Lawyer Mohammad Najafi Faces New Convictions for Supporting Protests

According to a letter sent to Iran Human Rights, Mohammad Najafi is facing two new charges for supporting the nationwide protests from prison.

He writes: “Since 2018, they’ve opened multiple cases against me and issued nine sentences. The two new sentences for supporting the people’s nationwide protests and sending a voice message from prison now increase the number of sentences to 11.”

“All the charges and convictions were all for peaceful action, including speaking and writing,” he further wrote from Arak Central Prison.

Mohammad Najafi who suffers from multiple illnesses has been denied medical furlough and has been banned from any contact with the outside world since 22 October 2022.

His son, Amirhossein Najafi is also facing trumped up charges and other family members including his sister, have faced interrogations and ill-treatment.

Mohammad was arrested in January 2018 while investigating his most notorious case, the suspicious death of Vahid Heydari in custody. While officials had claimed Vahid was a drug dealer who had committed suicide in custody, Mohammad’s investigation revealed that he had in fact been arrested at a protest in Arak in December 2017 and there was physical evidence to suggest he had died under torture in prison,12 and he shared his findings on Instagram. Officials claimed that Mohammad been arrested as one of the organisers of the protests but failed to obtain any evidence to back the allegation and he was released on a bail of 1 billion Tomans in April 2018. In late July 2018, he was sentenced to three years in prison and 74 lashes for, amongst other accusations, “slander with intent to disturb public opinion” in relation to the Vahid Heydari case.

Of his three lawyers, Mostafa Nili and Arash Keykhosravi are also currently behind bars and Nasrin Sotoudeh is banned from practicing law.