Iran Targets Lawyers

I guess it's not good enough for the crazy clerics of Iran to round up protesters, beat them, try them in kangaroo courts, sentence them to long prison terms, and even kill them. Now the mad hatters are targeting lawyers that have the nerve to defend protesters. The Jerusalem Post is reporting that at least 7 lawyers have been killed by the Iranian regime for defending protectors, and several more have been arrested or are missing.

In Tabriz, Iran's fourth-largest city, the bodies of five lawyers were returned to their families earlier this week, the sources said. The five had been representing some of the hundreds of Iranians detained in the northwestern city during the post-election protests. They were then themselves accused of disrupting security and encouraging unethical actions against the regime, and were sentenced to three years each in jail.

Three of them then died from injuries suffered during their detention. They were so badly beaten that their families could barely recognize their faces, this reporter was told.

The other two - prominent figures in the local community - were executed, having been sentenced to death on trumped-up charges of drug possession, the sources said...

In similar cases in Mashhad, in eastern Iran, two more lawyers were hanged on fabricated charges of drug trafficking, the sources said. Both were known to have been representing young students detained by the Iranian authorities.

In addition to the 7 killed, at least two other lawyers have been arrested or are missing. One lawyer was able to get his bother out of jail - who is also a lawyer - by agreeing not to represent any protesters and turning over all his files to the government. I understand his dilemma, but fear he may be the cause of more deaths by turning his files over. A second lawyer is reportedly "missing."

Crazy clerks, kangaroo courts, extra-judicial killings, flogging gays, stoning rape victims, suppression of free speech, killing lawyers for representing protesters, and rigged elections - and not barely a peep from the "great" human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch - guess they are too busy holding fund raisers in that enlightened country of Saudi Arabia.