullah Larijani, who was recently appointed by the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to head the regime’s Judiciary, has trumped the record of Sheikh Mohammad Yazdi and Mahmoud Shahroudi, the former chiefs of the regime’s Judiciary, in exerting extensive pressures on lawyers.
Larijani oversees a dreadful system that, according to Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, the former Interior Minister and Deputy Intelligence Minister of the regime, receives 11 million cases a year, a number that shows the intensity of the turmoil in Iran under the mullahs’ rule. The solution of the Iranian regime’s Judiciary to this crisis is nothing but torture, execution, hanging, amputation of limbs, stoning and other such punishments.
To carry out Khamenei’s orders, Larijani has appointed figures in senior positions who, at a minimum, have committed crimes against humanity. They include Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, Ali Razini, Ali Mobasheri, Hossein Ali Nayyeri, Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, Ebrahim Raeesi and others, each of whom are responsible for torturing and murdering thousands of members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and other freedom-loving dissidents in Iran. Such a shameful record has helped them attain senior positions in the regime. Abbas Jafari Dowlat Abadi or his predecessor, Saeed Mortazavi are similar criminals only without turbans.
Therefore the first duty of every honorable Iranian lawyer is to use every possible opportunity to pave the way for the prosecution of these criminals in international tribunals, and to use all their might to reveal to the people of Iran and the world evidence, documents and specific reports on the crimes that these regime officials have committed.
In the Velayat-e Faqih system (absolute clerical rule), there is absolutely no prospect for the improvement of the conditions for the judiciary and justice. Our colleagues in the legal profession must keep alive the memories of slain lawyers like Mohammad Reza Khaksar, Mahmoud Bani Najarian, Manouchehr Masoudi, Abuzar Wardasbi and others who have fallen or have been executed in the struggle against the clerical regime. They must learn from their struggle against the mullahs; there have also been lawyers like Nader Rafi’i Nejad, Ali Parhiz, Malik Kalbi and many others who left their country and during the past three decades, sacrificed everything in their struggle to expose the crimes of the murderers ruling our country, and finally rest in peace in exile.
Without a doubt, as the NCRI platform stipulates, following the overthrow of the wretched and anti-human establishment of the Velayat Faqih and establishment of popular sovereignty, a cohesive and fair judicial system as well as independent lawyers’ associations will come to find their true place in society.
Judicial Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
November 17, 2010