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Detained Iranian environmentalist says she was tortured

After a year behind bars, eight Iranian environmentalists appeared in court with the presence of court-approved lawyers.
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A year has passed since Iran arrested a number of environmentalists over accusations of spying and other serious crimes. The arrests shocked the Iranian activist community and tightened even further the boundaries of what activists assumed was safe work in a nonpolitical and nonpartisan field. With the court proceedings barely moving and minimal access to their lawyers in addition to accusations of torture, Iranian parliamentarians are pressuring President Hassan Rouhani to address their case.

After months of scarce news, Mohammad Hossein Aghasi, a lawyer for two of the environmentalists, announced Jan. 29 that all eight of the defendants had been summoned to court for the second time in the year they have been detained before Judge Abolqasem Salavati, who is known to hand down harsh sentences to activists. Four environmentalists have been indicted on charges of corruption on Earth, which carries the death penalty; three have been charged with spying; and one has been charged with taking actions against national security. Originally all had been charged with spying, but a few months later the charges changed to the more serious corruption on Earth — a process Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, spokesman for the judiciary, defended to reporters as ordinary and “not a new issue.”

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