On April 29th Mr. Mandanipour, the head of Iran’s bar associations announced, “Bar associations have the duty of defending the national interest and the highest expediencies of the country in addition to defending the rights of individuals. In view of the knowledge that members of bar associations have regarding legal issues at the domestic and international levels, it is their duty to carry out their role regarding this issue and so it has been decided that a legal and historic study on the status of the three islands will be put up for a discussion at a civil forum.”

Undoubtedly the associations’ examination of legal issues at the international level is most appropriate but the greater issue at stake is that a number of members of these very bar associations that Mandanipour leads are behind bars for defending their clients. Examples are Nasrin Sotudeh, Abdol-Fattah Soltani, and Mohammad Seyfzadeh. They are in prison for the same reason that Mandanipour refers to as the duty of lawyers, i.e., defense of the rights of people. But since their clients were political and ideological detainees facing state charges, and because judiciary courts in the country have lost their independence and they do what government security agents ask them to do, these defense attorneys are in prison today. They are seen as accomplices in the state’s cases against their clients.

Security agents and the Revolutionary Court have set the premise to be that these attorneys are in line and of the same views as of their clients they were trying to defend. But defending the client’s rights is the first duty of an attorney, something that takes priority over holding a seminar and providing international documents.

So the question that is pertinent is this: Is it right to accuse an attorney of being an accomplice in the charges that his clients are facing? If not, they why are these attorneys in prison or why were other attorneys who were forced to leave the country after serving their sentence for the same conspiracy charges imprisoned? Examples of the latter are Ms Mahnaz Parakand, Mr. Khalife Loo, Mr. Mostafai, and Ms Shadi Sadr.

The outcomes that security officials have demonstrated for attorneys who had accepted to defend individuals facing political and ideological charges have been noted by other attorneys who are no longer willing to defend individuals facing similar charges. A good example of this are the cases where American hikers were unjustly accused of espionage and who were eventually released after the payment of $500,000 but no independent attorneys were willing or courageous enough to take up their defense.

In all the cases since June of 2009 where defense attorneys – more than 50 of them – were charged to be accomplices in the accusations facing their clients, the bar associations have failed to perform their most important role, which is none other than defending the rights of their members. They have done absolutely nothing in this regard.

So what is the problem with this scenario? The issue is a specific law that cannot be openly discussed by Mr. Mandanipour and other presiding members of the bar associations. According to this rule and procedures, presiding members of the bar associations have to be ultimately vetted and approved by Iran’s ministry of intelligence which passes is judgment onto the judicial administrative tribunal which appoints or confirms the presiding members of the bar associations. In the past, the judicial administrative tribunal has acted like the Guardians Council, i.e., it has rejected the competence and qualifications of individuals without presenting any cause. Examples of this are the disqualifications of Abdol-Fattah Soltani and myself.

So while the bar association is supposed to be run by attorneys chosen by its members, it is in fact run by individuals acceptable to the state judiciary and the ministry of intelligence. It is thus not surprising that attorneys have no one to defend their rights.

We have witnessed that when a cinema actor is arrested, his or her colleagues and fellow artists protest, or that when a worker is detained, other workers sign petitions protesting the act. But when an attorney is arrested and detained, other attorneys do not protest and remain indifferent.

So rather than congratulating Mr. Mandanipour for convening a gathering to examine the legality of the Persian Gulf, we request that prior to that he convenes another gathering to examine the independence of attorneys and discuss why representatives of attorneys must be selected by the ministry of intelligence and not their own peers.

Roozonline