Narges Mohammadi: I Will Not Participate in Any Staged or Orchestrated Trial
Narges Mohammadi has dismissed her charges as “baseless and false,” declaring that she will not appear in any court for her defense. She has characterized the legal proceedings as “a clear violation of the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a violation of her own human rights.”
Narges Mohammadi has submitted a written statement to the Zanjan prosecutor and the Tehran district attorney, informing them that she will not appear in any court for her defense, as she considers their procedures to be “a clear violation of the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as violations of her own human rights and subject to prosecution.”
According to a report from the “Human Rights Defenders Center,” the prosecutor of Branch 2 of the Zanjan District Court visited the women’s ward of Zanjan Prison on April 6 to take Ms. Mohammadi’s final defense statement, but the detainee refused to cooperate with the “staged and orchestrated court.”
Narges Mohammadi stated that “I have so far been sentenced to 23 years in prison by three branches of the Islamic Revolution Court of Appeals.” She added: “I declare that I will not appear in the orchestrated and staged courts of the judiciary, and I accept all of my activities inside Evin Prison, the holding of sessions, my positions and statements that I have issued from prison over the past years, and I will bear the cost of this in exile and under the inhumane conditions imposed on me, and I consider the actions of the Ministry of Intelligence, Mr. Rouhani, the management of Evin Prison and the Prison Organization to be prejudicial, contrary to law and human ethics, and I will not remain silent in the face of them.”
According to the Human Rights Defenders Center, Narges Mohammadi is prohibited from leaving the women’s ward of Zanjan Prison even with the presence of security forces and under custody, such that the judicial and administrative procedures that should be carried out in the prosecutor’s branches are being conducted by sending the prosecutor and judicial officials to the women’s ward inside the prison.
Following Narges Mohammadi’s transfer to Zanjan Prison, six new charges were filed against her in two separate cases in March 2020.
Security officials have described the two new cases as relating to incidents during her imprisonment. The Zanjan District Attorney’s Office has cited “publishing political statements, organizing educational classes and holding a protest sit-in in the women’s ward” as evidence for the new charges.
The prosecutor has announced that both cases belong to Tehran and the taking of the final defense statement has been delegated to the Zanjan District Court as a proxy.
“Tyrannical Imprisonment”
Narges Mohammadi, deputy director and spokeswoman of the Human Rights Defenders Center who has been in prison since June 5, 2015, was previously sentenced to 16 years in prison on three charges.
Following Ms. Mohammadi’s protest sit-in at Evin Prison in solidarity with nationwide protests in November 2019, she was transferred to Zanjan Prison in December and faced additional charges in two separate new cases.
The reason for this transfer was Ms. Mohammadi’s sit-in and several other detainees in solidarity with victims of floods and earthquakes and November protests in the Evin Prison office. Evin officials placed the protesters in solitary confinement and deprived them of the right to phone contact with their families.
In a letter published on the anniversary of her imprisonment, Narges Mohammadi spoke of “tyrannical imprisonment among the victims of poverty, corruption and patriarchal laws.”
Narges Mohammadi, mother of two children, suffers from pulmonary embolism and muscular dystrophy and has been deprived of phone contact with her children for several months.
Prior to the publication of the aforementioned letter, Ms. Mohammadi’s lawyer had announced that her conditional release request had been rejected and she is being held alongside dangerous prisoners, contrary to the principle of separation of offenses.
Ezzat Bazan, Narges Mohammadi’s mother, also wrote a letter to the head of the judiciary, criticizing the inhumane conditions of Zanjan Prison, saying: “My daughter has contracted multiple diseases in solitary cells and over the past five years in prison has undergone three major surgeries and in these years has been granted only one three-day leave.”
Source: DW
