Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders Annual Report 2004 - Iran

Arbitrary detention and deteriorating health of Mr. Nasser Zarafshan⁷⁷

Mr. Nasser Zarafshan, a human rights lawyer, was still in prison at the end of 2004, despite several requests that his sentence be suspended for medical reasons.

Mr. Zarafshan, who is the lawyer of Mrs. Sima Pouhandeh, the widow of Mr. Mohammed Djafar Pouhandeh – a writer and human rights defender assassinated in 1998 – was sentenced to three years in jail by the Tehran military court on 18 March 2002, for "possession of firearms and alcohol". He was also sentenced to two additional years of imprisonment and fifty whiplashes for his statements to the press regarding the lawsuit of the alleged murderers of Iranian intellectuals, which ended in January 2002.

The Tehran military court confirmed the sentenced in appeal on 15 July 2002, and Mr. Zarafsahn was arrested in August 2002 and put in detention.

In December 2004, Mr. Zarafshan's health seriously deteriorated, following an nephritis attack while in detention. He was hospitalised on 2 December 2004, in the Evin prison. He was brought back to his cell three days later.

His family and his lawyer, Mrs. Shirin Ebadi, who visited him on 6 December 2004, asked for Mr. Zarafshan to be hospitalised outside the prison, but did not receive any answer.

Arbitrary detention and deteriorating health of Messrs. Akbar Ganji and Hassan Youssefi-Echgevari⁷⁸

The health of Messrs. Akbar Ganji and Hassan Youssefi-Echkevari, two journalists who were arrested in 2000 for having exercised their right to freedom of expression, deteriorated in an alarming way in 2004.

Mr. Youssefi-Echkevari was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment in October 2002. Mr. Akbar Ganji, of the daily newspaper Sobh-é-Emrooz, was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment in July 2001 on the charge of "undermining national security and propaganda against institutions of the Islamic State". This condemnation was linked to several articles suggesting the involvement of the Iranian regime in the assassination of dissident intellectuals as well as his participation in a conference on the Iranian legislative elections in Berlin in April 1998.

Both men were still being detained in the Evin prison at the end of December 2004.

Restrictions on Mr. Emadeddin Baghi's freedom of movement and subsequent legal proceedings⁷⁹

Mr. Emadeddin Baghi, president of the Society for Defending Prisoners' Rights, and editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Jomhouriyat (Republic) – banned in September 2004 – was prevented from leaving Tehran on 4 October 2004. He was going to participate in the 2nd World Congress Against the Death Penalty, organised by Penal Reform International and Together Against the Death Penalty (Ensemble contre la peine de mort) in Montreal, Canada, from 6 to 9 October 2004. His passport was confiscated.

Moreover, on 17 October 2004, the suspensive character of a judicial decision pronounced against him by the Revolutionary Tribunal of Tehran in December 2003, was lifted in absentia. Mr. Baghi had been condemned to a one year suspended prison sentence for "subversive activities against the Islamic Republic of Iran", following the publication of articles against the death penalty.

Mr. Baghi, who already spent three years in prison (2000 to 2003) for similar charges, appealed the sentence at the end of October 2004.

As of December 2004, Mr. Emadeddin Baghi was still forbidden to leave Iran, and his passport had not been returned to him.

[Refworld note: This report as posted on the FIDH website (www.fidh.org) was in pdf format with country chapters run together by region. Footnote numbers have been retained here, so do not necessarily begin at 1.]

77. See Annual Report 2003 and Urgent Appeal IRN 004/0012/OBS 125.6.

78. See Annual Report 2003.

79. See Urgent Appeals IRN 001/1004/OBS 075 and 075.1.