Amir Mohammad Ahmadi and Astiaj Haguigui are two Iranian bloggers aged 22 and 21 respectively. In October, as protests against the ayatollahs’ regime raged, they shared a video on social media of them dancing together in front of the iconic monument in Azadi Square (Freedom Square) in Tehran, a gesture interpreted as a show of support for the demonstrators. The young woman did not wear the veil that is still mandatory in Iran. On November 1, days after this 16-second recording was released, both were arrested. This Sunday, Section 15 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced them to ten and a half years in prison each for “inciting corruption, assembly [ilegal] and collusion designed to disrupt national security and spread propaganda,” Iranian media in exile such as IranWire reported on Monday. Ahmadi and Haguigui were also banned from engaging in any internet activity and leaving the country for two years after being released from prison.
In Iran, women are forbidden from dancing in the streets, and even more so if they do it with a man, even if it’s an engaged couple, like Ahmadi and Haguigui. IranWire, however, links that harsh sentence, and not the ban, to the crackdown on protests that began with the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody on September 16, three days after the 22-year-old was arrested in Tehran by moral police who said she was accused of wearing the veil incorrectly. Since then, at least 488 Iranians have been killed in the crackdown, while more than 18,000 protesters have been arrested and at least four executed, according to Oslo-based Iranian NGO Iran Human Rights.
Ahmadi and Haguigui were arrested by plainclothes officers on November 1, beaten and taken to Ward 209 of Tehran’s Evin Prison, notorious for housing political prisoners and controlled by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, IranWire reports. Numerous testimonies from former inmates of these facilities have described the existence of a torture chamber in which prisoners are subjected to electric current or other punishments, such as for extended periods of time.
Attempts without guarantee
After more than four months of popular protests under the motto “Woman, Life and Freedom” and against the Islamic Republic – which on February 11th made its 44th in the suppression of the demonstrations, at least for the moment. According to the Critical Threats organization’s Iran crisis monitoring website, only a small demonstration took place in Tehran on Sunday, in contrast to dozens of demonstrations across the country reported weeks ago. In the days before, this website had reported on small protests in other areas of Iran, but for economic rather than political reasons.
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However, according to organizations such as Iran Human Rights, the repression no longer took place in the streets but in courts, particularly in the Revolutionary Courts, a parallel system to the regular one created in 1979 and whose purpose is to protect the regime. Dissidents and critical journalists are usually tried in its rooms, and those arrested during the demonstrations parade before its judges these days. International organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch believe that these courts are the battering rams of oppression in Iran and that the trials taking place there lack safeguards.
Amir Ahmadi and Astiaj Haguigui were convicted by one of those courts, the No. 15 Court in the Iranian capital, which denied them the right to choose a defense attorney and also denied their request for bail, always according to IranWire.
The presiding judge of this court is Abolqasem Salavati, nicknamed “the hanging judge” by Iranian human rights activists for the ease with which death sentences are carried out by hanging. Other methods of execution, such as crucifixion and stoning, remain legal. Salavati signed the January 14 death sentence against British-Iranian citizen Alireza Ajbari for “corruption on earth,” among other serious charges. Both the European Union and the United States sanctioned this judge in 2011 and 2019, respectively, for alleged serious human rights violations, in particular violations of procedural guarantees and the defendant’s right to a fair hearing.
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