The trial has begun in Iran of the lawyer of Mahsa Amini, the young Iranian Kurd whose death last September triggered a widespread protest movement, a media report said on Wednesday, August 30. Saleh Nikbakht is charged with "propaganda against the system," the daily Etemad reported.
The first hearing "was on Tuesday and he was notified of the charge of propaganda activity against the regime for having spoken to foreign and local media, concerning the Mahsa Amini affair in particular," it said. Nikbakht's trial begins nearly a year after the death in custody last September 16 of 22-year-old Amini, after she was arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic's strict dress rules for women.
If convicted, he faces a prison term of between one and three years. Etemad reported that Nikbakht's lawyer urged his acquittal, saying that in interviews he "only criticized the running of the country by the authorities."
At the end of September 2022, Nikbakht indicated that the Amini family had filed a complaint against the police officers who had arrested her. Dozens of police officers were among the hundreds of people killed during the Amini protests, which Tehran labeled "riots" fomented by foreign governments. Authorities made thousands of arrests among protesters and their supporters. Nikbakht, who comes from the western Kurdistan province, has represented several Iranian personalities during his lengthy career, including acclaimed film director Jafar Panahi.
Iran is ratcheting up a crackdown ahead of the one-year anniversary of Amini's death, arresting prominent personalities, campaigners and relatives of those killed by security forces in protests last year, activists say.
Her death sparked months of protests that included calls for an end to Iran's Islamic system. The movement has now largely subsided, despite some sporadic outbursts, after a crackdown that saw thousands detained, according to the United Nations, and hundreds shot dead by security forces, according to activists.
But campaigners outside Iran say the authorities are acutely aware of the risk that the anniversary could spark more protests and say security forces have stepped up repression to prevent a repeat of the events of last autumn. Those arrested this month have included the prominent singer Mehdi Yarrahi after he released a song urging women to remove their headscarves in defiance of the law. Eleven women's rights activists were detained in Gilan province, one of the flashpoint areas for protests last year, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
Meanwhile, Amnesty International has said families of those killed in the crackdown on the movement have been subjected to "arbitrary arrest and detention" in a bid to enforce "silence and impunity" over the fate of their loved ones. In a report, Amnesty said families of victims killed in the crackdown across the country have been subjected to abusive interrogations, arbitrary arrest and detention and or unjust prosecution and sentencing in recent months.
Meanwhile, Norway-based Iran Human Rights says 486 people have been executed in Iran this year, with the use of capital punishment aimed at "creating fear in society and to prevent more protests." While seven men have been executed in cases related to the protests, causing an international outcry, most of those hanged are convicted on drug and murder charges and are "low-cost victims of the Islamic republic's killing machine," it added.
There have also been reports of arrests in the Kurdish-populated area of western Iran from where Amini originated and which were the scene of the earliest protests.