10 Jews in Iran Are Convicted of Spying

In a case that has put Iran’s judicial system on trial and strained its relations with the West, an Iranian court Saturday found 10 Jews guilty of taking part in a spy ring for Israel and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from four to 13 years. Two Muslims also were convicted of abetting the group.

The long sentences meted out at the end of a closed-door trial drew howls of astonishment from relatives and immediate condemnations and protests from President Clinton, Israel, the European Union and Jewish groups around the world.

Defense lawyers and human rights groups expressed relief, however, that none of the accused had been sentenced to death for the alleged espionage, which the state intelligence service claimed had been going on for at least 15 years, mainly in the southern city of Shiraz, where the trial was held and where most of the defendants lived.

Three of the 13 Jews who went on trial in April were acquitted Saturday. Two of the four Muslims accused as accessories in the case also were found not guilty.

The charges on which the 10 Jews were convicted included “cooperating with a hostile government, membership in an illegal ring and recruitment of new agents,” according to their lawyer, Esmael Naseri.

The chief defendants, 41-year-old shoe salesman Dani Tefilin and university language professor Asher Zadmehr, 54, both received 13-year sentences, according to a defense attorney. They were accused of being the chief operatives and leaders of the conspiracy allegedly run and paid for by the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

Although eight of the Jews had confessed to spying--two on national television--the confessions were widely discounted abroad because they were made during the more than one year that the group had been imprisoned and subjected to interrogation without access to either family members or their own lawyers.

Four of the remaining Jewish defendants had maintained their innocence throughout the investigation and trial. The fifth had admitted passing information to the group but said it was not secret or harmful to the state and, therefore, should not be considered spying.

Hopes Riding on an Appeal

“All of the confessions were taken under duress,” said Elahe Hicks, who monitored the trial from outside the courthouse in Shiraz for the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch.

Speaking from New York, she said, “Throughout the hearing, the court brought no evidence. . . . Therefore, they should all be freed.

“We hope that this error will be remedied on appeal,” she added.

Since the arrests of the Jews became public in early 1999, Israel has vociferously denied that any of the accused had been funneling information to its intelligence services.

Iranian law recognizes how easily confessions can be coerced and therefore requires that the state provide evidence to back up its charges even if a confession has been made. In the case of the Jewish accused, however, such corroborating evidence was never produced, according to the defense lawyers.

The trial highlighted the comparative lack of protections for defendants in the Iranian justice system: The suspects were not given a speedy trial; they were kept in prison from late 1998 until the proceedings began in April this year; they were deprived access to lawyers of their choosing until the final stages of the investigation; and they could not appeal to an unbiased jury or to a neutral judge. In Iran’s system, there is no jury, and the prosecutor who investigates and brings the charges also determines the guilt or innocence of the accused.

The trial and its outcome seem likely to have long-term diplomatic repercussions for Iran, where moderate President Mohammad Khatami has been working since his election in 1997 to improve relations with the nation’s Arab neighbors and with Western Europe, while at the same time calling for a “dialogue of civilizations” with the American people.

In a statement in Washington, Clinton said he was “deeply disturbed” by the verdicts. Iran “has again failed to act as a society based on the rule of law, to which the Iranian people aspire,” he said.

“We have raised our concerns time and again when the Iranian government has treated intellectuals, journalists, Muslim clerics and members of the Bahai community with the same fundamental unfairness,” Clinton added.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called for Iran to be treated as a pariah until the defendants are released.

“Iran cannot be accepted as a member of the international community as long as Jewish prisoners are rotting away in prison, when they have done no wrong,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron said. “Israel will not rest until all the prisoners are released.”

In Los Angeles, the Council of Iranian American Jewish Organizations condemned the verdicts.

“We are deeply disappointed in the verdicts, and we now hope that those who were cautious in their reactions to this case will wake up and realize that only a public, international outcry will win the freedom of the Jews imprisoned in Shiraz,” said Pooya Dayanim, spokesman for the organization.

“The council, which revealed to the world the arrest of the 13 Jews and has worked with the families and American Jewish organizations to coordinate activities to win their release, will continue its work until we eventually win their freedom,” Dayanim added.

The organization has scheduled a Los Angeles news conference today to discuss the verdicts.

Pieces of a Larger Puzzle

Among diplomats based in Tehran, the case against the Jews always was presumed to be part of the larger political maneuverings in Iran, where a popular reform movement aligned with Khatami has been striving to wrest power from an unpopular hard-line conservative faction that still controls the judiciary, state broadcasting, and the military and intelligence services.

Under this theory, some minor infractions by members of the Jewish community in Shiraz--such as paying illegal visits to Israel or having e-mail contacts with Israelis--may have been blown up into a full-fledged espionage case by hard-liners bent on poisoning Khatami’s relations with the West and preventing any steps toward rapprochement with the United States.

About 30,000 Jews live in Iran, the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel. Under an edict from the late Islamic Revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Jews and Christians were to be treated as protected minorities in Islamic Iran and allowed to practice their religions freely. There are synagogues in most large Iranian cities, and one seat in parliament is reserved for the Jewish community.

Nevertheless, the number of Jews in Iran has been falling since the revolution, and the trend accelerated last year, Jewish community leaders acknowledged, because of apprehension stemming from the spy case.

“I clearly could see a wave of emigration coming,” said Maurice Motamed, the newly elected Jewish representative to the Majlis, or parliament, after the verdicts Saturday. “I’m sorry for this, because we are a religious people who love our country and would like to live here.”

In Shiraz, home to about 6,000 Jews, there had been hope since testimony ended in May that because most of the defendants had confessed and were cooperative, they would be given only mild sentences. The announcement of the prison terms came as a shock, causing family members to cry out in astonishment. One relative fainted.

Defense lawyer Naseri urged the families to try to remain calm. “None of these verdicts and sentences are final, and all can be appealed,” he said.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, meanwhile, defended the conduct and outcome of the trial and accused Israel of mounting a worldwide propaganda campaign meant to tarnish Iran’s image.

Hamid Reza Asefi said Israel had been “raising false claims so as to derail the legal proceedings against the spy suspects from their natural course,” according to the official IRNA news agency.

Nevertheless, he said, the Iranian judiciary had “managed to deal with the case independently and based on national interests.”

Hicks, of Human Rights Watch, said the case should be viewed in the context of a deteriorating human rights climate for many other groups in Iran as well. She cited the recent closure of 18 pro-reform newspapers, the arrest of activists and crusading journalists, and even the detention of lawyers involved in defending those accused of political crimes.

“The human rights situation in Iran is a hostage of the power struggle and in fact is getting worse,” she said.

She acknowledged that support from the reform movement for the Jews on trial in Shiraz had been muted, however. She said that was because reformers themselves are on the defensive and are vulnerable to accusations that they are in the employ of foreign powers. Also, she said, many activists were skeptical of the West’s motives for highlighting the trial of the Jews and according it more attention than is usually given to other victims of repression in the country.

Hicks said she thought it would be “counterproductive” to punish Iran for the verdicts by actions such as withdrawing diplomats.

Her visits to the Shiraz trial were the first time that a Western human rights group representative had been given access to government officials and judges in Iran, she said.

“Part of the government is really trying hard” to help the situation, she said. “And another part is trying to spoil it.”