Narges Mohammadi: I Will Not Participate in Any Show Trial

Narges Mohammadi has described her charges as “baseless and false” and announced that she will not appear in any court to defend herself. She has characterized the legal proceedings as “a blatant violation of the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a violation of her own human rights.”

Narges Mohammadi has informed in writing the prosecutor of Zanjan and the Tehran prosecutor’s office that she will not appear in any court to defend herself, as she considers their procedures to be “a blatant violation of the Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a violation of her own human rights and prosecutable.”

According to a report by the “Human Rights Defenders Center,” the prosecutor of Branch 2 of the Zanjan Prosecutor’s Office visited the women’s ward of Zanjan Prison on April 5 to obtain Ms. Mohammadi’s final defense statement, but this prisoner refused to cooperate with the “show trial.”

Narges Mohammadi stated that “so far, in three branches of the Islamic Revolution Court, I have been sentenced to 23 years in prison.” She added: “I announce that I will not appear in the show trials and stage-managed courts of the judiciary, and I accept all of my activities inside Evin Prison, holding sessions, taking positions and issuing statements that I have made from prison over the past years, and I will pay the price for them in this place of exile and under the inhumane conditions imposed on me, and I consider the actions of the Ministry of Intelligence under Mr. Rouhani and the management of Evin Prison and the Prison Organization to be malicious, illegal and contrary to human ethics, and I will not remain silent in response to them.”

According to the Human Rights Defenders Center, Narges Mohammadi is not allowed to leave 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 and inside the prison.

After Narges Mohammadi’s transfer to Zanjan Prison, six new charges in two cases were informed to her in March 2020.

Security authorities have described the two new cases as related to events during her imprisonment. The Zanjan Prosecutor’s Office presents “the distribution of political statements, the establishment of educational classes and a protest sit-in in the women’s ward” as the basis for the new charges.

The prosecutor announced that both cases belong to Tehran and the authority to take the final defense statement has been delegated to the Zanjan Prosecutor’s Office.

“Tyrannical Imprisonment”

Narges Mohammadi, Vice President and Spokesperson of the Human Rights Defenders Center, who has been in prison since June 5, 2015, was previously sentenced to 16 years in prison for 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 from January of last year, and further charges were brought against her in two new cases.

The reason for this transfer was Ms. Mohammadi’s sit-in and several other prisoners in solidarity with flood and earthquake victims and November protests in the Evin Prison office. Evin authorities banned visitors from meeting with the protesters and deprived them of the right to telephone contact with their relatives.

Narges Mohammadi, in a letter issued on the anniversary of her imprisonment, 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 paralysis and has been deprived of telephone contact with her children for several months.

Prior to the release of that letter, Ms. Mohammadi’s lawyer announced that her conditional release had been rejected and that, contrary to the principle of separation of crimes, she is being held alongside dangerous prisoners.

Ezzat Barzegar, Narges Mohammadi’s mother, also in a letter addressed to the head of the judiciary, while criticizing the inhumane conditions at Zanjan Prison, stated: “My daughter has contracted multiple diseases in solitary cells and in the past 5 years of imprisonment, she has undergone three major surgeries and in these years has only had one three-day leave.”

Source: DW