Iranian lawyer Hassan Younesi was summoned today by Evin Prison authorities to serve out his one-year sentence for “propaganda against the regime and assembly and collusion to commit crime.”
Younesi, who was arrested in the protests that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed election victory in 2009, was also given a $6,000 fine and a five-year ban on practising law.
A court attorney and legal consultant for the strategic research centre of the Expediency Council, Younesi is also the son of a former intelligence minister in the reform government of Mohammad Khatami.
Younesi’s verdict specifies: “In a text published under the pretext of determining the real versus the fake Islamic Republic, he accused the system of human rights violations, lying, deceiving, murdering dissidents and critics … intimidation and coercing false confessions.”
Thousands of people were arrested after the 2009 election as authorities attempted to quell mass protests, and in the past two years there have been numerous reports of Iranian prisoner abuse.
Prisoners’ families recently called on Parliament to investigate prison conditions, asking that reformist MPs be included on the panel to avoid any “false reports.”
