Yazd City Council Chairman Sentenced to Flogging, But Says He Will Not Remain Silent
The head of the Yazd city council has been sentenced to flogging and a fine on charges of “insult, spreading lies, and slander.” Last year, he sought to lift the suspension of Spanta Niknam from the Yazd city council. He demanded that his sentence be carried out, saying he was not willing to “shut his mouth.”
Gholamali Sefid, the head of Yazd City Council, has been sentenced to 37 lashes and a fine of one million rials. He had been pushing for the lifting of this restriction last year after the Guardian Council suspended the sentence of Sepanta Niknam, a Zoroastrian member of Yazd City Council.
The plaintiff is Ali Asghar Bagheri, the chairman of Yazd City Council. Bagheri filed a complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court last year, after the results of the council elections were announced and Spanta Niknam was elected to the council, and when the Guardian Council approved her membership. As a result of this complaint, Spanta Niknam’s membership in the Yazd City Council was revoked. This ruling was overturned after weeks of protests and with the efforts of the government, some members of parliament, and the chairman of the Yazd City Council.
Gholamali Sefid’s sentence is suspended for one year due to his age. However, in an interview with the “Jamaran” website, he preferred to have his sentence carried out, saying that he will be older next year and that he “is not going to shut his mouth.” Ali Asghar Bagheri’s complaint against Gholamali Sefid apparently relates to a speech in which the head of the Yazd City Council called Ali Asghar Bagheri an “extremist.” Ali Asghar Bagheri also complained that he had been “insulted.”
Gholamali Sefid says that Ali Asghar Bagheri produces a weekly magazine during Friday prayers in Yazd in which he criticizes “the regime’s figures,” including Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami, Hassan Rouhani, and the “children of the Imam,” “calls them names and portrays them in a bad light.” He has criticized that despite all this and despite Ali Asghar Bagheri “doing whatever he wants,” “no one tells him anything.”
He also complained about a story that the Islamic Republic Radio and Television broadcast. According to the head of the Yazd City Council, the Islamic Republic Radio and Television broadcast a telephone conversation with a person from Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari in a television program showing his image as the “CEO of the Hazrat Javad Al-Aemme Cultural Charity Organization,” in which the person claimed that he worked for the organization in question, that “the organization did not pay him,” and that “a number of workers have now become unemployed.”
Gholamali Sefid has said that this story is completely “fabricated” and not a single sentence is true because he did not have a contractor, was never at Sar-e-Pol-e-Zahab, and does not know this person. He filed a complaint after the program was broadcast. But the judge “issued a restraining order.”
The head of the Yazd City Council has asked why saying that someone is an "extremist" should be considered "spreading lies" and "insulting" and he should be sentenced to flogging, but the issues that the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation has broadcast about him should be banned?
Source: DW
