Hezbollah's Renewed Efforts to Prove 'Corruption' in the Judiciary

Sadegh Larijani, the head of the judiciary, reacted in a private meeting with a group of students to the ongoing revelations by Mansour Nazari regarding the existence of 'widespread corruption' in this branch. According to Nazari, this issue has no 'connection' to the people. Nazari, known as the 'Defender of the Shrine Poet' within Hezbollah, has been publishing documents about 'corruption' in the judiciary for the past two years. In his latest revelations, last week during a meeting with Gholamhossein Mohseni Eje'i, the first deputy of the judiciary, and a group of students, he pointed to new dimensions of corruption within this institution. In a video from this meeting shared by Hezbollah activists on social media, Nazari harshly criticizes the performance of high-ranking judiciary officials and discusses corruption within this institution. He describes the various encounters he has had with different levels of the judiciary and explicitly states that judges, lawyers, and judicial experts in Iran are involved in corruption. He stated, 'Lawyers have become corrupt, take and give bribes, collude with judges, [and in this regard] judges extract numbers from the files and inform lawyers.' Nazari added that 'official judicial experts are engaged in a very horrific situation of taking bribes and writing false reports.' He also referred to a judge who had been taking bribes for '15 years' and ruled over the lives, property, and honor of the people during this time. Nazari mentioned that he spent eight months in a prison for traffickers to understand how 'a trafficker is connected with several judges.' Criticizing the state and performance of the judiciary, he told Mohseni Eje'i that 'the U.S. Congress allocates millions of dollars each year to make the people dissatisfied with the revolution; the judiciary receives a budget and makes the people dissatisfied with the revolution through its performance.' He also criticized Sadegh Larijani, stating that regarding corruption in this institution, 'either Mr. Amoli Larijani is mistaken or those who are his special inspectors are.' Nazari further added that 'the judiciary's information protection is weak; judges are deeply involved in corruption systems and bribery discussions, easily circumventing the protection forces, who cannot perform their duties properly.' One day after this meeting, Sadegh Larijani responded to Nazari's comments in an eight-hour meeting with representatives of student organizations, stating, as Nazari reported, that the issues of this institution have no 'connection' to this Hezbollah activist and the people. No comprehensive report has been published about the content of this eight-hour meeting yet, but according to a group of participating students on social media, strong criticisms were directed at the judiciary during the session. Nazari, in a seven-minute video released on December 14, stated that Sadegh Larijani denied the existence of corruption in the judiciary during this meeting. In this seven-minute video released on December 14, he added that Larijani presented a three-page report in the meeting with students, claiming that Nazari's statements about corruption in the judiciary are 'lies.' Meanwhile, this Hezbollah activist responded to Larijani's remarks by announcing that he would publish his documents regarding corruption in the judiciary for the people to judge. According to various Hezbollah statements, Nazari had discovered documents indicating the activities of a 'corruption gang' of judges in Shahr-e Kord years ago and submitted these documents to the government employees' prosecutor's office. The initial review of these documents led to an indictment against the members of this gang, but the indictment did not progress in its early stages. This led Nazari to submit his documents to Gholamhossein Mohseni Eje'i, the then Attorney General of the country. The office of the then Attorney General sent these documents to the judiciary in Shahr-e Kord in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province for follow-up. However, the deputy of the Shahr-e Kord judiciary filed a complaint against Nazari for 'interfering in a non-issue,' which resulted in a one-year prison sentence and 74 lashes for this poet. In a video shown in Bahman 1395 (February 2017) on the website 'Aparat,' Nazari provides explanations about this case and speaks of 'widespread corruption' in the judiciary. In this video, he states that in his investigations, he discovered a 'corruption gang' in the judiciary that was active in areas such as 'land grabbing,' 'water grabbing,' 'drug trafficking,' 'arms trafficking,' and 'moral corruption,' and that the Ministry of Intelligence and the Parliament have been unable to deal with them. He also explains that after the prosecutor's office sent the documents of this gang to the judiciary in Shahr-e Kord, the judges involved in this gang asked him not to pursue this case. According to Nazari, the investigator of the government employees' prosecutor's office issued an 83-page indictment for the judges in this gang, which included 10 charges such as 'forgery of documents,' 'collusion to take others' property,' and 'collusion to change land use.' He continues his remarks by mentioning the exile of the investigator of this case to the Administrative Justice Court and the dissolution of Branch 10 of the government employees' prosecutor's office, stating that the judiciary ultimately issued a retirement order for one of the offending judges. Abdollah Mousavi, the head of the judiciary in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, also provided explanations about this case and Nazari's statements in Bahman 1395, explicitly stating that Nazari had committed 'criminal actions' in this regard. This judicial official also stated that 'we repeatedly announced mistakes regarding this case, and we firmly believed that the rights of public property were not secured in this case.' He added that 'Nazari attributed matters to the former judicial deputy that were considered by the court as instances of spreading falsehoods and slander, and he was sentenced to imprisonment and was on the run until he was ultimately arrested and sent to prison.' According to Mousavi, 'our perception was that this case was not significant enough to be publicized, and Nazari is not a hero of loyalty and justice-seeking.' These statements from this judicial official come at a time when several student organizations have published multiple statements to the judiciary officials, demanding the release of Mansour Nazari and action against 'corruption' in this branch. This is not the first time that Hezbollah forces have reacted to the 'widespread and systematic' corruption in the Islamic Republic, particularly in the judiciary, and have called for reform of the structure and performance of this branch. Protests against corruption in the Islamic Republic had previously been initiated by a group of clerics and students in Iran, led by Alireza Jahanshahi, known as the 'Sirejani Student,' which resulted in a prison sentence for this protesting cleric. In Farvardin of this year, a group of clerics and students from Borujerd in Lorestan province undertook an unprecedented action, protesting the 'corruption' of the Friday prayer leader of this city and other Friday prayer leaders in Iran by marching towards Tehran. In their statement, these protesters explicitly referred to Hassan Torabi, the Friday prayer leader of Borujerd, as an 'incompetent and unworthy' individual who has 'betrayed the people by trampling on values and promoting corruption and misery in Borujerd for years.' These protesting clerics also stated in their statement that 'many Friday prayer leaders in the country, like the current Friday prayer leader of Borujerd, have become agents of corruption and misery.' Several officials of the Islamic Republic, including Ali Larijani, the Speaker of Parliament, deny the systematic nature of corruption in Iran, while in Mordad 1394 (August 2015), Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary of the Guardian Council, explicitly criticized the spread of corruption in Iran's administrative structure, stating that currently 'disorder, lawlessness, and bribery are rampant in some administrative and judicial bodies.'