- 17 December 2009
- 2 Comments
- Human Rights in Iran
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is asserting that the case against Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh “contains no evidence to support the allegations against him,” based on conversations with Tajbakhsh’s lawyer who has studied the prosecution’s entire case against Tajbakhsh. Tajbakhsh was sentenced to 15 years in prison for “espionage”.
There is apparently no correlation between the evidence in his file and the conviction and sentencing of Tajbakhsh, while the file itself is evidence of the blatantly political and arbitrary nature of the case. Espionage is closely defined under Iranian law, and guilt needs to be established by evidence that highly confidential documents were passed to foreign governments. There are no references to such documents in the file.The file, only recently seen by Shafie, contains video clips of public demonstrations that Tajbakhsh allegedly emailed which hardly qualify as confidential or classified government documents. Tajbakhsh had no access to such documents in any event.
The Campaign goes on to document the numerous breaches of Tajbakhsh’s rights. (More below the fold):