

HRANA, November 8, 2017.

Mr. Sarmad Shadabi (سرمد شادابی), Tara Houshmand (تارا هوشمند) and Rouhiyyeh Safajou (روحیه صفاجو), aged 22, 21 and 21 respectively, have each been sentenced to five years in prison by the notorious human rights violator Judge Moqiseh (قاضی مقیسه). All three are students barred from tertiary education because of their Bahai beliefs, who pursued their constitutional rights to equal treatment through various legal means. They were arrested in Tehran on March 8, 2016.

Tara Houshmand was arrested by security agents in her home in Tehran, which was searched. She was one of a group of Bahais excluded from education who responded to a claim made in 2014, by Mohammad Javad Larijani, Head of the Human Rights Council of the Judiciary, that Iranian authorities do not discriminate against Bahais, and challenging the Bahais excluded from education to send documentation. The Bahai students took their documentation to the authorities as requested, thus exposing Mr. Larijani’s lie. The story is detailed here.

Mr. Sarmad Shadabi was arrested at the Roudehen campus of the Islamic Free University, near Tehran. He was a signatory of a letter about the breaches of Bahais’ civil rights, written to a Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights. An interview with him, about his expulsion from University, was cited on the BBC Persian service.

Rouhiyyeh Safajou was arrested by 8 security agents posing as workers from the gas supply company who entered her home. She was one of a group of Bahai students excluded from tertiary education who met with Ali Reza Mahjoub (علی‌رضا محجوب), a reformist Member of Parliament, to argue for the right of education. The meeting was reported on this blog in September 2014. Mr. Mahjoub called the students terrorists and gunmen and expelled them from his office.

The three were summoned to appear in court six times, but court sittings were held on only two occasions. In the first sitting, Judge Moqiseh was absent and another Judge took his place. This Judge heard the accusations and defence, and issued a summons to the Prosecutor’s Office dealing with the defendants’ case to come to court and explain why they had been arrested [since they had not broken any law ~ sen]. However at the next sitting, on September 26 this year, Judge Moqiseh was present, as were the defendants and their lawyer. No representative from the Prosecutor’s office was present to explain why the defendants had been arrested. Judge Moqiseh reserved his judgement, and now, five weeks later, has announced the sentences of five years each on charges of undermining state security in the form of membership of the Bahai sect. The ruling contained no mention of the defence that had been presented, as if the defendants and their lawyer had not attended the court at all.

Older items can be found in the archive, here. Even older news is here.