Iranian dissident Ebrahim Yazdi has been sentenced to eight years in prison and a five-year ban from civic activities for the crime of “activities against national security and publishing falsehoods.”
Aftab website quotes Yazdi’s lawyer saying he had challenged the competence of the court and declared the case should be tried in open court before a jury. Therefore, he refused to present a defence.
According to the Article 168 of the Islamic Republic Constitution, political crimes must be prosecuted in an open court in front of a jury. However, Iranian authorities have ignored that stipulation, arguing that political crimes are not defined in the constitution.
Nevertheless, Yazdi’s defence attorney said there is a good chance the appellate court would recognize the preliminary court’s lack of competence in this case.
Ebrahim Yazdi, the head of the reformist organization the Freedom Movement of Iran, was arrested after the controversial presidential elections of 2009, when waves of reformists were detained for challenging the election process.
Yazdi was released three days after his first arrest in July of 2009, only to be re-arrested in December of that year. After 60 days of solitary confinement, he was released on bail due to severe heart complications.
He was arrested once more in September of 2010 for participating in what the authorities called “an illegal Friday Mass prayer” in Esfahan. He spent three months in Evin and another three months in so-called Revolutionary Guards safe houses until the octogenarian dissident was finally released on bail to await the outcome of his trial.
Source : Radio Zamaneh
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Iran Jails Veteran Opposition Figure
Iranian opposition activist Ebrahim Yazdi, who served briefly as foreign minister following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has been sentenced to eight years in prison, his lawyer told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.
Mohammad Ali Dadkhah also said that the opposition figure was handed a five-year ban on civic activities.
The 80-year-old Yazdi, who heads the banned Freedom Movement, was put on trial on security charges, including acting against national security and spreading lies. Similar charges have often been brought against political activists in Iran.
Yazdi had refused to defend himself because he said he didn’t recognize the Revolutionary Court’s legitimacy to put him on trial and review the charges against him.
Yazdi has been in and out of prison in Iran over the past two decades. He was jailed in Iran last year and also following the 2009 postelection crackdown.
One of the main reasons for the sentence against him is reportedly his leadership of the Freedom Movement. Yazdi’s open letter to Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda, in which he warned about a repeat of the Iranian experience, is also said to have angered hard-liners.
In the October letter, Yazdi warned that Muslims don’t have enough experience with democracy.
“We fight and overthrow dictators, but not dictatorship itself. Despotism is not just a political structure. It has its corresponding social and cultural dimensions, which enable it to persist and which become ingrained in individuals and whole societies afflicted by despotism for a long time.
“The result is that we Muslims overthrow despots often to see a new ones replace it. This is what has indeed befallen us in Iran. We deposed the shah, but neglected to address the ‘shah’ personality within our own selves. Thus the vicious circle continues.”
Yazdi’s son in law, Mehdi Nourbakhsh, told RFE/RL the opposition activist was suffering from prostate cancer and other health problems and was in need of constant medical care.
“Last time he was in jail he had to be transferred to the hospital several times” because of his health problems, Nourbakhsh said. “At his age and under these conditions I think what the establishment is doing to [Yazdi] is extremely unjust , unfair, and cruel.”