Parastoo Farahvar Sentenced to Six Years of Suspended Imprisonment

Parastoo Farahvar, daughter of Dariush and Parvaneh Farahvar, has been sentenced to six years of suspended imprisonment. One of the charges against her is 'insulting the sacred and Seyyed al-Shohada.' In a detailed letter published on Wednesday, February 24, she described the proceedings of her trial in Tehran and the interactions with the passport office and the Revolutionary Court. According to her letter, her lawyer informed her that the Revolutionary Court sentenced this artist and civil activist to five years of suspended imprisonment for 'insulting the sacred and Seyyed al-Shohada' and one year for 'propaganda against the regime.' The case of 'insulting the sacred and Seyyed al-Shohada' relates to the publication of a photo of Shadi Sadr, a women's rights activist, sitting on a chair designed by Parastoo Farahvar. In the fabric design of this chair, symbols of Ashura were used. In her letter, Farahvar also referred to the recent street protests in Iran, which coincided with her presence in the country, and commented on one of the slogans chanted during these protests, 'Islam is stepping on people, making them miserable,' adding that 'this simple sentence clearly expresses my analytical and emotional experience with the judicial system.' She added, 'A system that limits the logic of reasoning within the narrow frameworks of Sharia, thus an individual who does not believe in these frameworks - whether as a plaintiff or a defendant - is either preemptively or inevitably negated or will add to their guilt during the proceedings.' Parastoo Farahvar lives in Germany and travels to Tehran every year to hold a memorial for her parents' murder. This year, for the first time in 12 years, permission was granted to hold this memorial at the Farahvars' home. Her passport was also confiscated upon her arrival in Iran, as in previous years, and was returned to her after her trial in Tehran. Dariush Farahvar, a prominent nationalist figure, was murdered in December 1998 along with his wife, Parvaneh Farahvar, by a group of Ministry of Intelligence agents with multiple knife wounds. Following these murders, known as the 'chain murders,' Gholamali Darvish Abadi, the then Minister of Intelligence of Iran, resigned from his position. Hamid Rasouli and Mohammad Azizi, two officials of the Ministry of Intelligence, were sentenced to life imprisonment for 'instigating and issuing' the order to kill Dariush and Parvaneh Farahvar.