Lawyer, President of the Juridical Commission of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

ABSTRACT: In Iran the penal system uses stoning against women, interferes with citizens' private lives, practices the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, privatizes the penal justice within the families according to a tribal pattern. Moreover, it has executed - after a summary trial and without the right to legal representation - more than one hundred thousand Iranian dissidents. With the end of the dictatorship of the Shah, the power was taken by the only group that had had the chance to organize itself: the fundamentalists, and this despite the fact that they had lost all credibility in the eyes of the population for over a century. The revolution (end of the nineteenth century) had produced a modern and lay constitution and penal code, which had been improved for seven decades. "The person who rules the country is the custodian of the divine justice. He is a supreme and superior being and the right to defense disappears completely in consideration of the divine law".

("HANDS OFF CAIN", 1 February 1994)

In my country I used to be the vice president of the Legal Association. I live in Europe not only as a refugee, but also as the president of the Juridical Commission of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and of the Independent Commission of exiled Iranian lawyers, who are struggling to reconquer a country which is overwhelmed by the regime of reactionary fundamentalism. It is a regime based on a penal system which has not been in use for centuries, which resorts to stoning against women, interferes with people's private lives, practices the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, privatizes the penal justice within the families according to a tribal pattern. Above all, this regime has executed more than one hundred thousand Iranian dissidents after summary trials where the defendant was not allowed to be legally represented.

This regime, which lacks any popular support, increases its power by terrorizing the population and exporting Khomeinist-based Islamic fundamentalism to Islamic countries such as Egypt, Algeria, Pakistan and Turkey.

Fundamentalism was born because the previous regime tolerated it, believing that the reactionary forces present in society did not represent a danger. The Iranian intelligentsia, the middle or working class, could not organize themselves into political, social, non-governmental groups or in the form of a labour union.

When the revolution in Iran resulted in the fall of the dictatorial regime of the Shah, the only group that had had the chance to organize itself took power: the right-wing religious fanatics, or the so-called fundamentalists. The same group which, in my opinion, had lost all credibility in the country for over a century, wiped away by the Iranian constitutional revolution of the end of the nineteenth century.

The revolution, that arose as a social movement and that was supported by the liberal thought of the clergy, had produced a modern and lay penal code and constitution which had developed for seven decades. In the penal code of Iran, the death penalty was envisioned only in the case of first-degree homicide. The judges were free to reduce the penalty to life imprisonment or to 10-15 years, and they did this very often. For seventy years very few people were executed in Iran.

Unfortunately, the fundamentalists introduced the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and the penalty no longer serves the purpose of maintaining the public order nor of improving the society: it has instead become a private question within a family. Homicide, which was once punished with methods that have nothing to do with modern criminology, is entrusted to the family of the victim, which can decide either to kill the person or to accept money by way of compensation. The thief loses his hands, and if he continues stealing he is killed. He cannot be forgiven, and the sentence cannot be reduced because it is considered divine.

The person who rules the country is the custodian of the divine jurisprudence. He is a supreme and superior being, and the right to legal representation disappears completely in consideration of this. In adultery trials, where women are either stoned, thrown off a cliff, decapitated or killed with a stone on the head, there is not right to legal representation. In modern and civil legal terms, these executions are to be considered homicides committed by the authorities. Charges of "corruption on the earth", a vague and meaningless crime, may lead to execution by hanging. The person does not know what he is accused of until he appears before the judge. As far as the respect of human rights is concerned, Iran violates the international juridical system. Thousands of people have been hung for political reasons. Thousands more have been killed without a trial, with charges of drug traffic, one of the most frequent ways in which the regime gets rid of political activists.

The Islamic society could have been one of the most advanced in the world. In 1906, when we developed the penal code and established the constitutional monarchy, many countries of Europe - Germany and Austria, for instance - still had non-constitutional monarchies. In Islam the obstacle to the abolition of the death penalty is the Khomeinist fundamentalism: our population is struggling to defeat it and win the country back.