Crackdown on Justice: CHRI Reveals Systematic Persecution of Iran’s Human Rights Lawyers
New CHRI Fact Sheet Exposes Deepening Legal Crisis for Iran’s Embattled Lawyers
Vanishing Defenders: Fewer Than 12 Lawyers Left to Represent Thousands in Iran’s Courts
May 14, 2025—Iran is one of the most perilous countries in the world for lawyers, where simply upholding the rule of law can lead to arrest, imprisonment, and professional ruin. Attorneys who dare to defend the rights guaranteed under both Iranian and international law face relentless state persecution—and their numbers are rapidly dwindling. Today, fewer than a dozen such courageous legal defenders remain to defend the tens of thousands of individuals unlawfully prosecuted in Iran.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has published a new fact sheet—Human Rights Lawyers in Iran—that exposes this escalating crackdown and its devastating consequences for justice and accountability in Iran. Designed for researchers, journalists, students, and policymakers, the fact sheet offers a clear, concise overview of how Iran’s legal system is being weaponized against those who seek to uphold it. In addition to highlighting some of Iran’s persecuted lawyers, the fact sheet lays out in an accessible format the abuses and obstacles faced by lawyers in Iran. For example:
For defending basic rights lawyers are:
- Summoned, interrogated, and arrested without cause;
- Charged with manufactured crimes and prosecuted without due process;
- Convicted in sham trials, banned from practicing, and imprisoned for years.
Forced to navigate rigged prosecutions and trials, lawyers are:
- Denied access to clients, especially during interrogations;
- Barred from representing individuals in political cases;
- Face blocks, threats, bureaucratic delays, illegal searches;
- Not allowed to respond to “evidence” in court or provide evidence for defense;
- Not informed of charges till trial, not given full case files or time to review files;
- Forced to defend clients in closed trials that often last only minutes;
- Not given copy of court rulings, forced to copy verdicts by hand;
- Not informed of acquittals, and appeal hearings are held without them or the defendants.
“The government’s policy of persecuting human rights lawyers is not only aimed at instilling fear and discouraging other lawyers from entering this field, but also at denying protesters their right to legal defense. It is a strategy to impose a sense of helplessness on dissenting citizens, to force them into silence and submission,” said Saeid Dehghan, a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and director of the Parsi Law Collective.
Iran’s human rights lawyers are risking everything—their freedom, safety, and lives—to uphold the most fundamental legal rights, CHRI emphasizes. Their commitment to justice comes at an extraordinary personal cost. It is crucial for UN leaders, governments around the world, and international legal organizations to raise their voices in solidarity. They must demand the immediate release of imprisoned lawyers in Iran and call for an end to the prosecution of legal professionals simply for doing their jobs.
Other urgently needed reforms include: Eliminating requirements that political defendants use state-approved lawyers, upholding Iran’s constitutional bans on torture and forced confessions, revoking rulings that permit appeals without the presence of defendants and their lawyers, and ending the control of the judiciary by Iran’s security agencies.
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