The Voice of Mirza Xazar

The Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva

Please circulate this letter to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (also for Fair Trials)

CC Mrs. Harrison, Amnesty International, London

Mr. Abbas Leysanli

Prisoner of conscience

Dear sir/madam,

Re UPDATE ON A COMPLAINT: THE REARREST OF MR. LEYSANLI

Now Mr. Abbas LEYSANLI, the most distinguished leader of the national movement of Southern Azerbaijan, is imprisoned arbitrarily in the Islamic Republic of Iran in a dungeon. More than ever, this arbitrary act of intransigence symbolises the onslaught by the Iranian authorities on human rights of Southern Azerbaijanis. Now this episode is a test case for the expression of solidarity by the world human right defenders to condemn the Iranian perpetrators of human rights. We lay the particulars of this imprisonment before you and outline its background. Our Complaint for safeguarding human rights of Mr. Leysanli stands but updated as follows.

The information provided as part of this update is as follows:
5. Table 1: The particulars of the imprisonment of Mr. Leysanli based on the interview of his wife, Mrs. Ruqeyye Leysanli, in the Voice of America: http://www.azadtribun.net/Azad9.mp3. The interview is in Azerbaijani Turkic and our translation captures the main points. It is a clear testimony that the arrest was arbitrary and illegal, possibly related to his detention on 3 June 2006.
6. Table 2: Presents the references to our correspondences in relation to the events including: (i) a Complaint, (iii) a series of Updates to the Complaint, and (iii) a series of letters.
7. Table 3: The Complaint in a tabular form.
8. Table 4: the reverse chronology of Mr. Leysanli’s ordeal since June 2006 to manage voluminous data and a reflection of the violation of his human rights.

We confirm that Mr. Leysanli is deprived of his liberty and provide you the appropriate details. There remains the question that why Mr. Leysanli was imprisoned? Our response is that he has not broken any law and he is just exercising his human rights. Thus, Mr. Leysanli’s detention and imprisonment are illegal. We lay down some of the possible reasons for his re-arrest:
4. Arbitrary acts within the context of the Iranian legal system are unique to Iran in terms of a world of “contradictions, privileges obtained by corruption, underhand dealings and management through an internal networking and pulling strings.” For a pro-system conformist, it is basically possible to get away with anything. Non-conformist human rights defenders rejecting racist policies are normally given a rough ride by the authorities and hence the case of Mr. Abbas Leysanli, Mr. Rza Abbasi, or maestro Hesen Azerbaijan to say the least.
5. Mr. Leysanli has criticised the Imam of Erdebil in explicit terms in his appeal, see our letter (Ref: 403/2006, on 30 October 2006), and the realisation of the risk of persecution was therefore a test case for exposing arbitrary acts in Iran.
6. Mr. Leysanli’s commendable strategy for calling some 10,000 witnesses was novel and would have set a democratic precedence in the justice system in Iran but now the Iranian intolerance for democratic traditions is exposed. This is the clearest example of intolerance exercised by fascists.

In particular, we would like to draw your attention into the following evidences for arbitrary way of functioning of the authorities:
1. We made the point in our letter (Ref: 378/2006 on 31 August 2006) that the Iranian authorities were apparently deploying a clever trick by trying the leader of the national movement of Southern Azerbaijan in penal court to deny him the appropriate rights for political prisoners. Now the Iranian authorities are implementing it as Mr. Leysanli is interned in a cell with drug addicts apparently suffering from various illnesses and therefore he is deprived of the privileges appropriate to a political prisoner.
2. The sentence of imprisonment is qualified with the word punitive. The word in the source document for this is an Arabic word called “te’ziri” but we did not know of its proper equivalence in English. This qualifier was dropped in our previous translations. Now with a better understanding of the word punitive, we have realised the authorities are committing the greatest insult to the nation of Southern Azerbaijan by issuing punitive sentence to Mr. Leysanli as the most prominent leader of the national movement of Southern Azerbaijan. All the other sentences issued for Southern Azerbaijani activists so far are also associated with the qualifier of punitive. We regard this as the greatest insult to the integrity of the nation of Southern Azerbaijan and a ploy employed by authorities to deny the problem of Southern Azerbaijan. We will lodge a complaint specifically devoted to the Iranian disregard of the problem of Southern Azerbaijan.
3. The accounts given by Mr. Leysanli’s lawyer, presented in Table 1, provide another insight into arbitrary actions of the authorities and show that the authorities can even violate their own Iranian laws and get away with it.

We believe that Mr. Leysanli’s appeal was not conducted in a fair manner but it looks that the determination was premeditated and without reference to the documents and evidences. However, we do not have the full information yet. We will provide you an update as soon as the appropriate information becomes available.

Hereby, we reinforce our Complaint lodged earlier with further evidence for safeguarding human rights of Mr. Abbas Leysanli. Lack of sufficient information should not be a pretext your inaction, against which we pledge our readiness to provide you any information as and when required. We trust that you will act on this Complaint and hope that you share the concern of the nation of Southern Azerbaijan and are preparing for a country visit to explore for yourselves the violations of human rights of Mr. Leysanli in Erdebil, and other activists, such as maestro Hesen Azerbaijan, in Tebriz, and the human right defender Mr. Rza Abbasi, in Zenjan, to name but the least. Thank you for your attention.

Yours faithfully,

Boyuk Resuloglu

For and on behalf of
The Committee for the Defence of the Rights of World Azerbaijanis