The Supreme Court rejects Vahid Afkari’s request for retrial
23-August-2021
Category: Prisoners
23-August-2021
Newsgroup: Prisoners –
Breathing in Confinement: Branch 38 of the Supreme Court rejected the request of Vahid Afkari, the brother of the executed wrestler Navid Afkari, for retrial. Vahid had previously been sentenced by the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz to 25 years in prison.
According to Breathing in Confinement, the news organ of the Prisoners’ Rights League in Iran, Saeed Dehghan, the Afkari Brothers’ lawyer, tweeted today that Vahid Afkari’s request for retrial had been rejected. He wrote: “Branch 38 of the Supreme Court rejected our request for retrial for Vahid Afkari.”
Criticizing the proceeding, Mr. Dehghan wrote: “If they had read the case just once, even a cursory reading, the legal evidence was more than sufficient to convince them for retrial a verdict with 24 contradictions as well as 3 lies. Twenty five years in prison only on the basis of ‘the knowledgeof the Judge’; without observing Article 211 of the Penal Code!”
Saeed Afkari, Vahid’s brother, also tweeted: “The request for a retrial for my brother Vahid Afkari was rejected. Branch 38 of the Supreme Court has opposed the trial. False evidence, withdrawal of the testimony under pressure, as well as 24 contradictions; What else a case needs to justify a retrial? “You took away 25 years of Vahid’s life at the request of the security services.”
Vahid and Habib Afkari, along with their brother Navid Afkari, were arrested during the August 2018 protests in Shiraz and charged with “moharebeh” as well as “the murder of an employee of a security agency”. Despite many ambiguities and inconsistencies in his case, Navid Afkari was executed on September 12, 2020, and buried overnight.
In June this year, Amnesty International issued a call for urgent action to request from the authorities of the Islamic Republic, including the head of the judiciary, Ibrahim raisi to release Habib and Vahid Afkari.
This human rights organization called the detention of Vahid Afkari and Habib Afkari as “arbitrary” and criticized their torture, and called for an urgent action to write letters to Ibrahim Raisi, the then head of the judiciary, demanding the release of Vahin and Habib Afkari.
Amnesty International had previously documented the details of the torture against Vahid and Habib Afkari in prison in a 48-page report.
The report states that the two brothers have been held in ” windowless solitary confinement cells and denied access to adequate healthcare, fresh air, telephone calls and face to face family visits.”
According to Amnesty International, after his arrest in September 2018, Vahid Afkari was “forcibly disappeared for 12 days” when he was being held in a solitary confinement, without any access to the outside world.
Amnesty International continues that the brothers reported in written complaints and in court that: “they were repeatedly tortured and otherwise ill-treated to ‘confess’. They said they were held in prolonged solitary confinement, repeatedly punched, kicked, and beaten with sticks and cables while blindfolded, and psychologically tortured, including through death threats and threats to imprison, kill, sexually assault or otherwise harm their family members. ”
During his detention, Vahid Afkari attempted suicide twice. Once in mid-November 2018 when he cut his neck with a piece of glass. He underwent surgery at Namazi Hospital in Shiraz and rescued, but his treatment was stopped shortly afterwards and he was returned to the prison.
His second suicide attempt was in February 2019, when he tried to kill himself by taking “an overdose of sleep pills,” but was again taken to the hospital and rescued.