According to Reza Younesi, the brother of student and political prisoner Ali Younesi, the Revolutionary Court of Tehran has sentenced their father, Mir Yousef Younesi, to five years of imprisonment after more than a year of temporary detention.
Reza Younesi mentioned on the evening of Tuesday, January 9, on the social network platform X, that his father did not obtain permission to attend the court due to his refusal to wear prison attire.
حكم "دادگاه انقلاب": پنج سال حبس تعزيرى براى #ميريوسف_يونسی
به دليل امتناع از پوشيدن لباس زندان، وی به جلسه دادگاه برده نشد، موضوعی که باعث عصبانیت "قاضی" ایمان افشاری شد و وی با توهینهایی -که لایق خودش و رهبرش و نظامشان است- نسبت به پدرم، عملا اجازه دفاع به وکلا نداد.
۱/۳ https://t.co/9QZXq7iy2z— Reza Younesi رضا يونسى (@RezaYounesi) January 9, 2024
Reza Younesi stated that the judge in this court was Iman Afshari, who, by insulting his father, “practically did not allow him to defend himself through his lawyers.”
The lawyers of the case have objected to the Ministry of Intelligence’s failure to present documents, but the judge issued the sentence against Mir Yousef Younesi based on the “reports of the officers,” rejecting the objection.
Reza Younesi considered the formation of a judicial case against his father as “revenge seeking” by the Ministry of Intelligence and stated that the court has issued an identical sentence of five years in prison for him and the main defendant and prime suspect in the case who is outside Iran.
The prime suspect, whom Reza Younesi refers to by the abbreviation “B,” was released from prison after a short detention, but the temporary detention of Mir Yousef Younesi, contrary to the regime’s own laws, continues after more than a year.
The Ministry of Intelligence had accused Mir Yousef Younesi of “financial connection with the Mujahideen-e-Khalq organization (MEK/PMOI).”
Mir Yousef Younesi’s son had previously stated that his father was detained for paying 130 million rials (approximately $255) to a person who had been arrested, claiming that he had deposited the money for one of the protesters.
Although Mir Yousef Younesi has repeatedly denied making such a payment and no document has been presented regarding the transfer of this amount to the mentioned individual, a case was still filed against him.
On the other hand, he told the interrogators that he is an employee of a company that engages in commercial transactions with various individuals every month.
Prior to Mir Yousef Younesi, his other son, Ali Younesi, a computer engineering student at Sharif University and a winner of the silver medal in the National Astronomy Olympiad in 2016 and the gold medal in the National Astronomy Olympiad in 2017, was arrested and imprisoned. Sharif University is considered as the nation’s most prestigious and leading institution for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
In April 2020, Ali Younesi, along with Amirhossein Moradi, who was also a physics student at Sharif University and won the silver medal in the National Astronomy Olympiad in 2017, were arrested and each sentenced to 16 years in prison. This sentence, 10 years of which are enforceable, was confirmed directly in the appeals court.
These two Olympiad students have been accused of “corruption on earth,” “propaganda against the system,” and “collusion and cooperation with the aim of acting against national security.”
