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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 July 2000 Issue No. 489 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 July 2000 Issue No. 489
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region Focus International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters From Shiraz with restraint
By Azadeh MoaveniNineteen months have passed since police in Shiraz arrested the first of the 13 Jews sentenced last week by an Iranian court for espionage. Had the country's hard-line judiciary relegated the accused to the anticipated death sentences, it would have ravaged ties with the West and turned Iran into an international pariah once again. Many Iranians believe that the trial was influenced by political considerations. But why was the security of such a delicate religious minority jeopardized in the first place, if the court was to exhibit such unprecedented moderation?
The answer may lie in the course of the last 19 months, when every facet of Iran's new public face was put under careful scrutiny. Implicit in the trial proceedings were the efficacy of its justice system, its treatment of minorities and the strength of its international ties.
For 19 months, the trial cast a shadow over President Mohamed Khatami's drive to return these institutions to respectability, giving hard-liners ample cause to celebrate.
In the end, the Shiraz Revolutionary Court sentenced ten of the Jews to prison terms of four to 13 years for spying for Israel. Hamid "Danny" Tefileen and Asher Zadmehr, both considered by the prosecution as "ringleaders" of the spy network, each received 13-year sentences. Three others, who have been out on bail since February, were acquitted.
Prosecutors alleged that the spy ring had over several years recruited informants and passed classified information to the Israeli Mossad, relying largely on admissions by nine of the Jews of contact with Israel. The defense team challenged the confessions as inconsistent, arguing that the information transmitted was not classified, and that confessions made after suspects had been held for months without counsel were inadmissible.
The sister of a Jewish Iranian convicted with spying for Israel helped by relatives after a court in Shiraz sentenced her brother to 13 years imprisonment on 1 July
(photo: AP)The sentences were in line with what Western diplomats in Tehran have expected throughout the trial. "If there are no death sentences, the West will breathe a collective sigh of relief and look to the appeal process," one Western diplomat said in Tehran this week.
As questionable as the proceedings have been, diplomats believe the logic of engagement, which guides much of Europe's Iran policy, means confronting the apparently arbitrary decisions that characterise Iran's judicial system.
International Jewish groups roundly denounced the sentences, and have criticised the proceedings in which the judge, in the absence of a jury, acted as prosecutor, and where international observers were banned. US Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke condemned the conviction as a "kangaroo proceeding."
Though the trial may not prove to undermine Iran's cautious rapprochement with the West, the lasting implications for the country's dwindling Jewish minority may be severe; emigration rates have reportedly increased since the trial proceedings began.
Because no death sentences were handed down -- a move reformists would have considered tantamount to a full-scale attack on Khatami's rapprochement with the West -- and because the judicial standards applied are similar to those in other domestic political cases, the verdict is unlikely to produce a harsher international reaction than did the trial itself. The sentences can be appealed twice after 20 days and it is expected that some of those with shorter sentences will be released early after serving partial terms.
The defense spokesman Ismail Nasseri said this week that the case was one of the most effortless, and also the most punishing, cases he has ever tried. Legally, the case almost defended itself, but thrown up against the government, the defense waged a lonely battle for the sentiment of a public that rarely reads about the case in the newspapers, and only watched the taped confessions night after night on television. "I think politics will judge, not justice," he said.
If six months into the future Iran's foreign relations are proceeding swimmingly, it will be a sign of the times. But neither the Iranian Jewish community, nor the reformists struggling to reform a capricious and often brutal judiciary, will soon forget the trial that nearly brought a shoe-store clerk face to face with death.
