Three Haft Tappeh union activists were pardoned after serving five years in prison.
The convictions of three protesting Haft Tappe workers and four civil society and student activists were included in the amnesty. Esmaeil Bakhshi, Mohammad Khanifer, Ali Nejati, Atefeh Rangriz, Marzieh Amiri, and Soheil Aghazadeh were included in the list of “security defendants.”
Farzaneh Zeilabi, a lawyer for the workers of the Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Agricultural and Industrial Company, confirmed the cancellation of her clients' five-year sentence, telling the media that this pardon has not yet been notified in writing.
On the evening of Saturday, June 25, the Iranian judiciary's news website announced that the Leader of the Islamic Republic had agreed to "pardon" and commute the sentences of 3,712 convicts, including a number of "security defendants," but did not mention the names of the individuals in question.
The “Defense of Hafte Tappeh Detainees” campaign wrote that Esmaeil Bakhshi, Ali Nejati, Mohammad Khanifar, Marzieh Amiri, Atefeh Rangriz, Neda Naji, Leila Hosseinzadeh, and Soheil Aghazadeh are among these individuals. Bakhshi and Khanifar are dismissed workers from Hafte Tappeh, and Nejati is a retiree of the company. These three union activists have been summoned and arrested many times in recent years.
Haft Tappeh Company was sold to the private sector in 2015, and the reason for the protest and strike by its workers was this transfer and unpaid wages. Esmaeil Bakhshi, who was the spokesperson and representative of the protesters during the Haft Tappeh labor protests, was sentenced in September 2019 to 14 years in prison and 74 lashes. He was temporarily released from prison in November of this year on bail of 750 million Tomans, pending the completion of the case.
Atefeh Rangriz and Marzieh Amiri were arrested along with several student activists during the International Labor Day protests in 2019. According to the judiciary's ruling, Neda Naji, another civil society activist who was arrested on the same day and is on leave, will not return to prison.
Sepideh Qolyan, a social activist sentenced to 18 years in prison for supporting the Haft Tappeh protests, is not on the amnesty list. She is currently out on bail of 1.5 billion tomans, and tweeted: “Atefeh Rangriz was pardoned despite enduring all kinds of mental and emotional torture during her detention. She was granted bail three times and each time it was revoked. Nevertheless, I congratulate this strong girl on her release.”
The “Defense of Haft Tappeh Detainees and Progressive Prisoners” campaign said in a message: “We demand the cancellation of the inhumane sentences of all defendants in this case, including the editorial board of Gam magazine, Haft Tappeh supporters such as Sepideh Qolyan, the detainees of the Haft Tappeh court and International Workers’ Day, and other defendants in the labor, student, and political protest cases, and we will not remain silent until this goal is achieved.”
Amir Amirgholi, Sanaz Allahyari, and Amir Hossein Mohammadifar, three members of the online publication Gam, have been arrested in connection with publishing news and reports related to the Haft Tappeh labor protests.
Haft Tappeh union activists have been granted amnesty while the trial of the company’s CEO and board members on charges of corruption, bribery, and foreign exchange embezzlement is ongoing behind closed doors. One of the charges against Omid Asadbeigi, the 33-year-old CEO of Haft Tappeh, is that he received $1.5 billion in government currency to address the company’s situation but sold the currency on the open market. Gholamreza Shariati, the governor of Khuzestan, and his wife have also been charged with receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.
Source: DW
