Amnesty International: Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah, from Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority, are facing the death penalty following a grossly unfair trial. “Confessions” they have said were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment, including electric shocks and mock executions, were used to convict them. Their cases are before the Supreme Court.
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Dear Mr Raisi,
Head of the Judiciary Ebrahim Raisi
C/o Permanent Mission of Iran to the UN Chemin du Petit-Saconnex 28 1209 Geneva, Switzerland
Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah, Sunni Muslims from Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority, are on death row following a grossly unfair trial which relied on “confessions” they say were obtained under torture and other ill- treatment. They have been convicted of “enmity against God” (moharebeh) in connection with an armed attack on a Shi’a religious ceremony in Safiabad, Khuzestan province, on 16 October 2015, which left two people dead. They have denied any involvement in the attack. Their lawyers have said there is no evidence linking them to the attack and have identified inconsistencies between the “confessions” that led to their convictions and the accounts of eyewitnesses present at the scene of the crime. On 19 October 2015, both men were arrested by the ministry of intelligence and held in solitary confinement in an unknown location for six months. They have since been moved to several different detention centres. They have been given extremely limited access to their families through irregular telephone calls and only one visit. On 9 April 2019, they were transferred to a ministry of intelligence detention centre in Hamedan, Hamedan province, where they have been denied access to their families.
Both men have said they were subjected to months of torture in detention including by being beaten and given electric shocks. Abdullah Karmollah Chab has said his interrogators hung him upside down for 11 days and subjected him to mock executions, saying they would execute and bury him in an unmarked grave. For three mornings in a row, according to him, they woke him, put a sack over his head and a noose around his neck, and told him that if he “confessed” he would not be executed. He refused, saying he was innocent. On the third day, he said he heard one of the interrogators say: “Just let him go. If he had anything to confess he would have done so by now.” Both men were denied access to a lawyer until the day of their trial, when they were represented by a state-appointed lawyer. During their trial before the Revolutionary Court in Ahvaz on 22 June 2016, they reportedly removed some of their clothes to show torture marks on their bodies to the court. However, no investigation was ordered. Iran’s Supreme Court later quashed the conviction and sentence due to lack of evidence and flawed investigations and ordered a retrial. On 6 July 2017, they were sentenced to death again. The case is now again before the Supreme Court for appeal.
I urge you to quash Abdullah Karmollah Chab and Ghassem Abdullah’s convictions and death sentences; and release them unless there is sufficient evidence, not obtained through torture or other ill-treatment, to charge them with a recognizable criminal offence. In addition, I urge you to grant them a fair trial, without recourse to the death penalty. I urge you to provide them with ongoing access to their families and lawyers. I also urge you to ensure that they are protected from torture and other ill-treatment, and to order an independent and impartial investigation into their torture allegations, bringing to justice anyone responsible.
Yours sincerely,
...
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PLEASE TAKE ACTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UNTIL: 19 June 2019
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You know JJ, back when you worked for IRNA, when the executions by the IR had reached their peak, almost on a daily basis IRNA would announce the names of the people the IR had executed the night before on air. Most times that was the first and only way for the hapless families of those victims to hear the news of their sons', daughters's, fathers', mothers', brothers', and sisters' deaths. I know this because that's how my relatives learned about the exceutions of their sons. You were a part of that terror. Have you ever apologized to those families? I don't think so. In fact, not only you never apologized, but you also allowed your former site to become a mouthpiece for the Islamic Republic's lobby abroad.
So please, spare us your crocodile tears.
AR - I am of the opinion that in terror regimes (and by terror I mean terror against its own people) the propaganda aparatus of the regime are just as guilty as the guys who pull the trigger in firing squads -- especially in IR's case where IRNA operate as the death sqauds' information outlet. And in terms of the old site, JJ allowed professional IR agents to troll, attack, and pychologically terrorize anyone who spoke up against the IR. When you have one IP address posting under 13 different usernames attacking anyone who was critical of the IR it wouldn't take a genius to relaize who that perosn was. Plus, NIAC disclosed in its lawsuit against Hassan Dai that it has operatives on iranian.com. That's a shame.