Second Request for Retrial of Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani Eslamloo Rejected by Iran’s Supreme Court
24-April-2025
Category: Prisoners
24 April 2025
News Category: Prisoners
Breathing in Confinement – Thursday, 24 April 2025, for the second time, the Supreme Court of Iran has rejected the request for a retrial submitted on behalf of Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani Eslamloo, two political prisoners sentenced to death.
According to Breathing in Confinement, the news outlet of the Prisoners’ Rights League in Iran, on Tuesday afternoon, 22 April, the lawyer representing Mehdi Hassani announced that the second request for a retrial had been denied. The lawyer stated:
“For the second time, the retrial request for Mehdi Hassani (sentenced to death on the charge of baghi, or armed rebellion) was rejected by Branch 29 of the Supreme Court without the case file being requested from Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court. Meanwhile, none of the judicial authorities approved my request to review the case documents.”
Hassani’s initial retrial request was also rejected by Branch 29 of the Supreme Court in March 2025. A similar request filed by Behrouz Ehsani Eslamloo had previously been denied as well.
In September 2024, Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Iman Afshari, sentenced both men to death on charges including baghi (armed rebellion), moharebeh (waging war against God), corruption on Earth, gathering classified information, collusion against national security, and membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). The Supreme Court upheld the death sentences in January 2025, despite the case never having gone through the appeals process.
Amnesty International had previously issued a statement calling for the death sentences to be halted. On 24 April, the organization again expressed concern via social media about the rejection of the retrial request for the two political prisoners, who are currently held in Ghezel Hesar Prison.
Mehdi Hassani, 48, was arrested in September 2022. He was subjected to months of physical and psychological torture before being transferred to Evin Prison.
Behrouz Ehsani Eslamloo, 69, was arrested at his home in December 2022. He endured months of torture and pressure to extract a confession, which he consistently resisted. He had also been arrested previously in 2019 after attending the funeral of Pouya Bakhtiari, one of the protesters who was killed during November 2019 protests.
Both prisoners are among the participants in the “No to Executions Tuesdays” hunger strike.
Last year, Ehsani wrote a letter from Evin Prison on the anniversary of the 2022 uprising:
“As I said during my interrogation, quoting the martyr Khosrow Golsorkhi, I will not bargain over my life—not at the age of 70. I am not at all concerned about the remaining 10 percent of my life. I am ready for my humble life to be sacrificed for the liberation of the Iranian people.”