{"id":6056,"date":"2016-10-24T21:59:18","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T02:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=6056"},"modified":"2016-10-24T21:59:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T02:59:18","slug":"iran-ahmad-montazeri-on-trial-without-a-lawyer-in-the-special-clerical-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/6056\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Ahmad Montazeri, on trial without a lawyer in the Special Clerical Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ahmad-montazeri-400\"NCRI –\u00a0Iran: Trial of Ahmad Montazeri without a lawyer in the Special Clerical Court on charges of \u201cacting against national security\u201d<\/span><\/strong>
\nAccording to reports, Ahmad Montazeri, son of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri (former Deputy Supreme Leader and Khomeini\u2019s nominated successor at the time) was tried in the Special Court for Clerics (SCC) in Qom on Wednesday, October 19, for publishing an audio file of his father\u2019s meeting with the \u201cDeath Commission\u201d responsible for the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988 in Iran.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Montazeri\u2019s family announced the news on their Telegram channel, adding that the court session was held \u201cbehind closed doors without the presence of a defense lawyer and jury.\u201d The statement said that Ahmad Montazeri was accused of \u201cacting against national security\u201d and the charges were read out by Ansari-Zadeh, representative of the prosecutor.<\/p>\n

Ahmad Montazeri has denied the charges but \u201con the request of the relevant authorities, it has been decided not to publish the content of the meeting until the court\u2019s verdict is announced,\u201d Ayatollah Montazeri\u2019s family added.<\/p>\n

The court started at 9:00 a.m. and ended at around 13:00 in the afternoon. The Special Court for Clerics does not exist in the constitution of the Islamic Republic but the Court has been handling the cases of allegation and offenses committed by this stratum for years. The Court is accountable only to the Supreme Leader.<\/p>\n

On August 2016, Ayatollah Montazeri\u2019s official website published an audio file of this late Ayatollah\u2019s meeting with the member of \u201cDeath Commission\u201d including Hossein-Ali Nayeri, Morteza Eshraghi, Ebrahim Raeisi and Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi (current Justice Minister in Rouhani\u2019s administration) who oversaw and approved all the executions during the 1988 massacre of political prisoners after a fatwa by the regime\u2019s then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. In this meeting, Ayatollah Montazeri describes the mass execution of political prisoners as \u201cthe greatest crime committed during the reign of the Islamic Republic\u201d and tells them that they would be remembered in the future as criminals.<\/p>\n

The release of the audio file was met with widespread reactions in Iran and outside the country. Most officials and figures of the Islamic Republic from both the hardline and the reformist factions, who took a stance on this issue, defended Khomeini\u2019s decision for the mass execution of prisoners in 1988. However, figures like Ali Motahari demanded an apology from the perpetrators of the crime.<\/p>\n

The People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), whose members and supporters make up most of those executed in that year, once again called for justice and the trial of the leaders of the Islamic Republic on charges of \u201ccrimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, 100 Iranian civil society figures, academics and human rights activists living abroad in a letter to the UN Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court urged these institutions to recognize the 1988 massacre of political prisoners as \u201ccrime against humanity.\u201d
\nDuring the mass execution of political prisoners in the summer of 1988 in Iran, several thousand members and supporters of the PMOI and some other opposition groups were executed by the Iranian regime within a few months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NCRI –\u00a0Iran: Trial of Ahmad Montazeri without a lawyer in the Special Clerical Court on charges of \u201cacting against national security\u201d According to reports, Ahmad […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,5,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-human-rights","category-news","category-society-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6058,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6056\/revisions\/6058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}