West Berkshire Bahá'í community makes fresh call for release of seven Bahá'í leaders

West Berkshire’s Bahá'i community has joined the Bahá'i International Community in a fresh call for the release on bail of the seven Bahá'i leaders who have been held for more than a year in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. The call comes with the announcement of a new trial date - 18 October 2009.

The trial was originally scheduled for 11 July, but was postponed and no new trial date given until authorities sent a notice to a key member of the legal team (himself currently imprisoned in Evin prison, having been detained in the wake of civil unrest following the presidential election in Iran), saying that 18 August had been set as the trial date. The postponement to 18 October was made following a request from the attorneys from the Defenders of Human Rights Centre representing the seven Bahá'is.

Shawn Khorassani, a West Berkshire based Bahá'i, said: “We support the call of the Bahá'i International Community in calling for the human rights of all the people of Iran to be respected and upheld. The call has been raised on behalf of our innocent co-religionists, whose only ‘crime’ is their religious belief and who face the most severe punishments if they are found guilty of the trumped-up charges against them. Our hope is that our seven innocent co-religionists will be released on bail.

“Bahá'ís have been persecuted in Iran since our faith was founded in the mid-19th century. After the Revolution in 1979, their situation considerable worsened. Some 200 Bahá'ís were executed. Today, Bahá'ís are accused of all manner of ‘crimes’, but the truth is that this is blatant religious persecution.”

Richard Benyon, MP for Newbury, recently added his support to moves by the British Government to protest to the Iranian authorities and call for the release of the seven. The seven have been held in jail, without charges or access to their lawyer, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr Shirin Ebadi. They are allowed only occasional supervised visits from their families.

Official Iranian news accounts have said that they are to be accused of “espionage for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the Islamic republic.

Mr Khorassani said: “The announcement that a new trial date has been set makes it all the more urgent that these Bahá'i leaders are released on bail.”