An Iranian human rights lawyer who fled abroad after defending a woman sentenced to death by stoning said his office in Tehran had been raided and all his documents on the woman and his other clients seized.
Mohammad Mostafaei, 37, made headlines when he appealed through the media for international pressure to stop Iran stoning to death Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani who was convicted of "adultery while being married".
That pressure, including appeals from friendly powers such as Brazil, appears to have worked and Ashtiani will probably be spared death by stoning for now, the lawyer said.
However, Iranian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Mostafaei who promptly fled the country. His wife was then arrested and held for two weeks in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison in what he said was an attempt to force him to return.
Had he gone back, Mostafaei said, his wife "never would have forgiven me."
Iranian authorities did not stop there, he said.
"I have just received news that the office was stormed today, and they took my computer, client documents and other possessions," Mostafaei told Reuters in Norway which granted him a visa after he was arrested in Turkey for entering illegally.
Ashtiani has already received 99 lashes for having an illicit relationship with two men. The stoning sentence has been suspended pending a judicial review, but could still be carried out, an Iranian judiciary official said.
Mostafaei said his 100 clients in Iran include 18 juveniles, some facing stoning or other forms of execution for crimes ranging from homosexual acts to murder.
They include 18-year-old Ebrahim Hamidi who is facing imminent execution for sodomy, a charge he denies.
The conviction was based on an article in Iranian law which allows a judge to use his knowledge where conclusive evidence is lacking, Mostafaei said. The sentence still stands even though Hamidi’s alleged victim has withdrawn the accusation, he said.
INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN
Mostafaei said he would have preferred to continue fighting for his clients in Iranian courts, but other lawyers have taken up the cases. He believes the best he can do is help organise an international campaign to stop child executions.
"The regime is trying to make it necessary for human rights defenders to leave Iran, so it is important to set up a new organisation from abroad," Mostafaei said in an interview in an Oslo hotel.
Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran’s sharia law, in force since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
According to human rights group Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in the number of people it executes. It put to death at least 346 people in 2008.
The U.N. Convention for the Rights of the Child prohibits execution of people under 18. Despite being a signatory to the convention, Iran has executed 37 juvenile offenders since 1990, Amnesty says.
"We should make a conference and plan how to proceed with this effort to rid the world of death sentences for minors," Mostafaei said. "I am ready to take a leadership role."
He proposed a global network of governments, activist groups and U.N. bodies similar in structure to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
That campaign culminated in a treaty prohibiting landmines negotiated in Oslo in 1997 and signed later by more than 100 countries. The campaign and its coordinator, Jody Williams, was awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, also in Oslo.
"My goal is big," Mostafaei said with a smile.
