Iran Focus: Tehran, Jul. 30 – Iran’s Court of Appeal has upheld a death sentence for political prisoner Jaafar Kazemi, his lawyer said.
Iran Focus
Tehran, Jul. 30 – Iran’s Court of Appeal has upheld a death sentence for political prisoner Jaafar Kazemi, his lawyer said on Thursday.
Kazemi, a 47-year-old lithographer, was arrested on 18 September 2009 and transferred to Tehran’s Evin Prison, charged with “moharebeh”, or waging war on God, for supporting the opposition People’s Mojahedin Organisation or Iran (PMOI) and taking part in anti-government protests following last summer’s disputed Presidential election. He was originally sentenced to death on 26 April 2010, but his lawyer Nasim Qanavi filed an appeal.
Qanavi told foreign-based Persian radio stations that Kazemi’s son Behrouz had joined the PMOI at their base Camp Ashraf in Iraq in before the US turned over the protection of the camp to the Iraqi government in early 2009.
The opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran, the coalition which includes the PMOI, said in a statement on Friday that Kazemi was subjected to torture and “medieval pressures” in order to repent and give a forced confession in “kangaroo courts”.
The NCRI urged UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other UN officials to take “urgent measures” to save the lives of Kazemi and other political prisoners.
Qanavi said her client had previously spent 10 years in Iranian prisons in the 1980s for supporting the PMOI.
Opposition sources claim prison authorities in Evin have disconnected the phone in Ward 350 where Kazemi is being held.
