Hassan and Hossein Amiri, 20-year-old twin brothers sentenced to death on charges of cooperating with Israel, have become the focus of renewed concern over the use of evidence and the rights of defendants in Iran’s national-security cases.
Mai Sato, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, has warned that the brothers are at risk of execution. According to her account, one of the pieces of evidence used against Hassan Amiri was a photograph of a bombed site found on his mobile phone. There have also been reports that the brothers were forced under torture to confess to possessing images stored on a laptop that they did not own.
At the heart of the case is a fundamental legal question: what separates possessing or taking a photograph from criminal cooperation with a foreign state?
The question has acquired greater urgency following the adoption of Iran’s new Law on Intensifying Punishment for Espionage and Cooperation with Israel and Hostile States. Critics warn that vague formulations such as “indirect cooperation” could blur the line between ordinary activities, the circulation of information and acts that can result in the gravest national-security charges.
Zamaneh spoke with Hossein Raisi, a lawyer and human rights scholar, about the Amiri brothers’ case, the new espionage legislation, the use of the death penalty, and the erosion of accountability during wartime.
A Photograph Alone Does Not Prove Criminal Cooperation
Raisi says the fundamental problem is that Iran’s judicial authorities frequently fail to apply even the standards formally established under the Islamic Republic’s own criminal law.
The new espionage law was passed rapidly following the 12-day war. Yet, Raisi notes, the law still does not allow the authorities to treat such accusations as offences established merely by the existence of a physical act.
He points to Article 144 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, which requires the mental element of a crime to be established. In other words, prosecutors must demonstrate not only that an act took place but that there was criminal intent behind it.
“Simply alleging cooperation, photographing a bombed, military or restricted location, or even sending an image somewhere is not sufficient to establish the offence,” Raisi says. “All the material and mental elements of the crime have to be established together. The absence of any one of these elements changes whether an offence has actually been committed.”
For the Amiri brothers, this distinction is decisive.
A photograph of a bombed site, even if the site were military or restricted, does not in itself demonstrate that the person taking it intended to assist a hostile state.
“The physical element cannot be established merely by taking a photograph of a bombed location,” Raisi says. “Criminal intent and the purpose for which the photograph was used also have to be considered.”
The same principle applies to confessions.
Raisi stresses that a confession can only be treated as valid evidence if it has been given freely, in fair conditions and without coercion or intimidation. If a confession is extracted through torture, psychological pressure or physical abuse, he says, it cannot legitimately be used to establish guilt.
He believes this is particularly important in security cases arising since the recent wars. Revolutionary Courts and security agencies, he argues, have repeatedly relied on pressure, mistreatment and coercion when gathering evidence.
“If evidence is obtained through torture, abuse, psychological pressure or physical pressure,” he says, “the entire process is fundamentally compromised.”
Raisi acknowledges that neither he nor the public has access to the complete Amiri case file. But he says the information available points to serious problems with due process.
These include the brothers’ reported lack of access to lawyers of their own choosing, closed-door hearings, the failure to release even those details of the case that could safely be made public, pressure on the defendants, their isolation from the outside world, and the lack of information provided to their families about their condition.
“All of these are indications of an unfair judicial process,” he says.
For a death sentence to withstand legal scrutiny, the authorities would have to demonstrate clearly that the brothers knowingly intended to cooperate with a hostile state, that they were recruited for such a purpose, or that they took and transmitted images with the conscious intention of acting against national security.
Without such evidence, Raisi argues, the gap between possessing an image and committing espionage remains substantial.
How the New Law Expands Espionage
The concern surrounding the Amiri brothers is also part of a larger debate about the transformation of espionage law in Iran.
Raisi says the new legislation has dramatically expanded both the range of conduct that can be classified as espionage and the severity of the punishments attached to it.
Earlier provisions in the Islamic Penal Code, he notes, generally imposed prison sentences of up to ten years for espionage offences. The new law has not simply replaced those provisions. Instead, it has created additional and much broader categories of criminal liability.
Raisi points in particular to phrases such as “cooperation,” “any form of cooperation,” and “direct or indirect cooperation.”
Such terminology, he says, moves the law away from the classical understanding of espionage, in which prosecutors would normally have to prove a relatively direct relationship between an individual, sensitive information and a foreign state or intelligence apparatus.
Under the expanded framework, the possible chain of criminalisation becomes much longer.
Raisi warns that even educational activities or contact with institutions whose status as organs of a hostile foreign government has not been established could potentially expose individuals to severe security charges.
This is why the issue of criminal intent becomes particularly important in cases of alleged indirect cooperation.
A person involved somewhere in a chain of communication, he argues, cannot automatically be held responsible for the ultimate destination of information. Prosecutors must establish that the intermediary knew in advance what they were participating in and acted with the relevant criminal intention.
In Raisi’s interpretation, the intent of an intermediary must correspond, at least in part, to the criminal purpose of the person at the end of the chain. Without that shared intent, the offence cannot simply be presumed.
Iranian criminal law formally recognises principles intended to protect defendants against precisely this kind of expansive interpretation. Criminal statutes are supposed to be interpreted narrowly, and ambiguities in penal law should be resolved in favour of the accused.
The presumption of innocence should also require prosecutors to establish criminal intent rather than placing the burden on defendants to prove that ordinary activities were innocent.
“On paper, it appears that we have all these principles,” Raisi says. “But under wartime conditions, and in the atmosphere of intimidation and fear that the Islamic Republic seeks to expand, the authorities are using the situation to place greater pressure on society.”
For him, the problem is therefore not simply the wording of the law. It is the political environment in which an already expansive law is being interpreted and enforced.
Instead of answering questions about the growing use of security accusations, the rising number of executions and the increasing ease with which capital punishment can be imposed, Raisi says the state has widened the scope of criminalisation through broad categories such as direct and indirect cooperation.
War and the Falling Political Cost of Execution
Raisi situates these developments within the political conditions created by the recent wars.
In his view, the wartime environment has weakened mechanisms of accountability while giving the Islamic Republic additional space to portray executions and severe national-security prosecutions as necessary acts of defence.
“Inside the country, the political cost of executions for the Islamic Republic has fallen since the war. The government can tell part of its support base, and others, that it is protecting the country.”
This is particularly significant in cases involving accusations of cooperation with Israel.
War allows the government to frame defendants not simply as alleged offenders but as threats to collective security. Raisi argues that this environment can make it politically easier to impose the harshest punishments while making scrutiny of the evidence more difficult.
“Unfortunately, the war has deprived people of agency,” he says. “The Islamic Republic is neither able nor willing to provide clear answers, and it hides behind the war.”
The consequences go beyond the Amiri brothers.
Raisi believes the new espionage legislation has created a framework in which the authorities can more easily claim that the elements of an offence have been established, sentence young defendants to death, carry out those sentences and avoid meaningful accountability afterward.
War, Human Rights and International Double Standards
For Raisi, however, the erosion of accountability is not confined to Iran.
He argues that the broader international environment has also weakened the ability of human-rights mechanisms to exert meaningful pressure on the Islamic Republic.
He describes the recent wars launched by Israel and the United States against Iran as violations of international law and argues that governments involved in military attacks on Iranian civilians cannot credibly present themselves as consistent defenders of human rights inside Iran.
At the same time, he stresses that the Islamic Republic itself remains a systematic violator of human rights.
The result, in his view, is a profound crisis of credibility.
Raisi points to the inability of international institutions to prevent wars, protect civilians or halt atrocities in conflicts elsewhere, including in Gaza. He also refers to Iranian civilians killed in recent attacks, including at a school in Minab, a stadium in Lamerd and a wedding in southern Iran.
He compares the limited consequences following these incidents with the international response to the torture and execution of Iranian protesters. In both cases, he argues, responses have largely been restricted to condemnations, statements and expressions of concern.
This weakness has consequences inside Iran.
If the Islamic Republic concludes that there is little prospect of meaningful international accountability, Raisi argues, the pressure to justify executions or abusive judicial practices diminishes further.
He is particularly critical of what he describes as a double standard in the value assigned to Iranian lives.
“The world is not as concerned about the blood of young Iranians as it is about the Strait of Hormuz and rising diesel prices,” he says. “It does not appear that their lives receive the same level of concern.”
For Raisi, the contrast is telling. International attention can rapidly mobilise around shipping routes, oil prices and energy security, while executions inside Iran rarely produce a comparable political response.
He does not argue that international statements are meaningless. But he believes they are insufficient when they remain disconnected from mechanisms capable of affecting the behaviour of the state.
The UN special rapporteur, he argues, should be able to move beyond warnings and requests for stays of execution and help generate broader international pressure against capital punishment in Iran.
Yet he sees major obstacles to such mobilisation, including the weakness of the United Nations, geopolitical interests and what he regards as inconsistent standards in the application of international law and human rights.
Who Can Stop an Execution?
Despite his criticism of international mechanisms, Raisi places significant responsibility on Iran’s own judicial institutions.
He argues that the courts issuing death sentences should be required to explain publicly, to the extent legally possible, the evidence on which those judgments are based.
But responsibility does not stop with the Revolutionary Courts.
The Supreme Court also has a central role because it reviews and confirms death sentences during the appeals process.
Raisi calls on Iran’s legal community and civil society to demand that the Supreme Court explain how it determines whether trials have been fair, whether the elements of an offence have actually been established and whether a punishment is proportionate to the alleged conduct.
Reviewing precisely these questions, he says, is among the Supreme Court’s basic responsibilities.
When a sentence involves execution, such scrutiny becomes even more important because the consequences cannot be reversed.
He therefore calls for pressure from lawyers and civil society inside Iran, together with sustained pressure from human-rights organisations outside the country, directed not only at the government in general but at the specific courts and Supreme Court branches responsible for issuing and upholding capital sentences.
He acknowledges, however, that much of the current pressure remains confined to interviews, reporting and public statements.
A Divided Iranian Diaspora
Raisi also identifies divisions within the Iranian diaspora as an obstacle to building a larger campaign against executions.
He describes the community outside Iran as fragmented and lacking the cohesion necessary to organise sustained protests capable of attracting broader international attention.
One source of this fragmentation, in his view, is the position of those Iranians abroad who support military action against the Islamic Republic.
For Raisi, supporting external war while opposing repression inside Iran produces a human-rights contradiction. It makes it harder to build a position that consistently defends Iranian civilians against both state repression and foreign military violence.
“Unfortunately, part of this community supports the war,” he says.
In his view, accepting different standards for different forms of violence ultimately leaves Iranian society more isolated.
Cases such as those of Hassan and Hossein Amiri can then disappear between competing political positions, even when two young men are facing execution.
Raisi ends by expressing hope that reason and common sense will prevent their case, and others like it, from reaching an irreversible conclusion.
He calls on civil society and the legal community inside Iran to press the Supreme Court directly about how it evaluates the fairness of proceedings and the proportionality of death sentences.
The Court, he says, must explain how it can approve judgments that take the lives of young people when fundamental questions remain about the evidence, criminal intent and the fairness of the proceedings.
For Hassan and Hossein Amiri, these are not abstract questions of legal interpretation.
The difference between suspicion and proof, between possessing a photograph and establishing criminal intent, is the difference between life and death.
Interview conducted and written by Hossein Noush-Azar.