One of the detainees from the January 2019 protests sentenced to prison
Farhad Bakhshi, one of the detainees of the January 2019 protests, has been sentenced by the Revolutionary Court to 6 months in prison and to write a handwritten investigation.
A source close to Farhad Bakhshi told VOA on Tuesday, May 13, that the Tehran citizen was tried by Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court on charges of "gathering and colluding against national security" and sentenced to six months in prison for participating in protests against the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 by the Revolutionary Guards.
According to this informed person, Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court has also issued him a month of service in one of the Basij bases and the writing of a 90-page handwritten research as additional punishment.
On January 12, 2019, after attending protests against the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 by a missile attack by the Revolutionary Guards, Farhad Bakhshi was arrested by the IRGC's intelligence forces in front of Amirkabir University in Tehran and transferred to the Greater Tehran Prison (Fashafoyeh Prison).
This person close to Mr. Bakhshi says that he is currently the only detainee from the January 2019 protests who, despite being granted bail of one hundred million tomans, is still being held in the Greater Tehran Prison due to his inability to pay the bail.
Previously, Mohammad Moghimi, a lawyer, had said in an interview with Radio Zamaneh regarding the charges brought by the judiciary against participants in protest rallies against the downing of a Ukrainian plane by the IRGC's air defenses that these charges have no legal or logical basis.
This is not the first time that the Islamic Republic has sentenced one of the detainees of the January 2019 protests to prison. Previously, Voice of America reported that Seyyed Mostafa Hashemizadeh, a civil engineering student at the University of Tehran who was arrested during the January 2019 protests, was sentenced by the Revolutionary Court to 6 years in prison and 74 lashes.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which was en route from Tehran to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on January 8, 2020 with 176 passengers, crashed minutes after taking off due to a missile attack by the Revolutionary Guard near the new city of Parand in Tehran province, killing all of its passengers, who were mostly Iranians.
On Friday, April 10, the 100th day since the crash of the passenger plane in Iran, US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said in a Twitter message: "100 days ago, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted and shot down Flight PS752, killing 176 passengers and crew."
Source: Voice of America
