UK Lawmakers Pass Resolution Urging Gov’t To Proscribe IRGC

Riahi’s trial session, a popular Iranian actress who had earlier removed her mandatory hijab to express solidarity with the anti-regime demonstrations, was held on Wednesday.

During the trial and being filmed she was pressured to confess to political crimes and apologize. Riahi, unable to bear the relentless psychological torment, passed out and was taken to hospital by ambulance.

The court session, which was held abruptly with a change of date and in front of several cameras, met with widespread criticism.

Adeleh Cheraghi, the spokesperson of the association, said that Katayoun Riahi was asked to apologize and express regret to the authorities of the Islamic Republic for removing the mandatory hijab, in the presence of the state media reporters, possibly to broadcast later. According to Cheraghi, she refused to do so.

Movie star, Hamid Farrokhnejad also slammed the move to obtain coerced confessions from the actress.

"You imagine a video of someone, who apologized to you under threats, is a proof of your righteousness! How miserable you are!” he wrote on his Instagram addressing the government.

"People have decided that you must go, and you will. This way you just make yourself more pathetic," he added.

Security agents also confiscated a large part of her belongings, including her laptop in October when she was not home.

In its World Report 2023 published Thursday, Human Rights Watch said Iranian authorities have detained hundreds of activists on “dubious charges” and issued death sentences in “grossly unfair trials”.

The acting executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) Tirana Hassan announced in the report that the protests against the mandatory use of the hijab are just the most visible symbol of repression.

"The demand for equality triggered by women and schoolgirls has morphed into a nationwide movement by the Iranian people against a government that has systematically denied them their rights, mismanaged the economy, and driven people into poverty," she underlined.

The 712-page report looks at the state of human rights in about 100 countries where the organization works.

The death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police in mid-September sparked nationwide demonstrations, including in schools and universities.

Human Rights Watch says security forces have used shotguns, assault rifles, and handguns against protesters.

“With mass repression, unfree elections, and apparent corruption and mismanagement, Iran’s autocracy rules with all that remains: brute force,” said Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“Other countries, including from the Global South, should increase pressure on these brutal authorities and ensure there is accountability for their crimes,” she added.

Over 500 people have been killed by the regime forces since the beginning of protests.

In a statement on Wednesday Amnesty censured the arbitrary executions of Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini on January 7 and called on the Islamic Republic to halt issuing death penalty for demonstrators.

The international body also warned that another protester, Mohammad Ghobadlou and several others risk the same fate.

On January 2, Iran’s supreme court upheld the death sentence of Mohammad Ghobadlou, 22, in connection with the ongoing protests.

In the past week, Iranian courts also issued five more protest-related death sentences to detainees after sham trials.

“It is abhorrent that the Iranian authorities persist in their state-sanctioned killing spree as they desperately seek to end the protests and cling to power by instilling fear among the public,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The arbitrary executions of Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, just days after their death sentences were upheld, reveal how the Iranian authorities continue to wield the death penalty as a weapon of repression, and serve as a chilling reminder that scores of others remain at risk of execution,” she added.

Iran’s judiciary has so far executed four young protestors after holding trials that according to human rights activists were unfair and without due process.

According to Norway-based Iran Human Right Organization at least 109 protesters are in danger of receiving death penalty or being executed.

According to reports, some of the protesters who were injured during the regime’s crackdown refrain from going to hospitals in fear of arrest, leading to deaths in some cases. 

The council of the country's student unions cited reports Tuesday that Ghazal Amiri, a student at Shiraz University, was beaten by security forces during the protests on September 10, but was not taken to hospital. The following day, her condition worsened, and she died after finally being transferred to the hospital. 

There are many similar deaths that are not revealed to the media because their families are under pressure by intelligence agents. Iran International also obtained information about a young woman who fell to her death from the fourth-floor window of her home when security forces came looking for her.

In addition to over 500 protesters who have been killed during nearly four months of unrest, more than a dozen detainees have been sentenced to death. The Islamic Republic has already executed four people over their participation in demonstrations.

Security forces and the hardliner Judiciary have claimed that many of the dead protesters committed suicide or had medical preconditions.

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Meanwhile, there are several reports about the deteriorating health conditions of the detained protesters. According to reports obtained by Iran International, the teeth of Saleh Mirhashmi, a protester sentenced to death, were broken and his eardrum was also ruptured under torture in prison. Mirhashmi has recently married, and his mother is under immense psychological pressure due to her son's condition.

The number of protesters who are given death sentences in the regime’s courts is also increasing. Ebrahim Naroui, who was arrested during protests in the southeastern city of Zahedan, was sentenced to death by the Sixth Branch of the Revolutionary Court of the city on the charge of "Moharebeh". Three more Iranians arrested during antigovernment protests in the northern city of Nowshahr were sentenced to death on Tuesday. Iran's judiciary said Monday that a court has sentenced three more protesters to death for “war against God”.

Political activist Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, who already served several years in the regime’s prisons, was also sentenced to “corruption on earth,” a sentence punishable by death. He was arrested on September 20. 

The judiciary’s branch in Kordestan province also announced Tuesday that Pouria Javaheri is also facing a death sentence for “Moharebeh.” He was arrested in the city of Kamyaran during protests late in November. 

“Moharebeh” and "corruption on earth" are vague Islamic-Arabic Sharia concepts that in the lexicon of the Iranian regime means a death sentence. The Islamic Republic considers many acts of opposition or defiance against the regime as “Moharebeh” and "corruption on earth", with the maximum punishment of death.

Clerical judges who take orders from the hardliner Judiciary convict people to death without a real trial, often with no defense lawyers and behind closed doors. The defendants have no way of challenging state evidence or introducing witnesses.

According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Organization, at least 109 Iranian protesters are currently at risk of execution or facing death sentences, but the number seems to be much higher with new cases revealed almost every day. The rights organization also stressed that repression through arbitrary arrests, physical torture, sexual assault and rape in detention and the mass issuance of sentences has been intensified.

The push is mainly because of IRGC's role in using violence and lethal force to suppress protesters since September. Security forces mostly under its command have killed around 500 people during demonstrations and after arrest.

Anne-Claire Lengendre, the French Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said Tuesday that Paris was “working with its European partners on new sanctions measures, without excluding any.”

"Listing the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization is politically important and makes sense," she said on Twitter, adding that legal hurdles still needed to cleared before it could be done.

But while France has been skeptical over the benefits of sanctioning a large part of a sovereign state’s armed forces, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock tweeted Monday that “listing the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization is politically important and makes sense.” Baerbock added that legal issues were being explored.

It has been widely reported that the United Kingdom is preparing to list the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), with Foreign Secretary James Cleverly saying on at least two occasions that it had already sanctioned the corps “in its entirety.”

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‘Acts of terror’

Designating the IRGC would mean any member’s assets could be seized, and that belonging to the group, attending its meetings, or even displaying its logo would be a criminal act. The EU and UK have both since October sanctioned individual IRGC commanders.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Monday that those accusing the IRGC of ‘terrorism’ had themselves “committed acts of terror and are accused of sponsoring it.” The spokesman cited the US drone strike in 2020 that killed IRGC general Qassem Soleimani, which the United Nations special rapporteur judged ‘unlawful killing.’

Soleimani was in charge of organizing militant groups in the region that attacked US and allied targets.

The United States designated the IRGC in 2019 as part of ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions against Iran launched as Washington withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

During great power talks in Vienna, which paused late summer, aimed at restoring the JCPOA, it was reported that Iran wanted the IRGC, or at least its construction and business operations, delisted. The US reportedly refused.

‘Maximum pressure’ was designed, according to Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State 2018-21, to force Iran to concede 12 demands including ending all uranium enrichment, scrapping missile defense, and breaking links with regional allies. The EU describes the aim of its sanctions more vaguely as a “change in policy or conduct.”

‘Reinforce the message’

In the right-wing Daily Telegraph January 5, veteran columnist Con Coughlan wrote that listing the IRGC would “help to reinforce the message to Iran that the West is no longer prepared to turn a blind eye to its nefarious activities.”

Supporters of listing have compared the IRGC, which includes many thousands of Iranians on ‘flag service,’ to virulently anti-Shia Sunni extremists. Kasra Aarabi, of the Tony Blair Institute, said in December that the IRGC was “no different from the likes of Isis [Daesh, the Islamic State group] or al-Qaeda.”

Others are less convinced. An editorial in the London Observer January 8 suggested killing Soleimani had fueled an “evolving, many-fronted threat to western security interests.” It pointed out that the US leaving the JCPOA, and Israel killing Iranian scientists, had just brought closer a “nuclear-armed Iran.”

Iranian officials have highlighted some US and European politicians, including Pompeo, supporting the Mujahideen-e Khalq, a militant Iranian opposition group that helped Saddam Hussein suppress the 1991 Iraqi uprising. The MEK was ‘delisted’ by EU in 2009 and by the US in 2012.