The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran), reported that the mullahs regime Judiciary’s new regulations take away the attorneys rights to defend clients are a clear violation of international conventions and standards of the rights to defense.
The Bar Associations
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) Committee on the Judiciary strongly condemns Ebrahim Reisi’s recent enactment of regulations to control the Bar Association.
The new regulations destroy the credibility and independence of the Iranian Bar Associations, which are the valuable legacy of late Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq, the leader of Iran’s Nationalist Movement.
The new regulations strip the Bar Association
Ebrahim Reisi in his last days as the Judiciary chief approved and announced the new bylaws that are specified in 164 articles.
The new regulations strip the Bar Association of the right to issue lawyers’ licenses and handed the right to the Judiciary. New items such as adding jurisprudence texts to the Attorney’s exams have also been added.
Repressive laws on all social, political, and economic aspects
After installing mass murderer Ebrahim Raisi as its future president and appointing Gholam-Hossein Eje’i as the Judiciary Chief, Khamenei is now trying to force its repressive laws on all social, political, and economic aspects of the nation, including the imposition of the same type of ISIL courts in Iran, which Khomeini sought from the beginning.
Calls on the people to actively oppose and protest
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) Committee on the Judiciary calls on the people, lawyers, professors, law students, and intellectuals throughout Iran to actively oppose and protest against this anti-democratic act, which deprives all Iranians of the right to defend themselves and not to allow Khamenei and Raisi taint the legal profession with Velayat-e-Faqih ideology and turn the Bar Association into a mere instrument of legitimizing their crimes.
The background
On March 1, 2018, more than 12,000 Iranian lawyers have protested against a draft bill that undermines their independence and in effect replaces the Iranian Bar Association with a group of judiciary officials appointed by the government.
Based on the draft the Judiciary will form a new body named the “Supreme Council for the Coordination of Lawyers’ Affairs” that will be based at the Judiciary branch of the government “to coordinate matters relating to attorneys.”
Iranian lawyers have been struggling for independence since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that, among other things, put clerics with no legal training or formal law education on top of the Judiciary branch.
Even some of those appointed as Chief Justice, prosecutors, and judges in post-1979 Iran have never been to a law school. In the meantime, the government has refused to respect the independence of attorneys and has put dozens of lawyers in jail for insisting on legal principles and citizens’ rights.
Iran’s legal system is based mainly on Shiite religious rules, however, untrained or hardliner clerics serving as judges have been often accused of issuing arbitrary verdicts leading to sentences disproportionate to what people have done.
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