Amirpourang Sarmadi Tehrani, a civil activist, was arrested without receiving a summons and transferred to Babol Prison.
The defense lawyer of Amirpourang Sarmadi Tehrani, a civil activist living in Babolsar, says that he was arrested illegally and without receiving a summons, and transferred to Babol Prison to execute the warrant.
Ali Sharifzadeh, the lawyer for Amirpourang Sarmadi Tehrani, told VOA that the civil activist was arrested by Babolsar security forces at his workplace on Wednesday, December 1, without receiving a summons, and was transferred to Babol Prison to serve his sentence.
The lawyer, who considers Mr. Sarmadi Tehrani's arrest and transfer to prison illegal, told VOA: "Our issue is Article 500 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which states that the convicted person is summoned to execute the verdict. The note to this article also states that if there is a fear of escape or hiding, the judge executing the sentences can issue an arrest order by citing the reason in the case file. However, as far as I know, no summons has been sent to Mr. Sarmadi; because if a summons had been issued and served, they would have sent it to me as well."
Ali Sharifzadeh says that his client "was not afraid of fleeing or hiding. His place of work and residence was also known, and we did not anticipate that he would be arrested at the height of the coronavirus outbreak." The lawyer says that a summons should have been issued first, and if Mr. Sarmadi Tehrani did not appear, a summons would have been issued for his bailiff or guarantor; but unfortunately, these provisions were not observed in the case of Amirpourang Sarmadi Tehrani.
The lawyer also told VOA about the conviction of this civil activist, Amirpourang Sarmadi Tehrani was arrested by the IRGC intelligence in August 2019. He was eventually released from Evin Prison after his interrogations ended and he posted a bail of 500 million Tomans, temporarily until the end of the trial. In December 2019, Mr. Sarmadi Tehrani was sentenced to a total of 8 years in prison by Judge Salavati, head of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, on charges of “gathering and colluding against national security,” “propaganda activity against the system,” and “insulting the leadership.”
According to Mr. Sharifzadeh, this sentence was confirmed in full by Branch 36 of the Tehran Provincial Court of Appeal in May of this year. He added that, based on Article 134 of the Islamic Penal Code, which stipulates the aggregation of sentences, five years of this sentence has been implemented as the maximum punishment for this citizen living in Babolsar.
It should be noted that this case had 12 defendants, two of whom, Khaled Pirzadeh and Reza Mohammad Hosseini, were tried in Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Moghiseh, and were sentenced to a total of 12 years and six months in prison.
Ali Sharifzadeh, a lawyer who has represented eight of these citizens, told VOA that in the past few months, prison sentences for three other cases involving Mr. Sarmadi Tehrani have also been implemented, and Ataollah Rezaei has been transferred to Langroud Prison in Qom, Sasan Niknafs to Greater Tehran Prison, and Yasin Jamali to Evin Prison.
It should be noted that the judges in these cases, both Judge Salavati and Judge Moghiseh, have been sanctioned by the United States for issuing human rights violations and are known for handing down long prison sentences to critics and political activists. Most political and legal activists in Iran say that instead of following the judicial process, these judges are implementing the demands of IRGC and intelligence interrogators and sentencing the defendants to the harshest sentences. The US State Department has repeatedly condemned the Islamic Republic regime’s violent treatment of the Iranian people, including civil society activists, under various pretexts, as well as the repeated and persistent violations of the rights of Iranian citizens by regime agents.
Source: Voice of America
