Iran’s courts resort to death penalty in response to protests
Emad Mekay, IBA Middle East CorrespondentWednesday 14 December 2022
Protests calling for the overthrow of Iran’s ruling clerical regime, which have been ongoing for several months, have shaken the country leading to extreme repercussions. Tehran is now turning to its notoriously harsh legal system to mete out severe punishments, including the death penalty, in a bid to deter further demonstrations. And, there are serious concerns that the Iranian regime will execute numerous protestors, after 23-year old Majidreza Rahnavard was hanged from a crane less than a month after a secretive trial, and several more were sentenced to death.
The protests were triggered by outrage over the 16 September death of 22-year old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman who was arrested by Iran’s Basij forces, the morality police, for alleged indecent exposure. The outpouring of anger at the authorities spread across the country including in the capital Tehran and found particularly fertile ground among university students who, previously, were among the main forces that helped bring about the 1979 Iranian Revolution against the then Western-aligned regime of Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
But, despite weeks of punitive and lethal anti-riots tactics that caused several deaths and hundreds of arrests, the regime has so far failed to strike fear in the heart of the emboldened protesters.
The representatives of this nation ask all state officials, including the Judiciary, to treat those, who waged war (against the establishment)…in a way that would serve as a good lesson in the shortest possible time
Iranian lawmakers
No leniency
Hardline elements of the regime have increasingly signaled impatience with the rallies and were clearly setting the scene for Tehran’s usual harsh legal response to public displays of discontent. Government-controlled media has been referring to the street marches as ‘riots’ rather than legitimate demonstrations. Officials are quoted saying the protestors have caused ‘numerous attacks on policemen and ordinary civilians’.
The regime also extensively brandishes the word ‘terrorism’ to describe the action of the protesters and its officials often draws connections between them and ISIS, known in Iran by its Arabic derogatory acronym Daesh, originally a term coined in Iran. The use of the term ‘terrorism’ has often been a typical precursor in the Middle East to bloody crackdowns and harsh court sentences from authorities who liberally use the label against political opponents.
Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the country’s legislative body, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned on November 9, that ‘any kind of stance, which hurts unity, will be considered as loading the enemy’s gun.’ In a letter cited by state-run Press TV, some 227 Iranian lawmakers urged the country’s judiciary to ‘show no leniency’ to the demonstrators. ‘We, the representatives of this nation, ask all state officials, including the Judiciary, to treat those, who waged war (against the establishment) and attacked people’s life and property like the Daesh (ISIS) terrorists, in a way that would serve as a good lesson in the shortest possible time,’ the Iranian News Agency (IRNA) quoted the letter as saying.
The rhetorical build-up produced results. The country’s legal system issued around 1,000 indictments - many with charges punishable by death. And later in November, an Iranian court issued the first death sentence linked to the demonstrations against unnamed person for allegedly setting a government building on fire. Soon after, three more protesters were sentenced to death. Many more now face the same possibility. Other sentences ranged from 5 to 10 years in prison, according to both rights groups and exiled opposition.
International Reaction
Several UN experts, including Morris Tidball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion, issued a statement warning that Iran’s courts, established after the 1979 Revolution, have been used for years to sentence political activists ‘through grossly unfair summary trials’ and faulted the Iranian criminal justice system for relying on forced confessions.
Javaid Rehman, the UN’s special rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, told the UN Security Council that at least 14,000 people, including journalists, activists, lawyers and teachers, had been arrested in the current wave alone. The figure now has reached 18,000. Jake Sullivan, US National Security Advisor, decried the legal measures taken by Tehran. ‘We're deeply concerned about reports from Iran of mass arrests, sham trials, and now a death sentence for protesters voicing legitimate demands,’ he said in a statement.
The European Union and the United Kingdom imposed new sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards in Iran. The IBA’s Human Rights Law Committee tells Global Insight in a statement that if the Iranian authorities continue to implement a systematic or widespread practice of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, or extrajudicial killings, they may be committing crimes against humanity. ‘Crimes against humanity attract universal jurisdiction and can be prosecuted before domestic courts (with universal jurisdiction provisions) or international tribunals/mechanisms with jurisdiction over Iran,’ the statement for the Human Rights Law Committee says. ‘As an example, in July this year, a Swedish Court exercising universal jurisdiction convicted Hamid Nouri, an Iranian official, in connection with his involvement in summary executions and enforced disappearances against political dissidents, which occurred in 1988. The same or similar provisions could be applied in connection with the current events in Iran.’
Officers of the IBA’s Human Rights Law committee point out that Iran is a state party of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 21 of which clearly enshrines the right of peaceful assembly. They also pointed to the possibility of intervention from international bodies such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Council and the Security Council to help Tehran temper its response to the protests and suggested that those bodies could initiate dialogues or political action.
On November 24, the UN Human Rights Council took such a measure and launched a probe into alleged abuses in Iran’s response to the protests. Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said Iranian authorities must end ‘disproportionate use of violence’ against protesters.
Iranian officials responded by saying the protests were in fact part of a strategy pushed by the US and Israel to destabilize the 87-million people nation. They say that Western policy towards Iran in general has been hypocritical because there’s no similar outcry against abuses in pro-Western countries in the region that are human rights violators such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But the IBA’s Human Rights Committee’s statement said abuse in one country doesn’t entitle another to justify its own crackdown even when there exists double-standards internationally.
‘Universal human rights transcend borders and nationality,’ says the IBA’s Human Rights Law Committee. ‘It is not a valid argument to justify human rights violations by referring to inaction in other states. The existence or not of hypocrisy does not dilute the right of Iranian protestors to enjoy the protection of universally recognized rights. Put simply, the solution is not to do less in Iran, but more elsewhere.’
Tehran’s nervous reaction betrays how the current street crowds are perceived as ominous by the regime. They are reminiscent of the 1979 wave of protests that brought the clerical ruling class to office when Iranians took to the streets to protest against corruption and the repressive policies of the Shah of Iran. But, instead of capitalizing on public support to improve the lives of Iranians, the revolution that mesmerized the region as the first successful popular overthrow of a corrupt ruling regime in the Middle East, has wrought similar harsh policies on the country, only with a religious mantle. The clergy also sought a costly and unpopular Shiite religious revival outside the country and into the majority Sunni Middle East.
Despite the current brutal response, gestures of defiance such as the Persian chants of ‘down, down with the dictator,’ are spreading to three sectors that were decisive in the success of the Iranian Revolution nearly half a century ago; the Bazaar areas, or merchant locations; the holy city of Mashhad, which has recently seen a few rare rallies and, most importantly, university campuses, now a hotbed for the unrest. While it is not clear if the heavy hand of Iran’s legal and security systems will eventually manage to quash the protests, those elements coming together is shaping up as most severe political crisis facing the clerical rulers and their iron-fisted legal system.
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