Exclusive; 16-Year Prison Sentence Issued at the Request of the Execution Prosecutor for a Protester in Hamedan

The case of an unnamed prisoner in Hamedan was reopened after receiving a final ruling from the appeals court for a few months of imprisonment, following a complaint from the execution prosecutor. The same court sentenced him to 16 years in prison. The Persian section of Voice of America has obtained documents indicating that Ali Lalehdani, a political prisoner who has been in Hamedan prison for four years, was sentenced by Branch 11 of the Hamedan Appeals Court to 16 years in prison, of which 10 years are enforceable, on charges such as 'forming a group of insurgents.' An informed source told Voice of America that Ali Lalehdani has spent over four years in prison without any mention of his name in news and human rights sources, and there are many protesters like him in the prisons of the Islamic Republic across Iran. According to documents obtained by Voice of America, for the first time in September 2020, Branch 1 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Hamedan, presided over by Hassan Nazari, sentenced Ali Lalehdani, a young protester, to six years for 'forming a group with the name of insurgents to disrupt the order and security of the country,' one year for 'propaganda against the regime through graffiti,' and two years for 'insulting the leader through graffiti,' of which the 'six-year prison sentence' was enforceable. Additionally, the Hamedan Criminal Court had sentenced Ali Lalehdani to one year in prison for 'arson and burning the Qavamin Bank' and 'banners belonging to the Hamedan Islamic Propaganda Organization to confront the regime.' In an appeal with a request for 'consolidation of sentences,' Branch 11 of the Hamedan Appeals Court in November of the same year acquitted Ali Lalehdani of some charges, sentencing him to eight months for 'propaganda activities' and 16 months for 'insulting the leader,' while reducing two months from the one-year sentence of the criminal court, which was also supposed to have the maximum punishment of 16 months enforceable. However, this same branch of the Appeals Court, in another action following what was mentioned in the ruling as 'the request of the execution prosecutor of the Hamedan Revolutionary Court' regarding 'the application of multiple crime regulations against the convicted,' in January of the same year increased Ali Lalehdani's punishment to 16 years in prison, which included 10 years for the charge of forming a group, one year for propaganda against the regime, two years for insulting the leader, and five years for 'inciting people to war and slaughter,' with 'the most severe punishment being enforceable.' International statistics indicate that Iran has become one of the 'most imprisoned' countries in the world over the past 44 years, with currently three times the capacity of the Islamic Republic's prisons being occupied. Previously, Saeed Dehghan, a human rights defense lawyer, told Voice of America that 'the judicial system in the Islamic Republic has experienced a legal collapse, and for this reason, discrimination, like corruption, is systematically pursued in this system.'