HRANA News Agency – On May 9, 2010, Farzad Kamangar, teacher and human rights activist, along with four other political prisoners named Ali Heydarian, Shirin Alam Holi, Farhad Vakili and Mehdi Eslamian were executed after a flawed judicial process, secretly and without the knowledge of their lawyers and families at the parking of Evin prison.
According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency in Iran (HRANA), the execution verdict of Farzad Kamangar and four other prisoners among the unprecedented wave of domestically and internationally protests, was carried out while according to the documents, their judicial process was full of specific cases of rights violation including detention in contravention of the law, the long-term maintenance in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer during detention, physical and psychological torture against them especially in the case of three of them in detention centers of Sanandaj and Kermanshah, as well as numerous procedural violations, so that at least three of the defendants (Farzad Kamangar, Farhad Vakili and Ali Heydarian) were known as “Muhareb” and the death sentence was issued a for them without their chance of defense in a seven-minute-long court.
Kamangar’s lawyer in this regard, also accused the judiciary of adopting political procedure in this case and lack of independence of the system, announcing that “the court have not heard his words and his client is innocent.”
It is also important to note because the authorities secretly buried their bodies, after 6 years, the relevant agencies refuse to refund the extradition of their bodies or announcing their burial place.
Massive wave of domestically and internationally support, the flawed procedures of this case, outstanding personality of Farzad Kamangar as a teacher, trade unionists and human rights defender and simultaneousness of the execution with the teachers’ day in Iran, caused that May 9th was named as the “libertarian teachers’ day” by the number of teachers on the first anniversary of his execution, a movement which has been supported widely by many characters, parties, organizations and civil groups.
