A
Report on Judiciary Cases against the Freedom Movement of
By:
Abdolreza Tajik
“I
have great respect for Ibrahim Yazdi, because he is a whole politician, and this
is a rarity in our politics. He can
stand by what he states.”
(Abbas Abdi in
Truth or Freedom, p. 134)
Following the death of Mehdi Bazargan, the
ideologue and one of the founders of the Freedom Movement of Iran (FMI), Ibrahim
Yazdi emerged as the leader of this ideational-political organization in
1994. On October 3, 2004, Yazdi
reacted to being prosecuted by a secret court, and in the absence of a jury,
through not showing up at the court.
That is because Yazdi and his comrades in the FMI are accused of
political offenses, which ought to be prosecuted in an open court and in the
presence of a jury.
However, the judiciary denies their claim and
contends that since “political offense” is not yet defined, a revolutionary
court is proper to prosecute them for the accusations cited in the communiqué
released by the public relations bureau of the judiciary on March 18, 2001. The legal case against the FMI
followed the arrest of a number of activists belonging to the school of thought
called the “ideational-political or religious-nationalist,” and entailed the
objection of the movement in the form of a letter to the head of the judiciary
in the very next day. Yet the
protest did not prevent the judiciary from arresting around 40 of FMI leaders,
members and sympathizers on April 6, 2001 in Tehran, Tabriz, Mash-had, Zanjan,
Isfahan and Shiraz.
At the time, Yazdi was in the
At the reunion, Yazdi referred to their release and
affirmed, “the very fact that our friends were released demonstrates that the
charges against them were without merit.”
Yet the arrests of April 2001 were not the first for the FMI in the past
25 years. The movement has faced at
least another two prosecutions: one in 1989, and another in
2000.
The Background
of Disputes
After the provisional government of Mehdi Bazargan
resigned, members and sympathizers of the FMI, a number of them deputies in the
first post-revolutionary Majles (parliament), exited the rulership. They began to publicize their
organization’s positions and analyses on the current socio-political issues
facing the nation.
It was in this context that when Yazdi and his
colleagues were being charged with “subversive” activities, he told the French
paper, Le Monde: “For many years, the FMI has been committed to its legal
path, and has never supported the overthrow of the regime, or advocated public
insurgency. We want to change those
in command, and such changes, either in whole or in part, are recognized by the
constitution. Accordingly, no one
can accuse us of being subversive, since we campaign for democratic changes
within the framework of law and through peaceful means.” In spite of this pronouncement, the
socio-political positions taken by the FMI incited harsh reactions on the part
of its opponents, as it happens in the case of any political party or activist
organization.
Founders of the FMI, who had a different
interpretation of Islam from that of the “classic traditional” reading, had from
the very beginning distinguished themselves as “classic neo-thinkers” from
“classic traditionalists.” Yet with
the rise of the 1979 revolution, the movement, while making links to
similar-minded groups, including clerical, began to collaborate with “classic
traditionalists.” The
cooperation, however, did not last long.
After the events of 1982, the course changed and the FMI emerged as one
of the most contentious Iranian political parties.
This was to the extent that Asadollah Badamchian, a
principal member of the Islamic Coalition Party (Hezbe Mo’talefeh Islami)
whose party has always been critical of the FMI, criticized the movement’s
worldview and its performance. He
questioned regime’s lenience toward the movement in The Sobh, the party’s
weekly publication: “Isn’t this tolerance and indulgence that the FMI-ers -- who
before the victory of the revolution were never revolutionary or part of it,
never accepted Imam [Khomeini]’s leadership, believed in the policy of
gradual/evolutionary change within the framework of the laws of the era of the
taghoot [shah], supposedly believed in parliamentarian struggle [to the
extent that] Bazargan explicitly told the late Imam [Khomeini] that we should
not go for revolution, but be content with gaining some points from the shah —
were given the provisional government after the victory of the glorious Islamic
revolution led by the Imam?
“Yet from that very beginning, they quarreled with
the Imam: instead of Islamic republic, they sought democratic Islamic republic,
and according to Bazargan, on every issue he thought differently from the Imam,
yet the nation tolerated them. Isn’t this indulgence?”
This was against the backdrop in which the FMI,
while stressing on the authenticity of the Islamic revolution, viewed itself
involved in the materialization and victory of it. As a result, the final declaration of
its fifth congress, held in March 1982, read: “The FMI is a compassionate
supporter and a genuine defender of the Islamic system and the constitution,
which was approved by the votes of the nation. The constitution is a robust declaration
and a binding covenant between the rulership and the nation, which the two sides
in accordance to the Koranic teaching are obliged to respect and conform with
genuinely and fully. Based on this
perspective, the FMI believes that disregarding the constitution by either side
would ensue deprivation of rights or public unrest.
The FMI deems the path to reform is through
internal, transparent and legal challenges, which are grounded in the
constitution. Further, it
presupposes that freedom, confined within the limits of the law, constructive
criticism, and protests are neither harmful nor aggravating. Indeed, they are useful and beneficial
to maintaining and prolonging the system and are founded on the Islamic
tradition of amre be ma’roof and nahie az monkar, [enjoining what is
right, and forbidding what is wrong] which every [Muslim] person and society is
obligated to perform. The FMI
censures the notion of overthrowing the Islamic Republic, and condemns
dependency on or seeking assistance from foreign powers and enemies of Islam.”
Early in 1982, the group experienced a two-week
detention of Reza Sadr, a leading member and the publisher of the FMI newspaper,
Mizan. Later, Abbas Radnia,
another of its top members, was detained.
Yet it maintained that even based on the 10-article statement with regard
to banned political parties/organizations released by the revolutionary court in
that year, the FMI had the right to continue its political
activities.
However, Asadollah Badamchian attempted to justify
some of the treatment received by the FMI in the weekly Sobh: “Obviously,
a segment of the population cannot tolerate seeing so much violation,
lawbreaking, and opposition to Imam [Khomeini] and the public will. Those people might resort to acts of
violence, similar to which also occur in all Westerns countries and
democracies. In Iran it is even
more so: an old man has offered his son and son in law in the holy defense
[Iraq-Iran war], and has witnessed how his comrades falling in their bloods, or
that basiji [volunteer fighter] who has been present in the warfronts and
suffers the pain of losing thousands of his co-fighters. When these people see that FMI-ers are
disrespectful to the warfront, jihad, and defense, they become angry and
sometimes resort to actions such as attacking the former headquarters of the FMI
or its gatherings.”
The hostility toward the FMI among some of the
groups comprising the ruling coalition, based on what they perceived as the
movement’s opposition toward the revolution, led to actions taken by relevant
institutions in the ruling system.
The Office of the Revolutionary Prosecution [for instance] sealed for a
while the FMI headquarters in 1985 and returned it for resumption of activities
only after examining all the papers and documents inside the building. In spite of that, Ali Akbar
Mohtashemipour, the interior minister of the time, in an interview published on
January 27, 1990, stated: “Bazargan’s interview with the press is an indication
of the existence of freedom in the society. A person who has been within the
structure of an organization, acted so improperly during and after the
[post-revolution] provisional government, and he and his organization are
detested by the people conducts interviews and the press print them. This is the best reason for the
existence of freedom.”
The First-Case
Warning
The FMI, which had a different view of the
continuation of the Iraq-Iran War from 1982-3, released a statement entitled
“Warning” in April 1988. It was
initially written by Bazargan and, after being reviewed and edited by the
Political Office of the FMI, was signed by him. Following this action, a number of
high-ranking members of the organization were detained on May 30. Yet Bazargan, Yazdi, and Yadollah Sahabi
were not among them. Hashem
Sabbaghian, Mohammad Tavassoli, and Khosro Mansourian were among those who were
detained on charges of encouraging people to combat the Islamic Republic system,
causing public disorder, and disseminating lies and hearsay. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker
of the Majles [parliament], told the second-in-commands in charge of
security, and other directors of the Ministry of Information in a meeting: “Rest
assured that we are heading toward centralization and this needs time,
sufficient study and collaboration of all forces. We should harshly confront those who
want to create public dissent.” He
stressed that “those causing dissent anywhere should be separated from insiders
in the system,” and continued: “people should not perceive that you are trying
to solve their problems through repression. Oppression should be limited to elements
incapable of reform. The atmosphere
of fear should be for traitors and the impious.”
Finally, after around eight months of imprisonment,
Sabbaghian, Tavassoli, and Mansourian were released from jail around midnight of
February 10, 1989. They were
subject of a pardon by the leader of the revolution [Ayatollah Khomeini], and
their charges were never known.
Nonetheless, after the passage of the Article Ten of the laws governing
political parties, the FMI applied for a license. Its leaders modified FMI’s constitution
to suit the political party laws and submitted their petition to the interior
ministry. But, Rafsanjani, who was
in his first year as the president, told a university students’ meeting on the
occasion of Teacher’s Day: “The FMI became unlawful because of some of its
positions and because it rejected the supremacy of jurisprudence. If they reform themselves and conform to
the constitution, they can operate like other parties.”
Second
Detention with 90 Signatures
In spring of 1990, what is called the
Government of Construction, in its first year in power, received a letter with
90 signatures addressed to the president [Hashemi Rafsanjani]. A number of members of the FMI and
others, who had signed this letter, were arrested and moved to Tohid
Penitentiary on charges of “participating in [illegal] associations, committing
offenses against the internal and external security [of the state], and
participating in, signing and endorsing the letter written by a group of the
so-called ‘freedom seekers,’ better known as the ‘90-Sigature Letter.’” After two years of imprisonment,
those of whom the court had found guilty of “attempting to insult, accuse and
spread lies against the holy system of the Islamic republic” were released with
a pardon by the leader of the revolution on April 6, 1992.
Consequently, with the
closure of the second case against it, the movement began a new chapter. The end of the Government of
Construction and the election of Seyyed Mohammad Khatami as the president in
1997 provided fresh circumstances for the FMI. Abdollah Noori, the new minister of
interior, who was also a member of Rafsanjani’s government, proposed that the
FMI could be permitted to resume its political activities if it changed its
name. But, the movement’s leaders
rejected this. They believed that
if the FMI was not granted the right to political activism, its members, as
individuals, would not be permitted activism either. As a result, they preferred to
work within the structure of their old organization, which had a
40-year-old history behind.
(
Third Detention with Subversion Charge )
With the grow of a
splinter within the ruling factions of reformists and conservatives and the
emergence of fresh discourses in society, the FMI intensified its presence,
which brought a third legal case of “sedition” against its leaders and ranking
members. Although the court
eventually dropped the charge of “subversion,” they were found guilty of
“attempting against national security.”
In the revolutionary court -- the first session of which was held on
December 11, 2001, in the presence of many members and sympathizers -- 32 of the
34 accused attended the Branch 21 of the revolutionary court of Tehran and
listened to the prosecutor’s 150 pages of indictment. It was read in three
sessions. Then the court used
an amendment to the criminal law (Amendment 1 to Prefix 3 of Article 188) to
make the prosecution process secret.
In the meantime, five leading members of the FMI -- namely, Tavassoli,
Sabbaghian, Mansourian, Mahmood Na’eimpour, and Abolfazl Bazargan – were still
in detention. Yazdi, who had
an ongoing case against him, was summoned to the same branch of the
revolutionary court for May 3, 2002.
Since then and over the past two years, he has been interrogated in 52
sessions.
In
the end, Branch 21, which was in charge of prosecuting a total of 45 people in
the FMI case, issued its verdicts on May 16, 2002, yet they were not made
available to the accused or their lawyers until July 27 of that year. Those charged in the case had always
complained about the process of their imprisonment, search of their houses or
places of work, interrogation, and the conditions of detention and
prosecution. They even
requested a special committee to be formed to examine their case, and pleaded to
a higher court for reconsidering the verdicts.
Along
with prosecuting the FMI case, Branch 21 of the revolutionary court had also
shut down the Islamic Association of Engineers (Tehran), the Center for
Disseminating Islamic Truths [Ideas] (Mashed), Mehdi Bazargan Cultural Center
(Tehran), The Society for Cultural Development (Tabriz), The Association of
Resisting Intellectuals and Mahak Research Office (Zanjan). The closures were in spite of the fact
that the first two of the above institutions were founded before the FMI and had
developed independent ideational and cultural characters.
Now,
again, Yazdi is facing a new charge in Branch 6(new number for branch 21) of the
revolutionary court – i.e., “attempting to convert the velaii
(jurisprudence) rule into a democratic rule.” He has one condition for presenting
himself to the court and responding to the charges. That condition is: it should be a
proper, open court with a jury.
This is a
translation of “Three Experiences: A Report on FMI Cases,” published in
Shargh,
October 5, 2004.