Illegal arrestment of a political disgruntled citizen

Heshmatollah Tabarzadi is a former journalist and a politically disgruntled citizen whom is against the Islamic government. Even though Khalil Bahramian whom is the defending lawyer of Mr. Tabarzadi, consider his client to have exceeded his sentence, the revolutionary court on the 11th of November opposed that proposal and once again brought him to court and imprisoned him repeatedly.

Last year the revolutionary court released Mr. Tabarzadi from prison on provisional basis. The intelligence agency than instructed him that under no circumstances was he to have any interviews with the media or to write any articles against the government. Two months ago he disregarded the previously given warnings and threats of the intelligence agency and conducted interviews with Farsi lingual media situated outside of Iran. Mr. Tabarzadi, whom is the creator of a party that is opposing the Iranian government, wrote on his personal Webb log and called upon all oppositional parties to join in solidarity and rise against the government.

Mr. Tabarzadi had declared before his arrestment that he had been receiving several phone calls from agents of the intelligence agency telling him to attend a court and giving himself up, but he had refused.

Mr. Tabarzadi has been arrested at least 7 times. The reasons behind the arrestment have been his disgruntle with the government of the Islamic republic and its leader Ayatollah Khameneyi. During 2003 the revolutionary court sentenced Tabarzadi to prison for these alleged crimes; formation and organizing of an oppositional party against the government called “Jebheye democratic Iran” and spreading propaganda in opposition to the system and offending its leader, to a 14 years long sentence behind bars. After appealing the verdict, the 7th filial of the supreme court council of Iran finally decided that Mr. Tabarzadi’s crimes were insulting to the leader and hence sentencing him 2 years for that, 5 years added on for activities concerning the security of the country and 10 years of deprivation of any societal rights. Tabarzadi than refused to attend any of the court hearings that condemned him. He declared that this was a protest against the unjust and dishonest way of conducting a trial.

The defending lawyer of Tabarzadi declared that regarding the time his client is suppose to serve, if one would be counting the days he spent previously in lockup, his sentence would have ended the previous summer. Ali, Mr. Tabarzadi’s son also condemned his father being sent to prison as an illegal act.

During a recent telephone conversation with his family Mr. Tabarzadi explained that the terms of his imprisonment were incredibly unfitting and inhumane, the quality of food is particularly low and that visits to the shower facilities were restricted to all detainees. He also mentioned that the section 350 in the Evin prison does not have a functioning heating, because of the lack of diesel fuel, they only turned on the heating a couple of hours a day.