Amnesty International Expresses Concern Over Imminent Execution of Mohammad Thalath

Amnesty International has expressed concern regarding the imminent execution of Mohammad Thalath, urging Iranian authorities to halt the execution process of this Gonabadi dervish and the sentence issued against him. Simultaneously, one of Mr. Thalath's lawyers has reported that he will be executed early on Monday morning. In a statement released on Sunday evening, June 18, Amnesty International noted that prison officials contacted Mohammad Thalath's family for a final visit, raising concerns about the possibility of his execution in the coming hours or days. The statement reminds that information received by Amnesty International indicates that the pursuit of Mr. Thalath's execution by Iranian authorities will sacrifice justice, and thus the organization has called on Iranian officials to stop this ruling and demand a retrial in this case according to international fair trial standards and the abolition of the death penalty. Earlier, Zainab Taheri, one of Mohammad Thalath's defense lawyers, reported that her client would be executed on Tuesday. On Twitter and Telegram accounts attributed to Ms. Taheri, it was also announced that she possesses 'irrefutable evidence of the innocence' of this Gonabadi dervish and has called for the intervention of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic in this case. On Sunday, June 27, she wrote on her Twitter page to the Tehran prosecutor, 'With years of legal experience, I guarantee he is innocent and I have irrefutable evidence that he is innocent. What is the reason for this haste and injustice?' She added that the prosecutor's office could also arrest her for 'defending an innocent person' as she cannot 'sell her dignity.' In another tweet, this defense lawyer wrote: 'The Iranian judiciary does not intend to hear my words about the 'innocence' of Mohammad Thalath, the dervish accused of killing three police officers, and for this reason, I ask for immediate help from 'all the people of Iran and the world and international officials.' Ms. Taheri, who had previously stated on her Telegram channel that 'the evidence indicates a determined effort by a hidden hand to prevent a fair investigation into the case,' has requested the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic to intervene in this case. This lawyer did not provide further details about these factors, but mentioned that in the text of the petition for retrial submitted to the Supreme Court, it was stated that 'new witnesses' are willing to testify that the bus driver was a 'young man.' Ms. Taheri released this news while Mohammad Thalath's family visited him in prison for a final meeting on Sunday. It was said that he might be executed early on Wednesday morning. Saeed Ashrafzadeh, another defense lawyer for Mohammad Thalath, told the ISNA news agency that prison officials contacted his client's family to come for a final visit. At the same time, the Gonabadi dervish community has asked the families of the victims of the Golestan 7 incident to refrain from executing the 'qisas' sentence until legal evidence against Thalath is completed. Mohammad Thalath has been accused of killing three police officers with a bus during clashes on Pasdaran Street in Tehran last January, and with the approval of the Iranian Supreme Court, he has received a definitive sentence of three qisas, one year in prison, and 74 lashes. Meanwhile, according to Zainab Taheri and his son and daughter, Mr. Thalath was arrested three hours before this incident and was not the bus driver. Additionally, in an audio file released from Mohammad Thalath, he states that he was not the driver of the bus and confessed to this due to 'several hours of torture' at the police station. The Gonabadi dervish community wrote to the 'bereaved' families of the police that for the past two decades, Gonabadi dervishes have been positioned against the people through 'spreading lies and rumors' regarding their religion and beliefs, so that at the appropriate time, they can achieve their interests and goals through the suppression of the dervishes by the dear people. In this letter, the events of Golestan 7 in 2018 were also mentioned as 'planned' by unnamed individuals, stating that these individuals 'forced honorable police officers against a group of Gonabadi dervishes who sought nothing but the realization of their rightful citizenship and belief rights.' The Gonabadi community, referring to the fact that Mohammad Thalath has repeatedly stated he was not the driver of the bus that ran over the police officers, has asked the families of the police victims in this incident to 'exercise patience and tolerance' and postpone the execution of Thalath's qisas sentence. In this letter, these families are asked to request the court to 'execute his qisas sentence only after his case has been fully reviewed in a fair trial with the presence of a lawyer and through all legal proceedings.' During the protests on Pasdaran Street on January 30 last year, which were in response to increased restrictions against Nour Ali Tabandeh, the leader of the Gonabadi dervishes, the situation escalated into violence with the intervention of plainclothes forces, injuring dozens of dervish supporters and resulting in the detention of hundreds of them. Some of the detainees are still in custody, and some have been tried and sentenced to imprisonment. Dervish activists on social media and the Majzooban Noor website, which covers news related to dervishes, have recently reported that 10 imprisoned dervish women in Qarchak prison have gone on hunger strike since Friday, June 25, in protest against 'beating' and 'organized violence' by the prison guards. While Ahmadollah Sinkai, the public and revolutionary prosecutor of Qarchak, has denied these reports, Amnesty International had previously reported that women dervishes in Qarchak prison 'are subjected to mockery and verbal abuse, including sexual insults, and do not have access to adequate medical services.' On June 9, the Majzooban Noor website also reported that eight male dervishes imprisoned in Greater Tehran prison had gone on hunger strike. Two days later, it was reported that Hossein Hashemi and Alireza Ghasemi had also gone on hunger strike.