Iranian human-rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani was arrested in Tehran earlier this month—re-arrested, actually.

This was Mr. Soltani’s third detention since 2005. Sometimes Tehran files charges and sometimes—as currently appears to be the case for Mr. Soltani—it doesn’t bother.

Mr. Soltani’s only crime is that he defends Iran’s persecuted Bahais, who form the country’s largest religious minority. Mr. Soltani, along with Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, co-founded Iran’s Centre for Human Rights Defenders, which Tehran shut down in 2008.

When he was arrested this month, Mr. Soltani had been preparing to represent a number of detained Bahais who had been detained for their work at the Bahai Institute for Higher Education. This informal initiative gives young Bahais a chance to study, since Iran bars them from university for their beliefs.

Mr. Soltani’s arrest is only the latest in a disturbing trend. In the last several months, dozens of Iranian lawyers have been detained or imprisoned. Mohammad Mostafaei, who has defended dozens of clients from death sentences, fled Iran last year. He had been defending Sakineh Ashtiani, the woman who had been sentenced to death by stoning until an international outcry secured her a stay of execution. For his troubles, Mr. Mostafaei and his family had been detained and harassed, until he finally left the country in August 2010. His replacement, Houtan Kian, did not escape and is now in prison. Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer for human-rights activists and prominent journalists, has been in jail for more than a year.

 
Ms. Sotoudeh and Messrs. Soltani, Mostafaei and Kian are in a company of braves. Despite the government’s intense crackdown, Iranian human-rights lawyers regularly defend ethnic and religious minorities, women’s-rights promoters and civil-rights campaigners—always against the odds and often at tragic personal cost.

Iran’s government is a party to international covenants on human rights. But by snatching away one of the last defenses for Iranian activists, the authorities clearly want to smother any calls for them to abide by their obligations.

So once again, Mr. Soltani joins his clients behind bars. It is unclear when the Bahai educators will face trial, though it could be a while, judging by the delays and due-process shenanigans that other arrested Bahais have faced. The Bahai community’s seven leaders were arrested in 2008 and, despite international standards and Iran’s own laws, were kept in the notorious Evin prison with minimal access to their families or to counsel until 2010, when a show trial condemned them each to 20 years in prison. Ms. Ebadi said at the time that the evidence against them had no basis in fact.

The same must be said for the arrested Bahai educators. Their homes were raided in May and they have been in jail ever since. The charges against them are absurd: conspiracy against national security and the state, simply for teaching their students.

Iran kicked its Bahais out of state universities after the 1979 revolution. In 1991, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei signed a memorandum to “block the progress and development” of the Bahai community by, among other measures, systematically denying them access to any higher education at all. Iranian Bahais are also denied the right to legal representation, to earning livelihoods and even to organize as a religious community.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting the United Nations in New York this week, trumpeting the release of two American hikers as a sign of goodwill. But let us remember the true color of the Iranian regime: Religious minorities are denied education, and activists are herded into prison—and even their lawyers need lawyers.

Source : The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903791504576586941974721926.html)