HRANA News Agency _ Majid Asadi, Payam Shakiba, two former student activists and Mohammad Banazadeh Amirkhzai have been sentenced to 28 years imprisonment and four years in exile by Branch 26 of Tehran Revolutionary Court.
According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency in Iran (HRANA), three political prisoners have been detained since last year and gave their latest defences to Branch 6 of the Evin Prison on July 12, 2017. According to the verdict of Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, headed by Judge Ahmadzadeh, they have been sentenced to 28 years of imprisonment for acting against the national security through gathering, collusion and propaganda against the regime.
In a statement issued to their lawyers, Majid Asadi was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for two accusations, Payam Shakiba and Mohammad Banazadeh were sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for three accusations.
Majid Asadi and Mohammad binazadeh Amirkhizi were also sentenced to two years exile in Borazjan, in Bushehr province, and Nik Sahr, in province of Sistan and Baluchistan, respectively.
The close relatives of these three detainees told HRANA’s reporter: “The court was completely assaulted and the representative of the Ministry of Intelligence turned the court room into an interrogation room, and eventually he was the one who convinced the judge for convictions and sentences”.
The lawyers of three detainees intended to appeal the verdict within 20 days of notification.
It should be recalled that Majid Asadi was arrested at 10pm, on February 19, at his father’s house in Karaj by the Ministry of Intelligence forces and transferred to section 209 of Evin Prison. During the attempt to arrest Mr. Asadi, while insulting his mother, the security forces injured his father, despite the illness and physical weakness of his father who had undergone a liver transplant operation.
This former student activist had been already arrested on July 8, 2008, at the anniversary of July 8, and was held in solitary confinement for 52 days.
Mr Assadi had been sentenced to 4 years imprisonment by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, headed by Judge Salavati, in connection with the “eighteen-Tir” case, which was announced in May 2010. Despite appeals, he was summoned to the jail, and was arrested for execution of the sentence without being informed of the finalized verdict, on October 5, 2011. This civil activist was released at the end of his sentence, in June 2015.
Majid Asadi is a graduate of economics from Allameh Tabataba’i University, and a member of the Central Council of the Islamic Association of the Faculty of Economics.
Payam Shakiba, the other prisoner is a former member of the Islamic Association of Zanjan University and a graduate student of political science at Allameh Tabataba’i University, and suffers from “migraine and fatty liver disease”.
Payam Shakiba was arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence forces, on February 21, 2017.
Mr. Shakiba was had previously been arrested during the students protest against Zanjan University’s student department deputy’s moral corruption on July 8, 2008, by the Intelligence Office in Zanjan, along with five of his colleagues, and was released on the bail after 22 months. He was finally sentenced to 1 year imprisonment by Zanjan Revolutionary Court in 2009. However, the verdict was reduced to 6 months of imprisonment and 6 months of suspended imprisonment.
He went to prison to serve that sentence in 2010 and was released at the end of his sentence.
Payam Shakiba was expelled from university during studies in 2012. He was a graduate student at Tehran Science and Research campus, at the time, when he received a letter from Azad University Exams Center and he was prevented from studying a master’s degree and was prevented from attending exams at the end of the semester. Mr. Shakiba was again accepted for the same subject at Allameh Tabatabai University in 2014.
Mohammad Banazadeh Amirkhizi is the other prisoner who was arrested by security forces in his home on February 18, 2017.
Mr. Amirkhizi is 63 years old. He had been arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence at his workplace on November 30, 2009, and sentenced to five years imprisonment on charge of financially supporting People’s Mojahedin Organization, and was released after enduring his imprisonment sentence, in November 2014.
This prisoner has prostate disease and during his imprisonment period has got neurological problems such as sleep disorders and amnesia, and he should be subjected to an ultrasound examination from time to time because of his prostate disease.
Finally, no details of the case and allegations of any of these three prisoners, referred to in this report, have been announced by the judicial authorities or security authorities.
