Good afternoon.
On behalf of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for human rights, I would like to thank the honourable members of Parliament for their interest in the situation of human rights in our country.
Given our centre's focus on the right to life, we wish to bring to your attention the Islamic Republic judiciary's utter disregard for these fundamental rights. In 2018, ABC documented 253 executions, including four child offenders. This number is not exhaustive. Secret executions are ongoing in Iran.
Furthermore, every year we gather reports of numerous lives lost to negligence or active violation of human rights and due process by security forces as well as prison or judicial authorities. The government does not authorize any independent investigation of those suspicious deaths. In 2018, we have documented 30 deaths in detention, subsequent to prison authorities' negligence and lack of medical care, torture or altercation with prison guards. Forty-nine unarmed porters carrying merchandise between Iran and neighbouring countries were shot to death by border guards. Fifty-one individuals fell victim to the abusive use of firearms by or during clashes with security forces. In addition to the 253 reported executions, 130 lives were lost to extrajudicial killings or death in detention. To these numbers we must add eight suicides in prisons. One of the victims was the Iranian-Canadian environmentalist, Kavous Seyed-Emam. Whether coerced or voluntary, suicide cases in prison point to a lack of due process, routine torture and harsh prison conditions, all of which require international scrutiny.
As of 2019, so far we have gathered the reports of 66 executions and 51 cases of lives lost to extrajudicial killing, death in detention and abusive use of firearms. One may apprehend the troubling meaning of these abominable and tragic statistics by focusing on the laws and judicial machinery that produce them.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, 200 crimes are punishable by death, including apostasy, adultery, drinking alcohol, homosexuality, rape and the vaguely defined offences of “corruption on earth” and “enmity against God”. The penal code is not the only problem. The judicial system suffers from systemic shortcomings. In 1979, Iran's modern independent judiciary became a main target of its new revolutionary rulers. Soon thereafter, a five-member committee was established to purge the judicial system of undesirable elements. Judges were to be hired among men who were legitimate children and had practical commitment to Islam and allegiance to the Islamic Republic. Practically anyone could be hired as a judge who could obtain the judicial high council's permission. Seminary students who had general knowledge equivalent to a high school diploma were employed as judges or sent to work at prosecutors' offices as well as revolutionary courts. By 1989, the judiciary counted about 2,000 new judges trained in theological seminaries, many having replaced judges trained in law schools.
The risk of judicial incompetence is not the only problem defenders are facing. The constitution of the Islamic Republic denies the judiciaries' independence and submits this branch to arbitrarily serve at the pleasure of the supreme leader. The supreme leader appoints the head of the judiciary, who is the highest judicial authority of the land. The head of the judiciary has the power to appoint, promote and dismiss judges in accordance with loosely defined legal guidelines. He is empowered to remove a judge from a case without his consent if the interest of society necessitates it.
To make matters worse, the law empowers him to invalidate the court verdict that has been approved by the Supreme Court if he considers it to be in contradiction of the sharia law. Such contradiction is only a matter of opinion and interpretation. In addition to this structural shortcoming, it is important to add the systemic violation of the right of the accused to the presumption of innocence and to a proper investigation, as well as severe restriction on the work of defence lawyers, many of whom are silenced and given long-term prison sentences for defending the rights of their clients and publicizing the violation of due process.
Confessions obtained under torture and other methods of duress are accepted by judges as part of a proper mode of investigation. The question is how these appalling systemic deficiencies translate into reality and shape the fate of individuals caught in the grip of the judicial system.
ABC's Omid memorial is populated with more than 24,000 victims, all of whom were deprived of due process guarantees of fair trial established by international human rights laws.
As cases similar to many others, I would draw your attention to the story of two of the victims of 2018 executions. Zanyar and Loghman Moradi, two young Iranian Kurdish citizens, were arrested in August 2009 for the alleged murder of the son of a cleric and two of his companions. Raised by his grandparents in Iran, Zanyar was the son of the well-known exiled Kurdish political activist Eqbal Moradi, who lived in Iraqi Kurdistan. Eqbal had been the target of two assassination attempts, in 2008 and 2018. The second one, in July 2018, resulted in his death.
Prior to his arrest, Zanyar had been summoned to Sanandaj information administration on numerous occasions. He was asked to co-operate in arresting his father. Zanyar and his cousin Loghman were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in order to make them confess to the murder.
In December 2010, Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced them to death by public hanging, on charges related to “enmity against God”, a charge brought against them as a result of their alleged involvement in the murder. The trial apparently lasted only 20 minutes. Defence witnesses who were at the crime scene and had seen the assailants, who bore no resemblance to the Moradi cousins, were not heard by the court. Access to a lawyer was denied during the pretrial and trial proceedings.
During the trial, Zanyar and Loghman both denied the charges and explained that they had confessed to the crimes only due to torture. The Supreme Court subsequently upheld their conviction, and no investigation was undertaken into the claims of torture. In response to his objections to being tortured, prison officials had told Zanyar on one occasion, “This is a political game. When your father engages in activities against us, he should expect something like this to happen.”
Indeed, this was a bloody political game, as evidenced by the sudden execution of Zanyar, Loghman and another innocent Iranian Kurdish young man, Ramin Hossein Panahi, which took place just a few days after a Kurdish armed group announced that it had assaulted an automobile carrying 10 Revolutionary Guards, killing at least five of them.
The Islamic Republic's authorities detain dissidents as hostages and make them pay for other people's crimes. Dispensing justice is not the primary function of the Islamic Republic's judiciary. This institution does not even abide by the unjust laws of the land, as proved by the ongoing persecution of lawyers. The judiciary—