The 26th branch of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced Atena Farghadani, a cartoonist and former political prisoner, to six years in prison.
Branch 26 of Tehran Revolutionary Court issued this verdict on June 9, 2024, and notified Athena Farghadani on June 10.
She has been sentenced to 5 years in prison for “insulting the sanctities” and to 1 year in prison for “propaganda against the state.”
Atena Farghadani was violently arrested on April 13, 2024, by security forces while putting up one of her caricatures on a wall in Pastor Street where the presidential palace is located.
A week after the arrest of an Iranian cartoonist and former political prisoner, Atena Farghadani, her lawyer said she was tortured in a safe house run by the regime’s security police.
Her lawyer Mohammad Moghimi wrote in his social media account, “To protest her harassment by security agencies, Atena Farghadani went to Pastor Street to put up a protest cartoon on the wall, when the IRGC Intelligence agents, using extreme violence, first took her to one of their safe houses and severely tortured her. She lost consciousness due to severe bleeding from her nose and the blows to her head, and hours later, regained consciousness in the prayer hall of the 8th Fateb police base where she found out some of her clothes had been removed.
“After receiving her clothes, she noticed that blood stains were washed out of her clothes, and on the morning of April 14, she was transferred to the Evin courthouse. She has been falsely charged with ‘spreading propaganda against the state’ and ‘insulting the sanctities’ (against the Shiites’ 12th Imam).”
On April 21, the authorities of Evin Prison planned to send Atena Farghadani to Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court for trial which she refused, arguing that she had not committed a crime and did not consider the Revolutionary Court to be legal. She has also refused to accept the counsel of lawyers approved by the judiciary.
Atena Farghadani, a cartoonist, painter, and children’s rights activist residing in Tehran, was arrested on June 7, 2023, after being summoned to the interrogation courthouse of District 33 for interrogation.
In an interview after being freed, she explained that the authorities of Qarchak Prison had tried to poison her. They detained her in a solitary room without any lavatory and did not allow her to leave the room and use the bathroom. They also tried to force her to make televised confessions, which she refused. Finally, on June 20, they abandoned her in a hospital after she went unconscious due to hunger strike.
Ms. Farghadani was previously deprived of continuing her studies at the master’s level due to her activities. She was arrested in September 2014 and sentenced to 12 years and nine months of imprisonment for drawing and posting on social media cartoons that depicted members of the regime’s parliament with animal heads.
She was charged with “conspiracy against national security,” “propaganda against the state,” and “insulting members of the parliament.”
Ultimately, this sentence was reduced to 18 months of imprisonment in the Revision Court.
