Summoning of Ahmad Hakimi-Pour Regarding the Disclosure of Municipal Properties

Ahmad Hakimi-Pour, a member of Tehran's City Council, announced that he has been summoned to the prosecutor's office on charges of providing a letter from the General Inspection Organization regarding the transfer of municipal properties in Tehran to Yashar Soltani, the editor-in-chief of the Architecture News website. According to ILNA news agency, Ahmad Hakimi-Pour stated that he was summoned as a 'witness' to the Culture and Media Prosecutor's Office and visited the office on the morning of Tuesday, November 4. Yashar Soltani, prior to his arrest, had stated in an interview that the letter from the General Inspection Organization was provided to the Architecture News website for publication, and he published it after confirming the truth of the report. In response to the Tehran prosecutor's accusation that he provided the letter to Yashar Soltani, Mr. Hakimi-Pour said that he had handed over the letter 'as a trust' to Mr. Soltani to 'merely verify its authenticity.' He added, 'I pursued the information I received through the relevant channels and also provided a copy to Mr. Yashar Soltani.' Yashar Soltani, the editor-in-chief of Architecture News, which disclosed the transfer of municipal properties in Tehran, was arrested on Saturday, September 27, after visiting the prosecutor's office and remains in custody. Mr. Hakimi-Pour's statements come after Yashar Soltani had previously stated in an interview that the letter from the General Inspection Organization was provided to the Architecture News website for publication, and he published it after confirming the truth of the report. Hours before Mr. Hakimi-Pour's statements, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the Tehran Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor, stated that Yashar Soltani had claimed that the image of the report from the General Inspection Organization was provided to him by Mr. Hakimi-Pour. He added, 'According to the statements and writings of the inspector and also the chief inspector of the General Inspection Organization in the Tehran prosecutor's office, it was explicitly and repeatedly stated and warned to Yashar Soltani and some members of the City Council that the report of the General Inspection was confidential and its publication was prohibited, therefore the specific malicious intent of the accused is evident.' The Tehran Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor also criticized the statements of several lawyers who claimed that the letter did not have a confidential seal and its publication was permissible. He added, 'The publication of preliminary investigations by judicial authorities and non-public trials according to press law under the pretext of transparency of information by the media is not acceptable and can be prosecuted as a public crime.' Based on the image published from the letter of the General Inspection Organization on the Architecture News website and some other media, the Tehran municipality sold 200 properties belonging to the municipality 'at unrealistic prices' and 'very low' with '50 percent' discounts and in '60-month' installments to some managers of this institution and other individuals close to the mayor of Tehran. However, this organization announced on September 13 in a statement that the published letter 'does not constitute the final report of the organization.' The 'dual approach' of the Iranian judiciary and conservatives regarding the issue of salary slips and the transfer of municipal properties in Tehran has been criticized by some political figures. For instance, Ahmad Mosalla-Jami, a member of the Tehran City Council, stated on September 12 that websites that 'made serious accusations against the government under the pretext of salary slips' were not filtered, and the filtering of the Architecture News website in the public opinion would be interpreted as a 'dual approach to a problem.' However, Sadegh Larijani, the head of the Iranian judiciary, rejected the 'dual approach' of this institution regarding the issues of 'astronomical salaries and the Tehran municipality case,' stating that 'foreign counter-revolutionaries are constantly trying to convey that everyone in the Islamic Republic is corrupt and a thief by riding this wave.' Following the reports about the transfer of municipal properties in Tehran, Rahmatollah Hafezi, a member of the Tehran City Council, recently announced that 49,608 square meters of land in Region 22 of Tehran was transferred to a charity at a price of 149,000 tomans per square meter, of which Zahra Sadat Mosheer, the wife of Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the mayor of Tehran, is a member of the board of trustees. A report from the Shargh newspaper on October 2 also indicated a 'several tens of billions of tomans' assistance from the municipality to this charity in recent years. In advertisements for land sales in Region 22 of Tehran, each square meter that can be built upon is sold for more than three million tomans. However, the Tehran municipality stated that this land was transferred 'at the current expert rate' and that the assets of this charity belong to no individual or legal entity and are 'completely for public endowment.' In this context, hundreds of journalists have requested the judiciary for the release of Yashar Soltani.