Prominent reformist Abdollah Ramezanzadeh arrested

Sunday, 27 February 2011

The Green Voice of Freedom/2011-02-27 – Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a prominent member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has once again been arrested by Iranian security forces.

According to GVF correspondents, the former spokesman and secretary of the government during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency was arrested by security forces on Saturday afternoon. Reportedly, there was also a scuffle between security forces and Ramezanzadeh’s brother who were only attempting to take pictures with their sibling before he was taken away.

The security forces’ use of violence was then followed by the arrest of Ramezanzadeh’s brothers who were released on bail after a few hours. It should be noted that the physical confrontation caused serious damages to the eardrum of one of the Ramezanzadeh brothers, Nasrollah.

Ramezanzadeh who had endured six months of imprisonment following the fraudulent 2009 presidential election, had been in a state of legal uncertainty since his release in December 2009. Shortly after the election, he was paraded along with other reformists in televised show trials organised by the Iranian judiciary, yet judicial authorities have until now kept him in a state of limbo as no decision has been made regarding his case.

Ramezanzadeh was initially arrested on 13 June 2009, but was released more than six months later on 23 December on a staggering bail of 8 billion Rials ($778,740). During his time in prison, the veteran reformer endured 116 days of solitary confinement.

An Iranian Kurd, Ramezanzadeh is also considered to have been among the most successful governors of Kurdistan Province.

In August 2010, Ramezanzadeh and six other leading Reformist political figures filed a lawsuit against several commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for their intervention in Iran’s rigged presidential election and its aftermath.

The seven plaintiffs included four members of the Organisation of Islamic Revolution Mojahedin (OIRM) — Behzad Nabavi, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Mohsen Aminzadeh, and Faizollah Arabsorkhi—and three members of the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF)—Mohsen Mirdamadi, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, and Mohsen Safaei-Farahani. They described in their lawsuit how the Guard commanders planned the election “victory” of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad long in advance and what they did in order to realise their goal.

Ramezanzadeh is an assistant professor at the faculty of Law and Political Science of Tehran University. He received his PhD from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1996. The title of his thesis was “Iran; Ethnic relations; Minorities; Culture conflict; Conflict management; Political activity.”

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