2022-12-11 — In the midst of increasingly violent and repressive actions by the Iranian authorities against their own citizens, two Bahá’í women, Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, regarded as symbols of resilience in Iran after spending 10 years in prison, have been sentenced to a second cruel 10-year imprisonment. The two Iranian Bahá’í women had been arrested on 31 July – for the second time – at the start of a fresh crackdown against Iran’s Bahá’ís.
More than 320 Bahá’ís have been affected by individual acts of persecution since the arrest of Mahvash and Fariba. Dozens were arrested at various points in Shiraz, across Mazandaran province, and elsewhere throughout the country. Homes owned by Bahá’ís in the village of Roshankouh were demolished. Government plans to tar the Bahá’ís through hate speech and propaganda were also exposed. And at least 90 Bahá’ís were either in prison or subject to degrading ankle-band monitoring.
The latest jail sentence was handed down after a one-hour trial on 21 November – an hour which was mostly spent with the judge insulting and humiliating the defendants. This trial came almost four months after their arrest. Judge Iman Afshari, presiding over the Revolutionary Court’s Branch 26 in Tehran, rebuked the two women for “not having learned their lesson” from their previous imprisonment.
Dr. Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel laureate and defence lawyer for Mahvash and Fariba during their first trial, said in 2008 that “not a shred of evidence” was offered to prove the national security charges or other allegations. Nor was any new evidence forthcoming at this latest trial.
“It is profoundly distressing to learn that these two Bahá’í women who have both already and unjustly lost a decade of their lives to prison for their beliefs, are once again being incarcerated for another 10 years on the same ludicrous charges,” said Simin Fahandej, representative of the Bahá’í International Community to the United Nations. “Mahvash and Fariba are wives, mothers and grandmothers to families who have already been forced to endure their absence for 10 brutal years. Instead of expressing regret to these families for the unjust imprisonment they have already suffered, the Iranian government is unbelievably and inexplicably repeating the same cruelty for a second time. This ridiculous sentence, handed down without any basis in evidence, makes an absolute mockery of the Iranian judicial system where judges preside as prosecutor, judge, and jury all in one. Words fail to describe this absurd and cruel injustice.” [BWNS1631]
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