Iran Focus: London, Apr. 07 Former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik has appealed to the Iranian government not to go ahead as planned with the execution of a long-time political prisoner.
Iran Focus
London, Apr. 07 Former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik has appealed to the Iranian government not to go ahead as planned with the execution of a long-time political prisoner.
Valiollah Feyz-Mahdavi, a 28-year-old member of Irans main opposition group, the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), has been officially informed that his execution sentence will be carried out on May 16, according to his relatives in Iran.
Bondevik, who currently heads the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, said that Feyz-Mahdavi was believed to be at imminent danger of execution.
I am concerned over reports noting that he was not granted access to a lawyer during his trial and as such his trial did not meet international standards for fair trial, as laid down by Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Iran is a State Party, the former Norwegian Prime Minister wrote.
Bondevik said that he was deeply concerned by the high number of executions in Iran and urged Tehran to refrain from executing Feyz-Mahdavi.
Feyz-Mahdavi was arrested in 2001 for sympathising with the PMOI and tortured in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran.
His execution would be the second such known political execution in the past two months. Another PMOI member, Hojjat Zamani, a political prisoner in Iran since 2001, was hanged in Gohardasht Prison on February 7. The regime applied severe psychological torture on Zamani, 31, to break his morale and compel him to express remorse and surrender.
Bondevik also expressed concern at the overall human rights situation in Iran.
He highlighted the case of Fatemeh Haghighat-Pajouh who is once again on death row after originally having her death sentence suspended.
Haghighat-Pajouh was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband. She alleged that her husband was a drug addict and had tried to rape her daughter, 15, from a previous marriage, according to Amnesty International.
