If the courts are like this, it appears that the Washington Post reporter has a very slim chance of being freed.
Verdicts often set before trials take place in Iran’s revolutionary courts
By Carol Morello May 29 at 8:40 PM
Iran’s revolutionary courts, where Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is being tried on espionage and related charges, are notorious among human rights activists as venues where verdicts are preordained and proceedings can finish in minutes.
“Nobody thinks the result is ever in question,” said Rod Sanjabi, executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a New Haven, Conn.-
based group that the Iranian government has labeled as subversive.
The trial of Rezaian, The Post’s Tehran bureau chief who has been jailed for more than 10 months, is shining the spotlight anew on the branch of Iran’s court system that hears national-security cases, broadly defined to include the prosecution of dissidents and journalists.
“Anything that’s a crime against the system or a threat to the system itself winds up under the rubric of the revolutionary courts,” said Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department official who studies Iran at the Brookings Institution.
Continue reading at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/irans-revolutionary-courts
Verdicts often set before trials take place in Iran’s revolutionary courts
By Carol Morello May 29 at 8:40 PM
Iran’s revolutionary courts, where Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is being tried on espionage and related charges, are notorious among human rights activists as venues where verdicts are preordained and proceedings can finish in minutes.
“Nobody thinks the result is ever in question,” said Rod Sanjabi, executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a New Haven, Conn.-
based group that the Iranian government has labeled as subversive.
The trial of Rezaian, The Post’s Tehran bureau chief who has been jailed for more than 10 months, is shining the spotlight anew on the branch of Iran’s court system that hears national-security cases, broadly defined to include the prosecution of dissidents and journalists.
“Anything that’s a crime against the system or a threat to the system itself winds up under the rubric of the revolutionary courts,” said Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department official who studies Iran at the Brookings Institution.
Continue reading at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/irans-revolutionary-courts
