A Revolutionary Court judge in Tehran held a two-hour hearing last week in the espionage trial of Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post correspondent who has dual U.S. and Iranian citizenship.
Because the court proceedings are secret and the indictment remains under wraps, little is known about the specific charges against Rezaian, and virtually nothing about what evidence Iranian investigators think they can present to prove that he committed a crime. This is not a justice system but the machinery of oppression.
Sadly, Rezaian isn’t the only American to have faced charges in Iran’s Revolutionary Courts, which are closely tied to the government’s security apparatus and are often used to squelch dissent, including by sentencing political protesters to death.
Amir Hekmati, a decorated U.S. Marine veteran from Flint, Michigan, is currently serving a 10-year sentence for “cooperating with hostile governments” after being arrested while visiting relatives in 2011. Christian pastor Saeed Abedini of Boise, Idaho, was sentenced in 2013 to eight years in prison after being convicted of establishing churches in private homes. Both cases were heard in secret, and in Hekmati’s case, without the defendant or his lawyer being present.
Each nation has the right to adopt and enforce its own laws. But Iran’s Revolutionary Courts fall far short of any objective standard of fairness.
While we take a professional interest in the right of the world’s journalists to work without undue interference, we take a human interest in the right of all people not to be deprived of liberty through secret proceedings, hazy evidence and a rigged process.
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