"Mostafa Daneshjoo", a Gonabadi dervish, was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Reports indicate that "Mostafa Daneshjoo", a lawyer and Gonabadi dervish, has been sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Ali Sharifzadeh, Mustafa Daneshjo's lawyer, wrote on Twitter on Sunday, December 15, that Mr. Daneshjo has been sentenced to five years in prison on charges of gathering and collusion.
According to this lawyer, Mr. Daneshjo has been sentenced to two years in prison for disturbing public opinion and one year in prison for propaganda activities against the regime.
Mustafa Daneshjoo, a lawyer and expelled senior law student, and one of the managers of the Majzooban Noor website, which published news about the Dervishes, was arrested on the morning of July 8th of this year and spent a month and a half of his detention in solitary confinement in Evin Prison.
In May 2011, he was sent to Sari Prison with a seven-month prison sentence. While serving this sentence, he was transferred to Evin Prison after a new case was filed and sentenced to another three years and six months in prison.
This Gonabadi Dervish lawyer and rights activist, who was imprisoned in Evin and Sari prisons for more than four years, was released from Evin prison on Monday, May 18, 2015, upon the completion of his sentence.
The wave of arrests of Gonabadi dervishes and the issuance of heavy judicial sentences against them began following clashes on Golestan 7th Street in the Pasdaran neighborhood of Tehran.
A gathering of Gonabadi dervishes in front of the Pasdaran police station on the last day of February last year to protest the arrest of an elderly dervish turned violent with the intervention of plainclothes officers and police forces.
During these clashes, which continued until March 1, several police and Basij officers were killed, and hundreds of Gonabadi dervishes were arrested.
Since then, disturbing news has been published about the violation of the rights of imprisoned dervishes, which has drawn reactions from international organizations. Among them, the International Federation of Human Rights Societies on May 16, referring to the trial of the detained Gonabadi dervishes with "undercover work", called this action a "farce of justice" and a "blatant violation of international standards."
In March of last year, the US State Department, while condemning the repression of the Gonabadi Dervishes, reacted to the suspicious death of one of these dervishes in detention, describing it as worrying.
Source: Voice of America
