Following the announcement of the victory of incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in
the presidential election on June 12th, 2009, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Iran
to protest against the results. In response to the protests, the Islamic Republic sent the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij militia (a volunteer paramilitary force) to repress the
demonstrations.4 Due to the lack of official information about the whereabouts of victims, the
total number of those killed in the 2009 post-elections protests remains largely unknown. 5
Similarly, it is hard to ascertain the exact figures of individuals detained in connection to the
protests, as official sources indicate around 2500 individuals were arrested in Tehran alone by
July 12th.6 Non-governmental sources estimate over 4000 arrests, which were conducted mainly
by agents in plain clothes, without identification document and lacking any sort of arrest
warrant.7
B. Take all necessary measures to guarantee the right to fair proceedings before an
independent and impartial tribunal.
The guarantee of the right to legal defense is enshrined in Article 35 of the Constitution which
ensures the right to choose a lawyer. 8 Article 190 of the revised Code of Criminal Procedure
(CCP) protects the right of a suspect to “be accompanied by a lawyer during the preliminary
investigations”. Article 48 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP), revised in 2015, permits
the accused to “demand the presence of a lawyer from the start of detention.” 9 10 However, a
Note to Article 48 of the 2015 CCP,11 specifies that individuals facing charges for certain
offences, including those relating to national security and organized crime, must select their legal
counsel from among a limited list of lawyers approved and announced by the Head of the
Judiciary at the phase of preliminary investigations.12
4
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, 2013 https://iranhrdc.org/violent-aftermath-the-2009-election-and-suppression-ofdissent-in-iran/
5 Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, 2013, https://iranhrdc.org/violent-aftermath-the-2009-election-and-suppression-ofdissent-in-iran/
6 https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2009/06/list/
7 Amnesty International, Iran – Election Contested, Repression Compounded, December 2009.
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/48000/mde131232009en.pdf
8 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran < http://www.iranchamber.com/government/laws/constitution_ch03.php>
9 Code of Criminal Procedure of the Islamic Republic of Iran (2015) as referenced in the joint submission to the Human Rights
Committee from the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Impact Iran, Human Rights
Activists in Iran, 2020,
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/IRN/INT_CCPR_ICS_IRN_42313_E.pdf
10 Code of Criminal Procedure of the Islamic Republic of Iran (2015) original version http://dotic.ir/print/5584
11 Code of Criminal Procedure of the Islamic Republic of Iran (2015) as referenced in the joint submission to the Human Rights
Committee from the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Impact Iran, Human Rights
Activists in Iran, 2020,
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/IRN/INT_CCPR_ICS_IRN_42313_E.pdf
12 The former CCP had conditioned the presence of a lawyer at the investigative stage on the permission of the judge in cases
with a “confidential” aspect, cases where the presence of a party other than defendant would “corrupt” proceedings as determined
by the judge, and in national security cases; See the March 17, 2017 report of the UN Special Rapporteur, Asma Jahangir, on fair
trial in Iran (https://undocs.org/en/A/HRC/34/65)
2