Tajbakhsh's appeal impeded by Iranian judiciary

Kian Tajbakhsh

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran announced that Iran judiciary has impeded the defence attorney of Kian Tajbakhsh to appeal his sentence.

Kyan Tajbakhsh, Iranian-American scholar and social scientist who was arrested in the post-election unrest, has been convicted of “sedition" and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The preliminary trial issued his sentence over a week ago and according to Iranian laws, he has 20 days to appeal the sentence.

The Campaign reports that in the ten days following the sentencing, the judiciary authorities have consistently stopped his lawyer from filing his appeal. Upon hearing his protests, he has been told: “It’s our law and we can do whatever we want with it.”

Hadi Ghaemi, spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights says: “This kind of arbitrary handling of law reveals that the rule of law has no meaning in Iran.”

The Campaign has called on Ayatollah Larijani, head of judiciary to review Kian Tajbakhsh’s case and to order an impartial trial to rectify the violations committed in the handling of his case.

The mass trials of post-election detainees in the past two months have been referred to as “show trials” and condemned for lacking the appropriate legal provisions. Kian Tajbakhsh was presented in one of these trials and like many other detainees, gave self-incriminatory testimony. Opposition forces maintain that these so-called confessions were coerced.