Statement by Parastoo Farahvar and Arash Farahvar Regarding Claims by the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic - 2003-02-04

Fellow compatriots: In the announcement by the Judicial Organization of the Armed Forces published on Tuesday, June 6, 1381 (May 27, 2002), we encountered a new trick from the authority handling the case of the murder of our parents, Dariush and Parvaneh Farahvar, which obliges us to provide the following explanations: - We have officially stated that we do not seek retribution for the convicted in this fabricated case, but this never means forgiveness for these crimes, which have been misrepresented in this announcement. In pursuing the case of our parents' murder, we have considered ourselves solely committed to the lofty ideals of those two freedom fighters, one of whose demands was the abolition of the death penalty. They courageously stated against the prevailing norms that: 'Life is the first and highest divine gift to every human being, and no individual, group, or institution has the right to take it away for any reason...' (Quoted from the announcement 'Towards the Abolition of the Death Penalty' published by the Secretariat of the Iran Nation Party on December 10, 1997). - Just as this court intended to shift the responsibility of the retribution sentence for the convicts onto us in the initial rulings, now, by distorting the facts, there is an attempt to burden us with the responsibility of the newly issued sentences. - We have deemed this court incompetent from the very beginning and, for this reason, refrained from participating in it. - The handling of the political murder cases from the fall of 1377 (1998) until now has, from our perspective, only served to distort the truth and conceal the main perpetrators of these organized crimes, and we recognize the naming of these misdeeds as justice as an additional injustice. - After the initial rulings were issued by the sham court and the case was referred to the Supreme Court, all our efforts to obtain information from the responsible officials regarding the details of this handling faced a wall of silence, and we have no official information about what transpired in this case that led to the issuance of new sentences. - Fellow compatriots, the extermination and murder of dissenters in Iran is an organized crime planned and executed by the fabric of violence woven into the institutions of power. The pursuit of justice for these crimes will never end with the trial of a few execution agents behind the closed doors of a sham court. In the presence of the wounded conscience of the nation and history, this bloody case remains open until the truths that have been hidden from the Iranian people for years through countless tricks are revealed in a competent court. June 7, 1381 Parastoo Farahvar - Arash Farahvar