Restrictions on the Presence of Attorney in Mohammad Ali Taheri’s Case

HRANA News Agency – Vahid Meshkati, attorney at law has been selected by the relatives and close family of Mr Mohammad Ali Taheri the founder of Erfane Halghe to represent his case and to defend him. However, the judge has violated “interpretation in favour of the accused” article, and adopted some other articles to stop Mr Meshkati from entering the defendant legal representative team.

Mr Meshkati told HRANA that the judge’s logic for refusing him on the case is that he argues this case has two lawyers and those two are sufficient.

This lawyer explained about the behaviour of the judge in not accepting him on the case from the legal point of view “in Civil Law, the parties of the claim can only have two lawyers and no more. There is another branch of law called Criminal law which is divided into two courts. The first is for those procedures and courts attending to lawsuits and the second one if for criminal and punishment cases. On the second cases, role of silence is being obtained meaning that the legislator remains silent and the number of legal representatives only mentioned while the case is at prosecutor office and says during initial investigation each accused person can have one lawyer but in the court level, there is no mention about the number of lawyers. Now the judge of this case says that he wants to refer to the Civil Law and want to adopt unity criterion to prevent my presence. This is in spite the fact that there is only one law and that is “interpretation in favour of the accused”. This law tells us that when we are in a situation of doubt about the decision which can benefit or harm the accused, we are bound to make the decision which benefits the accused. In addition, there have been countless other cases that the accused had several legal representatives and I attended as part of the defending team such as the case of Mr Soltani which had more than 11 lawyers. Unfortunately, they are using this trick and preventing me from presenting this case.”

In the interview with HRANA, Mr Meshkati also expressed his concerns about the heavy charges alleged to Mr Taheri in his case. He emphasised: “one of his charges is corruption on earth and corruption on earth is punishable by execution”

This attorney at law explained about the controversial recent news about the health condition and even the death of Mr Taheri and said: “since I was called upon to attend to Mr Taheri’s case, in the first instance from his friends and in the second instance from his family, I have heard many rumours but the only valid news that I have is that his brother visited me last week in my office and told me that he visited Mr Taheri several days ago. Hence, the rumour which says he passed away and of course I have heard it is in contrast with Mr Taheri’s brother account and also Mr Taheri hearing is on next Wednesday.”

Mr Meshkati told HRANA reporter at the end of the interview: “I still insist on my previous position and will continue demanding to be his lawyer based on the request from his family and friends to the last day.”

It has been many years since Iranian Islamic government fighting and confronting religion and mysticisms with contrary views to their Islamic traditional believes and many leaders and founders of such religions and mysticisms have been prosecuted.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, these religions and mysticisms are called “Newly emerged sect” or “False Mysticism”.

It is important to mention that according to the media’s close to security forces, Mr Taheri has recently been sentenced to 6 year imprisonment. Back in 2011, Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced Mohammad Ali Taheri to 5 years imprisonment, paying fine and 72 lashes based on the charge of touching female patients and interfering in the Medicine and blasphemy.  Mr Taheri has been arrested several times and the last time was on 4 May 2011.

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