Conviction of One of December 2019 Protest Detainee to Prison
Farhad Bakhshi, one of the detainees from the December 2019 protests, has been sentenced by the Revolutionary Court to 6 months imprisonment and writing a handwritten research paper.
A source close to Farhad Bakhshi told Voice of America on Tuesday, May 13, that this Tehran resident was tried by Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security” for participating in protest gatherings over the downing of Flight 752 of Ukraine International Airlines by a missile attack from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment.
According to this informed source, Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court also issued one month of service at one of the Basij bases and writing a 90-page handwritten research paper as additional punishment for him.
Farhad Bakhshi was arrested on December 12, 2019, after participating in protests held against the downing of Flight 752 of Ukraine International Airlines by a missile attack from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by Revolutionary Guard intelligence forces in front of Amir Kabir University in Tehran, and was transferred to Tehran’s main prison (Fashafuyeh Prison).
This person close to Mr. Bakhshi says that he is currently the only detainee from the December 2019 protests who, despite having bail set at 100 million tomans, remains imprisoned in Tehran’s main prison due to inability to pay the bail.
Previously, Mohammad Moghimi, a lawyer, in an interview with Radio Zamane regarding the charges brought by the judiciary against participants in protest gatherings against the downing of the Ukrainian plane by the Revolutionary Guard’s air defense, stated that these charges fundamentally lack legal basis and logic.
This is not the first time the Islamic Republic has sentenced one of the detainees from the December 2019 protests to prison. Previously, Voice of America had also reported that Seyyed Mostafa Hashemizadeh, a civil engineering student at the University of Tehran who was arrested during the December 2019 protests, was sentenced by the Revolutionary Court to 6 years imprisonment and 74 lashes.
Flight 752 of Ukraine International Airlines, which departed Tehran on January 8, 2020, with 176 passengers bound for Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, crashed minutes after takeoff due to a missile attack by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps near Parand New City in Tehran province, and all its passengers, mostly Iranians, were killed.
Morgan Ortagus, spokesperson of the U.S. State Department, on Friday, April 19, on the 100th day of the crash of this passenger plane in Iran, said in a tweet: “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted and shot down Flight PS752 100 days ago and killed 176 passengers and crew members.”
Source: Voice of America
