Iran Opens ‘Riot’ Trials for Opposition Protesters

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2 August 2009 :: staff

The Iranian government has begun trials in which it alleges some 100 participants in the post-election opposition protests were violent rioters and terrorists seeking to overthrow the government. A number of officials in the government say the trials were begun without their being notified and may already be in violation of fundamental due process laws.

The New York Times, citing the AP, reports:

More than 100 opposition political activists and protesters stood trial in Tehran Saturday on charges of rioting and conspiring to topple the ruling system in the country’s first trial since the disputed presidential election, Iran’s state media reported.

Opposition leaders have said the trials are part of a concerted effort to crush dissent and fragment the reform movement. There are also allegations that the prisoners being tried are being targeted because they may have specific information about the alleged systematic and widespread mistreatment of prisoners detained at anti-government rallies.

Today’s trials have been called illegitimate, on the grounds that demonstrators had staged non-violent protests and had been assaulted by the security forces detaining protesters en masse. Allegations of mistreatment of prisoners have been so widespread, the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i was compelled to order the closure of a prison camp made notorious by revelations about prisoner abuse.

Under Iran’s constitution, all citizens are equal before the law and all have a right to peaceable assembly and to dissent. Opposition leaders and clerics ranging from reformist to conservative have criticized the government for using fuzzy legal reasoning for calling demonstrations a threat to the republic or a defamation of Islam.

The more than 100 opposition supporters facing trial include top political figures and opposition leadership. As reported by the Times:

The accusations read out in the courtroom were a broadside against virtually every major figure associated with reform in Iran, going well beyond those actually arrested. State television broadcast images of the defendants, who included a former vice president and a Newsweek reporter, as well as some of the reform movement’s best-known spokesmen, clad in prison uniforms and listening as prosecutors outlined their accusations in a large marble-floored courtroom. Some were shackled.

Opposition leaders outside the process have said the defendants have been given no access to legal counsel and have been barred from preparing a defense. The trial process may in fact be under manipulation, and there is no evidence that due process laws have been followed. Many of the defendants were “disappeared” after detention, before appearing at trial.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, opposition leader and main rival to the president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, has called on all Iranians to continue and expand protest chants of “God is great” from rooftops after nightfall. The chants are associated not only with religion in Iran, but with the Islamic revolution. Authorities are wary that the chants signal a spreading national disapproval of the regime and the possible beginnings of a new popular revolution.

Basij militia have reportedly been deployed throughout Iranian cities to use force if necessary to halt the chanting. The opposition wants these incidents to demonstrate that the regime is “unislamic” and “irreligious” and is calling on top clerics to say so.

The former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi is among those being put on trial for what amount to charges of crimes against the state. The trial is alleged to be part of a complex strategy by the government to frame all opposition to Khamene’i and Ahmedinejad, to their policies or their security clampdown or the disputed “divine assessment” that they claim returned the latter to the presidency, as a foreign plot to weaken Iran or undermine Islam.

According to the Guardian:

During yesterday’s hearing, prosecutors read out an indictment outlining what they said was a plot by the main pro-reform political parties to carry out a “velvet revolution” to overthrow the Islamic Republic, similar to the largely peaceful popular revolts that ended communist rule in eastern Europe.

State lawyers alleged that three of the biggest opposition parties took money from foreign non-governmental organizations, but Mousavi’s website denied any overseas aid or foreign connections.

In what could be a troubling escalation of international tensions related to the crackdown, it has been reported Iran has detained three American hikers who apparently lost their way while hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan. The New York Times reported yesterday:

The Kurdish regional government, in a statement issued late Saturday, said the Americans had “lost their way due to their lack of familiarity with the location, and entered Iranian territory.”

The statement said they were part of a group of four Americans who entered Kurdistan on Wednesday by land from Turkey and spent the night at a backpackers’ hotel in Sulaimaniya. Kurdish security officers said that the Americans were students, ages 27 to 36, and that two of them had been studying Arabic in Damascus, Syria.

A fourth hiker reportedly turned back before crossing the border into Iranian territory and was turned over by Kurdish officials to the American embassy in Baghdad. It remains unclear if the arrests are part of an ongoing attempt by the Iranian government to raise fears about foreign activities to destabilize the Islamic Republic or an attempt to pressure the US diplomatically, or whether they are in fact part of a routine border patrol and will result in the Americans’ uncontested release.

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