PRESS RELEASE
December 26, 2010
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT – The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) urges the Iranian Judiciary to set aside Habibollah Latifi’s conviction and execution sentence, and afford him a new trial. Latifi, a 29-year-old law student and Kurdish activist, was arrested in October 2007 and is imprisoned in Sanandaj in northwestern Iran. It has been reported that he was held in solitary confinement for months and tortured before being convicted of Moharebeh (“enmity against God”) based on his forced confession. He was sentenced to death. The trial is reported to have lasted only a few minutes.
Latifi’s execution by hanging, originally scheduled for today, has reportedly been postponed for twenty-four hours. IHRDC urges that the sentence be set aside completely and that Latifi be afforded his fundamental due process right to a fair trial.
For an understanding of the Iranian criminal justice system, please read the commentary by attorney Behnam Daraeizadeh, which can be found here: A-Look-at-the-CriminalProcedure-in-Iran.pdf
IHRDC is a non-profit organization based in New Haven, Connecticut that was founded in 2004 by a group of human rights scholars, activists and historians. IHRDC publishes comprehensive and detailed reports on the human rights situation in Iran. The reports, a database of documents relating to human rights in Iran, and other materials are published in English and Persian and are available to the public on the Center’s website at www.iranhrdc.org.