Two students who were tortured and held for two years by Iran’s hardline Islamic regime have been jailed for 16 years after they were accused of calling for democracy.
The pair – named as Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran – were forced to confess to ‘corruption’ after months of solitary confinement.
They were reportedly blindfolded while they were tortured and questioned and eventually dragged back to their university to admit their ‘crimes’.
Neither are said to have had access to a lawyer before signing their confessions.
The students – both aged 22 – were accused of having links to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, which wants to install a free and democratic government.
The university home page of Ali shows a smartly dressed young man with a passion for astronomy and football.
The students both denied any connection to the opposition group and say they only signed the confessions after torture.
The defendants’ lawyer Mostafa Nili also confirms this saying the young men “confessed after 50 days in isolation without a telephone call and without the right of access to a lawyer”.
The pair, held in custody since April 2020, were given 10 years for ‘destruction of public installations’ even though the only evidence was the forced confessions, five years for ‘cooperating with hostile groups’ and plotting against national security, and one year for spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic, according to judiciary spokesperson Zabihollah Khodayian.
The sentencing happened despite the fact that a group of Nobel laureates had written in January urging that they be freed after it was revealed there was no evidence to convict them on any charges other than the forced confessions.
In a joint letter to the UN Secretary-General & the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Nobel laureates and academic researchers called for the immediate release of Ali and Amir.
The letter was signed by ten prominent academic figures including Professor Noam Chomsky, and six Nobel Prize winners, including Randy Schekman, Nobel laureate in Physiology in 2013 and Barry Barish, Nobel prize in physics n 2017.
The letter states that Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi, who have been arbitrarily in detention since April 2020, were subjected to mental and physical torture and other forms of ill-treatment, such as forced confession. The letter describes them as political prisoners.
In May 2020, one month after their arrest, the authorities accused the students of being in contact with “counter-revolutionary groups” such as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), accused of causing unrest in the country.
The students’ lawyer Mostafa Nili said he would appeal the “heavy” court ruling, adding: “The two young men confessed after 50 days in isolation without a telephone call and without the right of access to a lawyer.”
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, co-founder and spokesperson for the NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), said: “This unjust conviction is the result of an extrajudicial process engineered by the security agencies, intended to repress and create fear amongst students.”
He added: “It lacks all credibility.”
Hadi Ghaemi, executive director for the Center for Human Rights in Iran, said: “Universities should be centres of free thought and expression, yet in Iran countless students have been expelled and or imprisoned for exercising these rights.”
Ali Younesi won a gold medal in the International Astronomy Olympiad in 2016 after winning a silver medal in Iran’s domestic astronomy Olympiad in 2015. Amir Hossein Moradi won a silver medal in Iran’s domestic astronomy Olympiad in 2016.
