Amnesty International - Iran sentences Human Rights Lawyer to 9 years in Prison

Amnesty International Report

Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, who is a co-founder of Iran’s Centre for Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), was sentenced in July last year after being convicted of charges including “membership of an association [the CHRD] seeking the soft overthrow of the government” and “spreading propaganda against the system through interviews with foreign media”.

Told verbally to report to the authorities on Saturday, the organization fears he is at imminent risk of imprisonment as a prisoner of conscience. “Mohammad Ali Dadkhah’s only crime is to have defended the rights of others. He should not even have been on trial in the first place and his sentence should be quashed immediately,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Sending him to prison for nine years would be a further nail in the coffin of freedom of expression and association in Iran, where spurious vague charges are frequently used in an attempt to silence those working to protect human rights.”

How 'progressive'. (sarcasm) Telling the truth about human rights abuses in Iran is considered to be 'spreading propaganda against the system' and is something that you can be thrown in prison for .. for a long, long time.

The CHRD, which is the Center for Human Rights Defenders, was led by Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi. The center was forced closed in December 2008 by the Iranian authorities (read: GOONS). The CHRD members are still active in combating human rights abuses in Iran. They have been harassed, intimidated. Many have been arrested and imprisoned. BAD things happen to people in Iranian prisons.

reply to post by FlyersFan
You know the apologists are going to crawl out of the woodwork on this one.

"It's their country"
"They can do what they want"
"They are following their own laws"

What they are also doing, though, is painting a very telling self-portrait of themselves. All the apologising in the world, all the appeasement in the world, can't change the brutal dictatorial regime.

So much for a shinging example of the "borg" religion.