A “Revolutionary” court docket in Tehran opened the trial of Habib Chaab, the chief of a foreign-based pan-Arab motion, on terror-related charges.
Studying out the indictment within the Jan. 18 session, a prosecutor accused Chaab of “corruption on earth,” a cost in Iran’s Islamic penal code that’s punishable by the demise penalty.
The indictment was based mostly on Chaab’s alleged position in “masterminding and finishing up terrorist operations” in a marketing campaign “to combat the Islamic Republic institution.”
Chaab, additionally recognized as Asyud, is believed to have been one of many founders of an Arab opposition group, identified by such names as Al-Nidhal, Al-Ahwaziyah and the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, which advocates independence for the Arab minority in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province.
The trial largely targeted on a September 2018 attack by a number of gunmen who ambushed an Iran Military Day parade within the metropolis of Ahvaz, leaving no less than 25 folks lifeless. Iranian authorities have blamed the assault on Chaab’s motion, a cost the group has denied.
The primary session was adjourned with out the defendant given an opportunity to talk to the court docket. Sporting a jail uniform, the bearded Chaab was seated going through the photo of one of the children killed within the 2018 assault.
Solely days after the dissident’s arrest in late 2020, Iran’s state broadcaster aired his confessions of “masterminding” the Ahvaz assault and a number of other different “plots” in Khuzestan province. Once more, forward of the trial, the judiciary’s official information company Mizan posted a sequence of documentary-style videos through which the defendant himself describes his actions as “terrorism” and particulars disruption of oil pipelines and a bombing inside a non-public financial institution department.
Iran’s state broadcaster and intelligence equipment have been strongly criticized by rights organizations for airing detainee confessions, which they argue are coerced underneath inhumane situations.
In its preliminary assertion upon Chaab’s seize, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry fell wanting detailing how the dissident was lured into Turkey and solely briefly boasted in regards to the “specialised and joint operations” by its “nameless troopers.”
Nevertheless, Turkish officials accused the Islamic Republic of utilizing handlers to abduct and smuggle the defendant into Iran. Chaab’s Turkey journey was, according to a Sky News report, a romantic lure set by an Iran-assigned lady.
The Chaab saga bore many parts of a well-recognized sample involving the Paris-based journalist Rouhollah Zam. The dissident’s ill-fated journey started when he fell into an Iran intelligence lure that took him from France to Iraq after which Tehran, the place he confronted what activists stated was a “kangaroo court” in a trial that concluded together with his execution.
