on their day of trial. 43 44 Prisoners reportedly remained incarcerated without proper access to legal representation at all stages of their trial process and lawyers were reportedly denied timely access to their clients' legal files. 45 46 47 Yet, the Human Rights Committee has explicitly stipulated that the accused should be granted prompt access to legal counsel,48 including during the pre-trial phase.49 In May 2019, the Iranian legal and judicial parliamentary commission proposed an amendment to Article 48 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which would allow the prosecution to delay access to a lawyer for 20 days, with a possibility of extension to the whole duration of investigation, in cases related to national security, terrorism of financial corruption.50 51 Such amendment would further restrict access to legal counsel during the investigation phase. With regard to the right to access legal counsel of one’s choosing, a Note to Article 48 of the 2015 CCP,52 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.53 In 2018, the Judiciary published the list of approved lawyers, which included only 20 for Tehran. However, many of the lawyers named are reportedly close to the security bodies or had paid to appear on the list after speaking with government officials, thus threatening due process and questioning the independence and neutrality of the Judiciary.54 As a consequence, the right to legal assistance of one’s choosing in such cases is particularly limited. Defendants in national security cases are often denied access to a lawyer in the investigative stage of the judicial process. In the hundreds of cases of individuals arrested for political reasons or suspected for ordinary crimes that the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center has investigated, all 43 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 44 HRW <https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/24/iran-detainees-denied-fair-legal-representation> 45 HRANA <https://www.en-hrana.org/arash-sadegh-golrokh-iraeis-lawyers-access-cases 46 HRANA <https://www.en-hrana.org/political-prisoner-denied-access-to-an-attorney> 47 HRANA <https://www.en-hrana.org/court-prevents-lawyer-accessing-files-five-sunni-prisoners> 48 CCPR General Comment No.32 <https://undocs.org/CCPR/C/GC/32> 49 HRC, Concluding observations on Georgia, CCPR/C/79/Add.75, para. 27, available at bit.ly/20caB7i; HRC, Concluding observations on the Netherlands, CCPR/C/NLD/CO/4, para. 11, available at www.refworld.org/docid/4aa7aa642.html 50 Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, https://www.iranrights.org/newsletter/issue/99 51 www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/0379/2019/en/ ; https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/iran-proposed-lawrestricting-access-to-lawyer-would-be-crushing-blow-for-justice/ 52 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 53 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) 54 “Iranian Lawyers Criticize Proposal to Deprive Defendants of Right to Choose Counsel,” Human Rights Activists in Iran, June 6, 2018 (https://www.iranrights.org/library/document/3443) 5