Sunday, April 13, 2008

Ghabel Ends Up in Prison Too

A Judgment Calculated to be Implemented after Elections

Without any prior warning, Hadi Ghabel, a cleric member of the Central Council of Jebhe ‎Mosharekat reformist front (Participation Front) was arrested on Monday and sent to ‎Langarood prison in Qom.‎

This news was broken by Ghabel’s son, Ruhollah who said, “My father had been ‎summoned by Qom’s special Clerics Court on March 26th, 2008. He requested an ‎extension and went to the court yesterday (on Monday). Because the court had not ‎announced that it was going to implement the sentence against my father, he was not ‎ready for detention, but was nevertheless transferred to a prison in Qom.”‎

Jebhe Mosharekat front, on whose central council Ghabel had served in the past, issued a ‎statement regarding Ghabel’s arrest in which it protests against the ‘unfair” execution of ‎a sentence and reminds the public that the execution of the sentence had been suspended ‎by the judiciary officials based on the negotiations that had taken place.”‎

The statement also reads, “A review of the charges against Ghabel indicate that a case ‎was concocted against him based on the public speeches that he had made which included ‎his political, religious and Shiite views, as well as his criticisms since 1997. From ‎amongst his writings and speeches, selected sentences and paragraphs had been extracted ‎to serve as documents for the arrest.”‎

Last Wednesday, agents approached Ghabel’s house on the pretext of having religious ‎questions. When the cleric appeared at the front of his house, they pushed their way ‎inside and after searching the rooms confiscated his papers, writings and computer, and ‎took him to prison. The following Tuesday, Jebhe Mosharekat issued a statement in ‎which it condemned his detention, while his imprisonment lasted for 2 months.‎

Despite the express legal provisions that political crimes must be reviewed in the ‎presence of a jury and must be public, Hadi Ghabel was interrogated repeatedly taken to ‎the Clerics Court during his two month detention and was finally sentenced to 40 months ‎of imprisonment. He was also defrocked.‎

The details of the sentence issued by the Qom court also assert that he had committed ‎acts against national security for which he was sentenced to 1 year of imprisonment, 10 ‎months for engaging in propaganda against the state, 15 months for spreading lies and ‎rumors with the purpose of disrupting public peace, the payment of 500,000 Tomans ‎‎(each US Dollar is about 850 Toman in the market) for insulting state and religious ‎officials, and imprisonment of 100 days for insulting judiciary leadership, the general and ‎revolutionary prosecutor of Tehran, and other judiciary officials. ‎

His defense attorneys have protested against the sentence passed against Ghabel and filed ‎an appeal. The second district of the court of appeals for the Clerics court however, ‎upheld the judgment.‎
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