Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three Iranian Kurds—Ramin Hossein Panahi, Zaniar Moradi and Loghman Moradi—were executed last month at Raja'i Shahr prison in Iran. The government of Iran arrested Zaniar and Loghman for the alleged murder of the son of an imam. In December 2010 Zaniar and Loghman were subsequently brought before the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, where they were sentenced to death by public hanging in a trial that lasted only 20 minutes. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said:

During the trial, they both denied the charges in court and explained that they had confessed to the crimes only due to torture following their initial arrest.

The case of Ramin Hossein Panahi has also been condemned by the UN. The case lasted the less than an hour. Panahi was arrested last June for alleged membership of the Kurdish nationalist group Komala. There have been reports that Panahi had suffered human rights violations before and during the trial, including torture, denial of access to a lawyer and denial of adequate medical care.

Despite the formality of a sentence of capital punishment, the absence of proper due process means the death of these three men can only be described as arbitrary executions—executions that have rocked the Iranian and Kurdish communities in my home state of Victoria, many of whom have fled the oppressive Iranian regime themselves. I call on the Australian government to make representations to the Iranian government, imploring them, pressuring them to ensure all people in Iran are given the right to a fair trial as outlined in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.