Abdolfattah Soltani

Abdolfattah Soltani ( Persian عبدالفتاح سلطانی; * November 2, 1953 ) is an Iranian lawyer and member of the Tehran Center for Human Rights Defenders, which he founded together with Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi in 2002. He is the recipient of the International Nuremberg Human Rights Prize 2009 .

Protest for the release of Soltani at the Inside Iran Conference in Berlin (2011)

Life

Abdolfattah Soltani represented in his capacity as a lawyer in Iran several times political prisoners and their families, including among others the journalist Akbar Ganji , the parents in custody murdered Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi and one of the few lawyers who Bahai .

In 2005 Soltani spent 219 days in prison, including 43 in solitary confinement. The Center for Advocates of Human Rights , an international non-governmental organization , protested against Soltani's imprisonment several times without success. In 2006 he was sentenced to five years in prison, four years for "disclosing confidential documents" and one year for "propaganda against the system". On May 28, 2007, he was acquitted of all charges brought against him since his arrest in July 2005. He has since been prevented from leaving Iran.

On June 16, 2009, after the Iranian presidential elections in 2009 and the protests that followed , Soltani was arrested again in his office for no reason and without an arrest warrant . The whereabouts of Soltani were initially kept secret by the Iranian authorities; Soltani was denied any contact with the outside world. He has now been taken to Tehran's Evin Prison and is being held there in solitary confinement. The arrests are interpreted as a sign of massive repression of the political opposition in Iran, as a member of which Soltani is considered an advocate for human rights.

On behalf of the city of Nuremberg and the jury of the International Human Rights Prize, the Lord Mayor of Nuremberg Ulrich Maly protested against the arrest of Soltani in June 2009 and, citing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ratified by Iran, called for his immediate release.

On August 27, 2009, Soltani was finally released on bail. The family had deposited the title deed from Soltanis law firm as bail.

The Iranian government refused Soltani on October 2, 2009 at the airport in Tehran to leave Iran for the official award ceremony of the International Human Rights Prize. On October 4, 2009, Soltani was awarded the International Human Rights Prize 2009 in absentia during a ceremony in the Nuremberg Opera House . His wife Masoumeh Dehghan accepted the award on behalf of the company. In 2012, Masoumeh Dehghan was sentenced by a court in Iran to one year probation and a five-year travel ban because she had accepted the award instead of her husband.

Condemnation

Shortly after the Iranian parliamentary elections in 2012 , Soltani was sentenced to 18 years in prison and subsequently banned from practicing his profession for 20 years. He was convicted of "accepting an unlawful price", "anti-regime propaganda", "gathering and blackouting with anti-system intentions" and "establishing the Center for the Protection of Human Rights".

In an appeal hearing in June 2012, the sentence was reduced to 13 years. According to his daughter, he turned down an offer to further reduce the sentence if he publicly distanced himself from Ebadi.

release

On November 21, 2018, Soltani was released on parole. The probation period is five years.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Iran: Harassment of Rights Defenders Escalates Human Rights Watch, August 2, 2005
2. ↑ Portrait of the laureate
3. ↑ Wave of arrests in Iran: whereabouts unknown Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 26, 2009
4. ↑ nuernberg.de of March 5, 2012 (PDF; 325 kB) Press release of the Baha'i in Germany (accessed on March 11, 2012)
5. ↑ Iran: Human Rights Defender at Risk Appeal Case: Abdolfattah Soltani Amnesty International, February 1, 2006
6. ^ Rights Group Protests Judiciary Move ; Article in: Iran Daily from August 1, 2005 (link no longer available)
7. ↑ Amnesty International, June 19, 2009, non-violent political prisoner
8. ↑ Soltani arrested again in Iran in: Nürnberger Zeitung of September 12, 2009
9. ↑ Iran: Arbitrary arrest / prisoner of conscience: Abdolfattah Soltani Amnesty International, June 19, 2009
10. ↑ Iran: Great concern about the Human Rights Prize winner Soltani ( memento from September 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) in Nürnberger Zeitung from June 19, 2009
11. ↑ Iranian lawyer is now in solitary confinement ( memento of September 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) in: Nürnberger Nachrichten of July 4, 2009
12. ↑ Mass Arrests and Detentions Signal Increasing Repression International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, June 17, 2009
13. ↑ International Human Rights Award
14. ↑ Human rights laureates in Iran released  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) br-online from August 27, 2009
15. ↑ International Nuremberg Human Rights Prize 2009 awarded to Abdolfattah Soltani - laureate prevented from leaving Iran ( Memento from October 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Press release from the City of Nuremberg from October 4, 2009
16. ^ Nuremberg human rights award for Iranian Soltani Bild-Zeitung of October 4, 2009
17. ↑ Prize to Soltani: Celebration for distant heroes ( Memento from September 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) in: Nürnberger Nachrichten from October 5, 2009
18. ↑ Soltani's wife condemned ( memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) in: Bayerischer Rundfunk , Studio Franken from November 19, 2012
19. ↑ Soltani laureate in Iran for 18 years imprisonment ( Memento from March 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on March 11, 2012)
20. ↑ The Guardian of June 13, 2012 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/13/iranian-human-rights-lawyer-jailed
21. ↑ Stephanie Rupp: Abdolfattah Soltani is finally free . In: Nordbayerische Zeitung . November 22, 2018, p. 3 .