Figure of the reform camp, Mostafa Tajzadeh was condemned, Tuesday October 11, to five years of imprisonment for activities against the mode. Arrested on July 8 at his home in Tehran, Mr. Tajzadeh “was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy against security, two years for publishing lies and one year for propaganda against the system”said his lawyer, Mr.e Houshang Pourbabaï, on his Twitter account.
Me Pourbabaï clarified that out of this total of eight years in prison, five years are enforceable under the law on mixed sentences. His client having not appealed, the court decision “shall be final and effective”, he added. Brought to a revolutionary court on August 13, Mostafa Tajzadeh refused to defend himself during the hearing, after his request to speak face-to-face with his lawyer was rejected, according to his defense.
A fierce critic of the power in place, this former deputy minister of the interior, under the presidency of the reformer Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), had tried to present himself as a “reformist citizen” at the presidential election of 2021. His candidacy was then rejected.
Arbitrary methods
In the interview he gave to World in June 2021, he called the victory of the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raïssi a “electoral coup” and called for “structural changes” and democratic in the Islamic Republic. In particular, he demanded the disarmament and withdrawal from Iranian political life of the Revolutionary Guards, the regime’s praetorian guard. “Their illegitimate powers must be neutralized”, he asserted. Since then, he has continued to denounce the “discrimination”the “internet blocking”, “military interference in politics, the economy and elections”as well as a “expensive foreign policy, anti-Americanism and [diplomatie] prorussian ».
Mr. Tajzadeh had already been arrested in 2009 after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election as president of Iran, contested by an opposition gathered around the unsuccessful reform candidates, Mehdi Karoubi and Mir Hossein Moussavi. Since his release in 2016, he has regularly called for the release of MM. Karoubi and Moussavi, under house arrest for almost twelve years.
Mostafa Tajzadeh’s wife, Fakhrossadat Mohtashamipour, also a reform activist, regrets that her husband is “still kept in solitary confinement” despite health problems. In an open letter addressed from his prison to the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, made public on October 10, the opponent, detained in Ward 2-A of Evin prison, denounced his conditions of detention, the arbitrary methods intelligence agents of the Revolutionary Guards in prisons and their lack of respect for “legal rights of prisoners”.
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