“Mostafa Daneshju” from Gonabadi Dervishes Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison
Reports indicate that “Mostafa Daneshju,” a lawyer and member of the Gonabadi Dervishes, has been sentenced to 8 years in prison.
“Ali Sharif Zadeh,” the lawyer of Mostafa Daneshju, wrote on Twitter on Sunday, December 16, that Mr. Daneshju has been sentenced to five years in prison on charges of assembly and conspiracy.
According to this lawyer, Mr. Daneshju has been sentenced to two years imprisonment for disturbing public opinion and one year imprisonment for propaganda activities against the system.
Mostafa Daneshju, a lawyer and expelled senior law student and one of the administrators of the Majzuban-e Nur website that published news about the Dervishes, was arrested on the morning of July 8 of this year and spent one and a half months of his detention in solitary confinement in Evin Prison.
In April 2011, he was also sent to Sari Prison under a sentence of seven months of disciplinary imprisonment, but during the serving of this sentence, a new case was filed and he was transferred to Evin Prison and sentenced to an additional three years and six months in prison.
This lawyer and activist for the rights of Gonabadi Dervishes, who was imprisoned in Evin and Sari prisons for more than four years, was released from Evin Prison on Monday, May 18, 2015, when his sentence ended.
The wave of arrests of Gonabadi Dervishes and the issuance of heavy judicial sentences against them began following street clashes on Golestan-e Haftom Street in the Pasdaran neighborhood of Tehran.
A gathering of Gonabadi Dervishes in front of the Pasdaran Police Station on the last day of Bahman last year, in protest of the arrest of an elderly Dervish, turned violent with the intervention of plainclothes officers and police forces.
During these clashes, which continued until the first day of Esfand, several police and Basij officers were killed, and hundreds of Gonabadi Dervishes were arrested.
Since then, concerning reports of human rights violations against imprisoned Dervishes have been published, which has drawn the attention of international bodies. Including the International Federation of Human Rights Societies, which on May 7, referring to the trial of arrested Gonabadi Dervishes along with “cover-ups,” called this action a “mockery of justice” and “an obvious violation of international standards.”
The U.S. State Department also condemned the suppression of Gonabadi Dervishes in March of last year and reacted to the suspicious death of one of these Dervishes in detention, describing it as concerning.
Source: Voice of America
