Prominent Iranian dissident Ebrahim Yazdi, who was facing charges of seeking to overthrow the Islamic regime, has been handed a "heavy prison term", the government Iran newspaper said yesterday. The daily said the hardline-controlled judiciary had convicted Yazdi of "acting against national interests, propagating against the regime, helping opposition groups, insulting the supreme leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and other officials and possessing unauthorised weapons." The paper did not elaborate on how many years the "heavy prison term" stipulates that Yazdi, who had boycotted his trial, must be jailed for. "I have no information on this sentence, but I will appeal any sentence with all legal means available," Yazdi told AFP.
| Surprised they didn't shoot him. |
Yazdi, 73, who heads the banned Iran Freedom Movement, was accused in November 2001 of "attempting to overthrow the regime" and "propagating against the regime". On October 2, Yazdi boycotted the first hearing of his trial on the grounds the court was "not competent". He had demanded an open court with a jury. Yazdi was a close aide to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during his final years in exile in 1978 in France, and served as foreign minister in the provisional government of Mehdi Bazargan. The Iran Freedom Movement, founded in the 1960s by Bazargan, is a liberal nationalist opposition movement seen as close to Iran's reformers. The group was tolerated until 2001 but is now banned in Iran because it questions certain principles of the Islamic Republic.
| Like, for example, who put the current bozos in charge. |
In March 2001, nearly 60 members and sympathisers were arrested on charges of wanting to "overthrow the regime" on the eve of presidential elections won by the reformist Mohammed Khatami. Fifteen of them were condemned to sentences of up to 11 years in prison, and are awaiting the outcome of their appeal. |