Al Monitor – Twenty-five percent of candidates for the Iranian Bar Association’s board of directors have been rejected by the High Regulatory Council of Judges.
“Disapproval of competence” is a legal device used by the Iranian government to limit access to public offices. Yet, the use of this device is not limited to cases of presidential, parliamentary or urban or rural council candidates. In fact, 25% of candidates vying for spots on the Iranian Bar Association’s board of directors, set for election on March 11, have been rejected based on their level of competence.
Legally, the High Regulatory Council of Judges is the supervisory body for the bar association’s elections. The council’s head is selected directly by the head of the judicial branch, a position currently held by conservative cleric Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani.
More amazing than the sheer quantity of people excluded, are the names of those rejected. Among the 29 individuals rejected based on their competence are Behshid Arfania, Abbas Karimi, Isa Amini, Shapour Manouchehri and Kamran Aghaie — all current members of the bar association’s board of directors. Mohammad Jandaghi additionally boasts on his resume the position of chairmanship of the board.
This sweeping round of rejections follows the bar association’s 104th anniversary, as well as last week’s Attorney Day celebrations. The bar association is the oldest legal association in Iran and has gone through many trials and tribulations throughout its history.
From its foundation in 1954, the bar association was not independent from the government. However, after much struggle that year, the civil body managed to gain its independence and, until 1979, its elections were conducted through a relatively free and democratic process.
After the 1979 revolution, upon witnessing the revolutionary courts ignoring legal procedures, the association raised a complaint against the “revolutionary” conduct of the judicial system. This complaint resulted in the arrest of several members of its board of directors by the revolutionary forces. After that, the association came to be dominated by the government, and for 18 years the Islamic Republic would find various excuses to stop the elections of its board of directors. With the victory of Mohammad Khatami in the 1997 presidential elections, a new hope emerged for the restoration of the bar association to an independent and nongovernmental body. Indeed, despite the serious opposition of the conservatives who disapproved of the Reformist government’s efforts to create nongovernmental civil institutions, the association was given the chance to elect its board of directors.
A member of the bar association, speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, said, “With the unpleasant memory of confrontation between the government and the bar association lingering, the government tried to maintain the ‘safety valve’ [Persian jargon for puppet opposition and criticizing institutions] under Khatami’s Reformist government that insisted on preserving the independence of the association. In the fifth parliament, dominated in 1997 by the conservatives, a law regarding the ‘conditions for obtaining an attorney practice license’ was passed. Based on amendment one to article four of this law, the control of the elections of the bar association’s board of directors was given to the High Regulatory Council of Judges. In this way, whenever it was felt that the situation was not ideal, the authority of the association could be curbed.”
Political analysts consider the electoral victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the beginning of a new round of pressure against independent civil bodies, among which pressure on the bar association stands out. Six years ago, under Ahmadinejad’s government, at least one-third of the attorneys running in the association’s board of directors’ election were rejected by the High Regulatory Council. Among them were Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, Nemat Ahmadi, Nasser Zarafshan, Abdolfattah Soltani, Ghasem Sholeh-Saadi and Shirin Ebadi.
In the winter of 2010, when Iran was still witnessing the street clashes of the Ashura and 22 Bahman demonstrations, these numbers increased significantly. At that time, the military court rejected the competence of about half of the board of director candidates on March 11.
A political analyst told Al-Monitor that although the rate of rejections has dropped when compared to the era of Ahmadinejad, the situation is not yet ideal. “[President Hassan] Rouhani was supposed to come and limit these illegal actions, so that no one can just reject whoever they want on a whim. My analysis is that Rouhani does not want to come into conflict with the judicial system. He considers foreign relations and the internal economic crisis to be enough and does not want to get involved in a new front.”
Rouhani met with the members of the bar association’s board of directors on Feb. 23. However, based on media reports, he did not mention the issue of rejections, although he emphasized the need for attorney independence and legal immunity while undertaking legal procedures. On the other hand, it appears as if the public outcry of the rejected attorneys, as well as the president’s behind-the-scenes negotiations, has somehow driven the judicial branch into a retreat position.
On Feb. 28, cleric Hossein Ali Nayyeri, head of the High Regulatory Council of Judges, told reporters, “The 29 lawyers are not rejected. It is just that the competence of some of them was not yet reviewed. It is set that their cases will be reviewed, and the results will be announced on Wednesday [March 5] by the judicial unit in charge of it.” Two days after this announcement, the deputy head of the capital’s bar association reported the approval of the competence of five lawyers, among them Abbas Karimi, Isa Amini and Mohammad Jandaghi.
An editor of Etemad newspaper told Al-Monitor, “I think the judicial branch is retreating. Lawyers, after journalists and university students, have been the group most targeted by the judicial branch and the security establishment. I think we have the highest number of lawyers in prison in the world!”
At present, a number of attorneys are spending time in jail, including Abdolfattah Soltani, Mohammad Seifzadeh and a number of attorneys defending the Gonabadi Dervishes, such as Mostafa Daneshjou, Amir Eslami, Omid Behrouzi and Farshid Yadollahi. Several other lawyers, like Nasser Zarafshan and Nasrin Sotoudeh, have also finished long jail sentences. The cases against these lawyers have been mainly based on their defense of political prisoners or prisoners of conscious. It appears that the judicial and security establishments, aside from punishing the lawyers, are now targeting the bar association’s internal affairs.
Abbas Karimi, one of the lawyers whose competence was first rejected and then approved, criticized the process, saying, “If my rejection was based on my criticism of the fact that the phones of the association were tapped or the building and the meetings were filmed, then I will oppose that again.” He further emphasized, “Lawyers and judges need to be professionally independent in their jobs, and this independence needs to be guaranteed.”
By A Correspondent in Tehran
Photo: Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, an Iranian human rights lawyer imprisoned in 2012, is interviewed by Reuters in his office in Tehran, Oct. 3, 2011. (photo by REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi)