The Voice of Mirza Xazar

November 2006

Further Information on UA 163/06 (MDE 13/063/2006, 8 June 2006) and follow-up (MDE 13/105/2006, 19 September 2006) - Incommunicado detention/ Fear of torture/ Medical concern/ Prisoner of conscience New concern: Fear of flogging

IRAN Abbas Lisani (or Leysanli), (m) aged 38, activist

His family

Abbas Lisani, a prominent activist for the rights of Iranian Azerbaijanis, was released on bail on 26 September 2006. He was redetained on 31 October 2006 by security forces, apparently without a warrant, in violation of Iranian law. His detention is apparently related to one of the several prison terms he is currently facing in relation to his participation in annual gatherings and other demonstrations of Iranian Azerbaijanis. He is believed to be held in Section 7 of Tabriz Prison in northwestern Iran. Amnesty International believes him to be a prisoner of conscience, held for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and of association.

During his previous period of detention, Abbas Lisani was reportedly harassed and threatened by cellmates. He is said to suffer from stomach and kidney problems, and pain in his ribs, which allegedly results from torture during previous periods of detention. It is not known whether he currently has access to adequate medical care. Since the day of his arrest, he has apparently had no access to his lawyer, and his wife has been permitted to visit him only once. His wife has also reportedly been threatened with arrest in connection with her advocacy on his behalf.

On 27 September, one day after Abbas Lisani was released from detention, Branch 105 of Ardebil General Court sentenced him to 10 months’ imprisonment and 50 lashes for participating in a demonstration on 27 May 2006 in Ardebil, and to a further six months’ imprisonment for participating in the destruction of public and state property by calling on people to participate in the demonstration which caused this damage. Abbas Lisani submitted a written appeal against this sentence, dated 26 October 2006. He claimed in his defence that the demonstration was not illegal, and that he had never called on people to cause damage, but had rather sought to keep matters calm. He alleged that the authorities had ignored video and other evidence from the demonstration to this effect. Five days after lodging his appeal he was re-arrested. His family later received a copy of a verdict from Branch 1 of Ardebil Appeal Court, which increased the sentence of 10 months' imprisonment to one year, bringing the total to 18 months of imprisonment. The verdict apparently confirms the sentence of 50 lashes and, in addition, states that his punishment should include spending three years in forced exile in the city of Tabas in the central province of Yazd.

Amnesty International is concerned that the procedure before the Ardebil Appeal Court may not have provided a genuine review, both in facts and in law, of Abbas Lisani’s case. In a statement to the Iranian Labour News Agency, Abbas Lisani's lawyer reportedly said, “this verdict is unprecedented in the judicial history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or at least I am unaware of such a case …since the Lower Court has not issued [such] a sentence to my client, how can the Appeal Court add to it? .. I believe this verdict is arbitrary and I will protest against it to the Supreme Court”. Amnesty International is seeking clarification of the process of Abbas Lisani’s appeal, noting that Article 4 (2) of the Law of Appeals against Court Judgments states that in criminal cases the appeal court cannot increase sentences ordered by the initial court unless the prosecutor had lodged the appeal for such an increase.

In August 2006 Abbas Lisani was sentenced in a retrial to one year’s imprisonment by the Revolutionary Court in Kalayber for “spreading anti-government propaganda”. This sentence is currently subject to appeal. According to the court verdict, the basis for the charge includes his participation in an annual gathering in 2003; encouraging others to participate in this gathering; reciting Azerbaijani poems and other material at the gathering; publishing and distributing a “Turkish-language” calendar; sending messages abroad via the internet; making calls to his supporters abroad; and intending to promote Iranian Azerbaijani nationalism and independence. Abbas Lisani’s previous sentence of one year’s imprisonment to be spent in exile in Masjed-e Soleyman in the south-western province of Khuzestan on these charges was later quashed on the grounds that Ardebil Revolutionary Court had no jurisdiction over the case, and it was sent for retrial in Kalayber.

On 17 August 2005, Abbas Lisani was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment by Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Kalayber for “propaganda against the system” in connection with his participation in the 2005 annual gathering. This sentence is also currently under appeal. Separately, Abbas Lisani has also been charged with attending a commemorative gathering for Constitution Day at the mausoleum of Baghir Khan in August 2005, but this case is not known to have been concluded.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in Persian, Arabic, English, French or your own language:

- expressing concern that Abbas Lisani has been redetained in order to serve an 18-month prison sentence in connection with his peaceful participation in a demonstration in Ardabil on 27 May 2006, noting Abbas Lisani’s position that he is personally opposed to violence and in no way advocated the use of violence by anyone during the demonstration;

- stating that, as such, Amnesty International believes that Abbas Lisani is a prisoner of conscience, and should be released immediately and unconditionally;

- asking the authorities to provide clarification about the procedure before the Ardabil Appeal Court, particularly in light of the speed of the review and Article 4(2) of the Law on Appeals against Court Judgments which only allows for the increase in sentences in cases where the prosecution has lodged the appeal;

- expressing concern that the procedure followed may not have provided a genuine review, both in facts and in law, of Abbas Lisani’s case.

- urging that his sentence of flogging be immediately commuted, as it amounts to torture;

- calling on the authorities to grant Abbas Lisani immediate and unconditional access to his lawyer, continued and regular access to his family, and access to any medical treatment that he requires;

- expressing concern about Abbas Lisani’s safety and calling on the Iranian authorities to offer him protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence;

- expressing concern for the situation of Abbas Lisani’s family, members of which have reportedly been harassed and intimidated by the authorities, including by being threatened with arrest.

APPEALS TO:

Leader of the Islamic Republic

His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei, The Office of the Supreme Leader

Shoahada Street, Qom, Islamic Republic of Iran

Email: info@leader.ir OR istiftaa@wilayah.org

Fax: +98 251 774 2228 (mark “FAO the Office of His Excellency, Ayatollah al Udhma Khamenei”)

Salutation: Your Excellency

Head of the Judiciary

His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi

Ministry of Justice, Park-e Shahr, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Email: Please send emails via the feedback form on the Persian site of the website:

http://www.iranjudiciary.org/contactus-feedback-fa.html

(The text of the feedback form translates as:

1st line: name, 2nd line: email address, 3rd line: subject heading, then enter email into the text box)

Salutation: Your Excellency

COPIES TO: diplomatic representatives of Iran accredited to your country.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the International Secretariat, or your section office, if sending appeals after 20 December 2006.

(source: Amnesty International/Ahwaz Human Rights Organization)

Dear countrymen,

I would like to inform you that the former Minister of European Affairs, Mr. Keith Vaz, and his colleague in the British Foreign Affairs Committee Mr. Paul Keetch, together with the Azerbaijani Youth Association in Sweden, has taken the initiative to table an Early Day Motion (EDM) about the Azerbaijanis in Iran.

EDMs exist to allow Members of the Parliament to put on record their opinion on a subject they would like to raise awareness about and canvass support for it from fellow Members.

The EDM about the Azerbaijani community in Iran states that despite that the United Nations Economic and Social Council estimates the amount of Azerbaijanis in the country to around 30 million, there is not a single school teaching in the Azerbaijani language. Further the EDM expresses concerns over the arrests of thousands of Azerbaijani activists in Iran and notes that this followed large-scale demonstrations in May, when thousands of Azerbaijanis in north-western Iran came onto the streets demanding their cultural rights and an end to the persecution that has been conducted against the country's non-Persian ethnic groups since the arrival of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. The EDM also recognizes that the demonstrations among the Azerbaijanis in Iran are the biggest in the country since the Islamic revolution of 1979.

In the EDM Mr. Vaz and Mr. Keetch and 21 other members of the British Parliament, call on the government of the United Kingdom to call on the Iranian government to give greater cultural rights to the Azerbaijanis in Iran. Altogether 23 Members of the British Parliament are demanding from the government of the United Kingdom to engage in increased rights for the South-Azerbaijanis.
EDMs often attract a great deal of publicity; they are circulated not only among all MPs but also among leading journalists in the country and are considered as a gauge of opinion.
An initiative such as the EDM in Great Britain will send signals to other European governments about the importance and actuality of the question, but fore mostly it will send signals to the Iranian government making known for them that Great Britain is aware and watching.
The EDM will be open for signatures until November 2007 when the queen of the United Kingdom will reopen the parliament, and will much likely gain even wider support during the remaining moths.
We are sure that all sincere Azerbaijanis will receive this news with great joy, but we are likely ensured that the Persian chauvinists all over the world will receive it with even greater bitterness. The Motion about the situation of the Azerbaijanis in Iran that was laid in the Swedish parliament on October 31, created storms of raged protests against it from different chauvinistic Persian groups in the Diaspora, not only in Sweden but as far away as in France and America. They organized and lobbied for the withdrawal of the motion through articles, radio- and TV-discussions and by pressuring Swedish Members of the Parliament; however none of their activities led to any success.
At the same time it is worth noting that the exile-Azerbaijanis within a very short period of time impressively mobilized their forces, putting aside their internal conflicts, and all together confronted the Persian chauvinists and defended the motion. Instead of harming the lobby activities of the Azerbaijanis the Persian chauvinists actually instead revealed their true faces to political circles in Sweden and proved the existence of the Persian chauvinists even among Iranians in the Diaspora.
Therefore I would like to take this opportunity to thank all Azerbaijani organizations and personalities that stood behind us during these tumult months. I would also like to express the feeling of extreme pride when witnessing how strong our community can be when needed, such as when being exposed to organized attacks like these.
We are prepared for attacks this time as well, but we believe we will succeed also this time because our fight is legitimate and conducted with democratic means through democratic channels and for democratic values.
Respectfully
Nergiz Nedaei

The EDM can be read on the link below:
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=31821&SESSION=885

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