The Hana Legal Office expresses its deep concern regarding the collapse of the minimum standards of judicial function in Iran and the complete transformation of the judiciary into a direct arm of security-led repression. What is currently transpiring in political and security cases can no longer be explained even within the framework of a flawed judicial system. Instead of acting as an independent authority for adjudication, a guarantor of the right to defense, and a supervisor of the conduct of security agents, the judiciary has effectively become a mechanism for rubber-stamping decisions formulated within security structures—specifically those affiliated with the IRGC—and imposed upon the judicial process.
In this situation, the fundamental boundary between prosecution, interrogation, judgment, and the execution of sentences has vanished. A political or security defendant is first placed at the disposal of a security agency, interrogated in detention centers outside of effective judicial oversight, and deprived of genuine access to an independent lawyer and regular contact with their family.
Subsequently, they are sent to the Revolutionary Court with a case file based on security reports, suspicious confessions, and vague charges. The court, rather than independently examining the evidence and guaranteeing the right to defense, often plays the role of the final stage in providing a facade of legitimacy to a pre-determined security decision. This situation represents the total negation of judicial independence and the descent of criminal proceedings to the level of repressive formalities.
Hana emphasizes that charges such as “espionage,” “cooperation with the enemy,” “Corruption on Earth,” and “Enmity against God” (Moharebeh) are used in the current structure of the judiciary not as precise legal terms, but as ambiguous and elastic tools to eliminate opponents, intimidate society, and manage political crises. When high-ranking judicial officials speak of accelerating the issuance and execution of sentences, confiscating property, and dealing ruthlessly with “agents of the enemy,” the language of the court becomes the language of a security command. Under such circumstances, a judicial verdict is no longer the product of an independent hearing; it is the legalized form of the will to repress.
This trend takes on a catastrophic nature, particularly regarding the death penalty. An execution resulting from a case marked by the deprivation of an independent lawyer, secret detention, torture or pressure for confession, the transfer of the prisoner to an unknown location, lack of family access, and rushed proceedings, fundamentally lacks legal legitimacy. Such a sentence is not the administration of justice but the arbitrary deprivation of the right to life. No valid legal system, even under conditions of war, security crisis, or state of emergency, allows the human right to life to be surrendered to vague security decisions, non-independent courts, and cases lacking transparency.
Hana also warns against the expanding use of property confiscation as a tool for political punishment. Confiscation of property, alongside executions, detentions, and the harassment of families, shows that the government targets not only the accused individual but also their family, social network, and even citizens living abroad, subjecting them to punishment, fear, and pressure. This method distorts the concept of individual criminal responsibility and drags punishment from the sphere of due process down to the level of state revenge and collective punishment.
From Hana’s perspective, the practical dominance of security agencies and the IRGC over criminal proceedings is a sign of a structural crisis in the rule of law. In a legal system, the judiciary must restrain security power, not serve it.
It must defend the accused against torture, forced confessions, and framed cases, rather than turning security reports into death sentences. It must be the guardian of the presumption of innocence, the right to defense, and human dignity, not the executor of a policy of intimidation and revenge.
Recent executions, widespread arrests, repeated threats by judicial officials, property confiscations, and the escalation of security-based case fabrication all demonstrate that the Islamic Republic has sought refuge in judicial violence in the face of a legitimacy crisis, public anger, and an inability to politically control society. This violence assumes a legal form, but its nature is not judicial. It is labeled with terms like court, verdict, charge, and execution of sentences, but in practice, it is governed by the logic of security, political vengeance, and the production of fear.
The Hana Human Rights Organization strongly condemns this trend and views it as a sign of the collapse of the minimum requirements for a fair trial, judicial independence, and the protection of the right to life in Iran. Hana warns that the continuation of this situation means the normalization of political execution, the physical elimination of defendants, the retaliatory confiscation of property, and the conversion of courts into tools for social control. Hana calls for the immediate halt of the execution of death sentences, an end to the intervention of security agencies in the judicial process, the guarantee of immediate and effective access to independent lawyers, the absolute prohibition of torture and forced confessions, and the establishment of an independent mechanism to investigate the responsibility of judicial, security, and IRGC officials in cases leading to detention, torture, property confiscation, and execution.