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Victims of November 2019 Protests Call for Concrete Action Ahead of The Anniversary

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NOVEMBER 15, 2019: A sudden and substantial hike in the cost of fuel sparks unrest across Iran. Individuals across the country pour into the streets in what soon becomes mass protests covering a reported 104 cities across Iran. 

 

As the anniversary of the November protests approaches, HRA has spoken with Iranians calling for concrete action against those responsible for violent crackdowns against protesters including arbitrary and incommunicado detention, illegal use of force, and torture among other serious violations. For nearly two years, perpetrators have, for the most part, enjoyed widespread impunity. Domestically, some have even seemingly been rewarded. Indeed, individuals such as now-President Ebrahim Raisi, a known and serious violator, have risen to top positions of power.

Soheila, a 45-year-old mother whose son was shot in the November 2019 protests, highlights the shortcomings of the judiciary in Iran, telling HRA, “I hope that accountability will mean that next time, my child, instead of taking to the streets, can work through established pathways to hold corrupt people accountable for their actions.”

November 2019 saw the deaths of several hundred Iranians  (227 were verified by HRA) in what is arguably a state-sanctioned arbitrary deprivation of life. In addition over 7,100 were arbitrarily detained, some remain detained today. Although the violations noted above have been extensively documented, little has been done to hold perpetrators accountable.

Figure 1: reported November 2019 protest points -black denotes locations where the killing of protester(s) were reported (Human Rights Activists in Iran)

 

Elika, 25, told HRA, “Without accountability for violations that occurred in November 2019, the cycle of repression and violence will not end. Those that intend to perpetrate future abuse [on us] need to see accountability. Maybe then they will take a moment to think before pulling the trigger.”  In a recent post in the Atlantic Council IranSource blog, Skylar Thompson, HRA Senior Advocacy Coordinator, stated similarly, “Without concrete action to fight the plague of impunity that covers Iran, these violent events will only continue to occur and the Iranian people will continue to suffer.”

Iran has proven unwilling to investigate and prosecute those responsible through domestic judicial frameworks. This unwillingness is paired with the fact that Iran’s judiciary is in no way impartial and is in fact led by the very perpetrators responsible for the noted violations. Unfortunately, violations of fair trial standards have become status quo.

When asked what accountability looks like to him, Hafez, 22, told HRA, “They should handcuff the perpetrators. […]. They should be prosecuted in a public court and imprisoned.” He continued, “Once handcuffed, perpetrators should have to look the victim’s mother in the face to calm her heart.” Nazanin, 32, told HRA that accountability, in her view “is [the Islamic Republic] honestly and openly admitting wrongdoing.”

HRA has identified 54 individual and seven institutional violators connected to the November 2019 protests. It Is noteworthy that a number of those violators have also been complicit in numerous additional acts of repression against protesters including in 1988, 2020 (protests over the shooting down of Ukrainian airliner), 2021 (protests over resource mis-management in Khuzestan), and many instances in between. This repeated action is a direct consequence of the lack of accountability.

The following section lists notable individuals responsible for repeated serious and widespread rights violations. Extensive and credible documentation is readily available. HRA calls on the international community to hear the pleas of Iranians like Hafez, Nazanin, and Elika and utilize available documentation to take concrete action against those responsible.

*For a more in-depth look at the listed violators visit www.spreadingjustice.org or select a name and be directed to a violator profile that includes several data points including an overview of violations, employment history, as well as additional evidentiary documentation. 

 

Government 

Mojtaba Raei
Special Governor, Najafabad City of Isfahan Province
Deputy Governor of Isfahan

Roham Bakhsh Habibi
Police commander of Fars Province

Lotfollah Dezhkam 
Representative of the Supreme Leader, Fars Province
Friday Imam of Shiraz

Leila Vaseghi
Governor of Quds City

Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli
Ministry of Interior
Chairman of the Security Council
Deputy Leader of the Islamic Republic Police Force

Jamal Alami Nisi
Governor of Ahvaz and Chairman of the Ahvaz City Security Council

Masoumeh Khanfari
Governor of Karoun City

Nik-Mohammad Balouch-Zehi
Director General, Information and Communications Technology Department of Sistan and Baluchestan Province

Seyed-Vahid Haghanian aka “Vahid” or “Sardar (General) Vahid”
Executive and Special Affairs Deputy of the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader’s office

Saeed Jalili
Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council

 

Police 

Ali-akbar Javidan
Kermanshah Police Chief

Hossein Rahimi
Head of Tehran Police Forces

Hossein AshtariFard
Commander of the police force of the Islamic Republic

Gholamreza Jafari
From November 12, 2019 to now: Commander of the Hormozgan Police Force

Hassan Karami
Command of the Special Unit of the Police Force

Mohammad-Hossein Babakalani
Retired Police Force

Saeed Motaharizadeh 
North Khorasan Police Chief

Reza Papey
Police commander of Mahshahr City

Abdolreza Nazeri
Commander of the Kerman Police Force

Ruhollah Geravandi
Dezful Police Commander

Manouchehr Amanollahi 
Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Police Commander

 

IRGC

Kioumars Heydari
Brigadier General IRGC

Hossein Taeb
Former Head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization

Hassan Shahvarpour
Commander of the Khuzestan Provincial IRGC force (Valiasr IRGC base)

Masoud Khorramnia
Second Brigadier General (IRGC)
Commander-in-chief of West Azerbaijan province

Mohammad-Esmaeil Kowsari
Senior Commander, IRGC

Hossein Salami
Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC

Mohammad-Reza Yazdi
Senior Commander of IRGC

Gholamreza Soleimani Farsani
Commander of Sahib al-Zaman IRGC in Isfahan province

Gholam-hossein Gheibparvar
Commander of the Basij
Deputy Commander of the IRGC, Imam Ali’s HQ

Mousa Ghazanfar-Abadi
Former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunals of Tehran

 

Judiciary 

 

Dadkhoda Salari Manzari
 Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Kerman City

Heydar Asiabi
Senior Judicial Official, Judiciary of the Islamic Republic

Alireza Aghajari
Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Pardis city, the former prosecutor of Mahshahr city

Peyman Samadi
Prisoner Supervisor in Ward 9, Evin Prison
Deputy Director of the 2nd Brigade in Fashafoyeh Prison

Mehdi Mohammadi
Deputy Prosecutor of Boroujerd

Hamid Golinejad
Head of Branch 101 of the 2nd Criminal Court of Urmia

Ali Esfahani
Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Isfahan Province

Ali Zare
General and Revolutionary prosecutor of Najafabad city in Isfahan province

Yahya Jafari 
Judicial Official, Judiciary of the Islamic Republic

Mohammad-javad Heshmati Mohazzab
Senior Judicial Official, Judiciary of the Islamic Republic

Mohammad-Hossein Sadeghi 
Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Kermanshah Province

Hamid Mohammadi
Head of Evin Prison

Mansour Mohammadi Khabbaz
Public and revolutionary prosecutor of Dezful

Abbas Hosseini-Pouya 

Public and Revolutionary prosecutor of Khuzestan Province

Hamid Asgaripour
Shahriar County Public Prosecutor and Revolution

Mahamad-Reza Amouzad Khalili
Judge, Head of Branch 24 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran

Seyed-Ahmad Zargar
Judge of the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal of Tehran

Iman Afshari
Judge, Head of Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran

Mohammad Mahdi Mahmoodi
Deputy Chief Justice of the General and Revolutionary Courts of Shiraz
Head of the 2nd Criminal Court
Judge of Branch 101 of the 2nd Criminal Court of Shiraz

Ali Alghasi-Mehr
General prosecutor of Tehran

 

Media 

 

Hossein Shariatmadari
Kayhan Institute

Abdolali Ali-Asgari
Head of the Islamic Republic Broadcasting Organization (IRIB)

Ameneh-Sadat Zabihpour
Interrogator-Reporter

____________________________________________________

For further inquiries please contact Skylar Thompson, Senior Advocacy Coordinator Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA) at [email protected]

 

At least Nine Citizens Arrested by Security Forces in Baneh City

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Ethnic Minorities, News
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On Thursday, November 11, a group of at least nine people was arrested by security forces in Baneh County and transferred to an unidentified location.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, quoting Kurdpa, security forces searched the citizens’ house without a warrant during the reportedly-violent arrest, and confiscated belongings such as laptops, cameras, cell phones and books.

The report identified the known arrestees as Salah Pezeshki, Refigh Pezeshki, Manaf Pezeshki, Farzad Pezeshki, Behzad Pezeshki, Farhad Pezeshki, Loghman Pezeshki, Jamal Morovati and Saeed Ghaderi, but an informed source claims that more than nine people has been arrested.

The reasons for the arrests, as well as the charges, are unknown as of this writing.

Aliyeh Motallebzadeh’s Request for Release on Probation Rejected

Posted on by A MN
News, Prisoners, Women
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Aliyeh Motallebzadeh’s request for release on probation was recently rejected in a written notification by the Tehran prosecutor’s office.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, the photographer and women’s rights activist is currently enduring a two-year sentence in Evin Prison in Tehran.

On November 26, 2016, Motallebzadeh was summoned to the office of the ministry of intelligence and subsequently was detained in Ward 209 of Evin Prison. On December 19, 2016, she was released on bail of 300 million tomans.

In 2017, the Revolutionary Court of Tehran sentenced Motallebzadeh to three years in prison on charges of  “assembly and collusion to act against national security” and “propaganda against the regime”.

This verdict was upheld by Branch 36 of the court of Appeals in Tehran. In the issued lawsuit, “launching and participating in women empowerment workshop in abroad” had been invoked as an example of these charges. Grounded on Article 134 of the Islamic Penal Code, a severest punishment of two years was enforceable for her.

On October 11, 2020, Motallebzadeh arrived at Evin prison to begin her sentence, where she has been held since.

On April 26, 2021, she was punitively deprived of making phone calls after her complaints about the practice of holding detainees in solitary confinements in the prosecutor’s office of this prison.

On July 19, 2021, after contracting COVID, she was granted furlough and went on leave until August 30.

Aliyeh Motallebzadeh is a photographer, women rights activist and a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign for Gender Equality as well as a campaign to protect acid attack victims.

 

Omar Sharifi Bukani Arrested in Tehran and Transferred to Unknown Location

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News, Prisoners
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On Thursday, November 11, security forces arrested Tehran resident Omar Sharifi Bukani and then transferred him to an unidentified location.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, quoting Kurdpa, security forces arrested 70-year-old Sharifi Bukani without a warrant at his home in Tehran.

Mr. Sharifi Bukani was reportedly arrested once previously, in 1992, on a charge of “membership in one of the opposition political parties” and then sentenced to seven years in prison by the Revolutionary Court of Mahabad City. He was released in 1998 after serving out his sentence in Urmia Prison.

The reasons for yesterday’s arrest, along with Mr. Sharifi Bukani’s current whereabouts, are unknown as of this writing.

Two Christian Converts Sent to Bushehr Prison to Endure One Year Sentences

Posted on by A MN
News, Religious Minorities
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Earlier this Thursday, November 11, Christian converts Sasan Khosravi and Habib Heydari were sent to Bushehr Prison to endure their prison sentences.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, quoting Mohabbat News, the Revolutionary Court of Bushehr sentenced each of them to one-year imprisonment, among other punishments, in June of this year. These verdicts were later upheld by the court of appeals.

Khosravi and Heydari received these sentences on a charge of “propaganda against the regime”. They had also faced two other charges of “acting against national security” and “membership in anti-regime group”, but of both of these they were acquitted.

On July 1, 2019, the intelligence agents arrested Khosravi and Heydari in Bushehr and  released them on a bail of 300 million tomans after two weeks. During their detention period, the detainees were held in solitary confinement and denied any access to a lawyer. They were also forced to make a videotaped confession.

Despite the fact that Christians are recognized as a religious minority under Islamic law, the security services pursue the issue of Muslims converting to Christianity with particular sensitivity and deal harshly with those who convert to Christianity.

The Iranian regime targets Christian converts despite Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which state that every individual has the right to freedom of religion and belief and freedom to express it openly or secretly.

 

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Park Ranger Sentenced to Death for Murder of Illegal Hunter

Posted on by A MN
Environment, Executions, News, Other
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The criminal court of Kermanshah Province recently sentenced a park ranger to death for the murder of an illegal hunter while he was poaching in the protected nature area Bisotun.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, quoting Javan Online, Branch 3 of the Criminal Court has issued this verdict. The report has identified the convicted park ranger as Boroomand Najafi.

In August 2020, during a fight between several forest rangers and several illegal hunters, one of the hunters was shot dead.

The most recent report of the Statistics and Publication Center of the Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA) states that between October 8 of 2020 and October 9 of 2021, at least 266 citizens, three of whom were juvenile offenders, were executed and 90 citizens were sentenced to death.

 

One Worker Killed and One Injured in Recent Workplace Accidents

Posted on by A MN
Labor and Guilds, News
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In two recent workplace accidents, one worker lost his life in Azna City in Lorestan Province and one was injured severely in Baneh City in Kurdistan Province.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, quoting IRIB News Agency, a worker of Iran Ferroalloy Industries Company was killed after falling from a tall industrial structure. Reportedly, he died from a heavy object that fell on top of him in the accident.

In a separate work accident, according to IRNA, a gasoline leak from a car parked in a store caused a fire that severely injured one worker in an industrial town in Baneh City.

“The fire broke out in the store due to the gasoline leaked from a car in the vicinity of a heading torch” head of Municipal Fire and Safety Services of Baneh Salar Bastami stated. The injured worker has second-degree burns and is now hospitalized in Tabriz City.

Iran ranks 102nd in workplace safety out of 189 countries.

Man Killed and Woman Injured by Landmine Blast in Elam Province

Posted on by A MN
News, Other
Afghanistan, Elam Province, Entekhab, Iran-Iraq war, Iraq, landmines, Mehran, Mehran County, Pakistan

On Wednesday, November 10, a landmine blast killed a man and injured a woman severely in Mehran County in Elam Province.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, quoting Entekhab newspaper, a man and woman who had been collecting residual military waste in zone 5 of the residential complex of Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation found a mortar 60mm which detonated when they tried to move it.

Reportedly, the man was killed at the spot and the woman was hospitalized.

Every year, landmine explosions take several victims in  Iran’s border areas. There are about 42,000 square kilometers of war zones in Iran that have not yet been fully demined from the Iran-Iraq war.

Accordingly, there are still thousands of landmines planted in Iran in the border areas with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. The regime also planted many landmines during the conflicts of the 1980s in Kurdistan.

 

Educator and Union Activist Aziz Ghasemzadeh Summoned by Public and Revolutionary Court of Rudsar County

Posted on by A MN
Cultural, Freedom of Expression, News, Prisoners
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On Saturday, November 6, educator and union activist Aziz Ghasemzadeh was summoned by the Public and Revolutionary Court of Rudsar County.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, Aziz Ghasemzadeh received a summons via the online judicial system SENA to appear at the Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court of Rudsar within eight days.

Following nationwide protests of educators all across the country, on September 26, security forces arrested Ghasemzadeh at his parents’ home in Rudsar City. During the arrest, security forces searched the house and confiscated several of Ghasemzadeh’s personal belongings.

The arrest took place the day after working and retired teachers held protests in 36 cities across the country, which were organized by the Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations. Throughout the detention, he was denied any access to a lawyer, phone calls and family visitations. Finally, on October 11, 2021, he was released on bail.

Ghasemzadeh will need to defend himself against charges of “propaganda against the regime” and “spreading lies”.

 

Rahil Mousavi Arrested By Security Forces in Khorramshahr City

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Cultural, News, Women
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On November 9, photographer and media activist Rahil Mousavi was arrested by security forces in Khorramshahr City.

According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, Mousavi was transferred to an unidentified location following the arrest.

Ms. Mousavi had previously faced other arrests. On December 8, 2016, intelligence agents detained her for a while due to taking photos of a protest against Karun water transfer.

The reasons for Mousavi’s arrest, the charges against her, and her whereabouts are still unknown as of this writing.