By Pishtaz | 2023-08-31

Iran's judiciary has filed a formal complaint against Saleh Nikbakht, the Iranian attorney who represents the family of Mahsa Amini.

Amini's September 2022 death in custody of the regime's "morality police" sparked a months-long nationwide anti-regime uprising -- the largest since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The young Kurdish woman was detained by the regime's so-called "morality police" as she allegedly did not adhere to the state-mandated Islamic dress code. She was 22 at the time of her death.

Saleh Nikbakht's attorney Ali Rezaie said his client's first court session, held on Tuesday (August 29), ended without any time allotted for defense, which the judge has postponed until the court's next session.

If convicted, Nikbakht, who is Kurdish himself, faces one to three years in prison.

Iran's judiciary filed a case against Nikbakht on multiple charges, mainly the charge of "propaganda against the system." He has most notably been charged with rejecting the state-issued forensic report on Amini's cause of death.

The Amini family filed a complaint against the state for their daughter's wrongful death.

The forensic report detailing the cause of death was issued by a coroner after the autopsy and toxicology reports were submitted. It referred to Amini having undergone surgery for a brain tumor at the age of 8 as the root cause of her death, and denied reports that physical blows to her head killed her.

Nikbakht, the Amini family's attorney, rejected the report and elaborated on the rejection in various interviews with domestic and expatriate media outlets -- one of the reasons for the state charges against him.

Other than Amini's case, Nikbakht has also been accused of discussing challenges that Kurdish citizens are forced to deal with in Iran and the wrongful treatment of Afghan refugees at the hands of Iranian forces, as well as supporting women's biking.

Nikbakht has requested further review of Amini's cause of death by an alternate medical team of the country's top trusted physicians.

Young protester dies in prison

Meanwhile, Iran's judiciary confirmed Thursday the death of a young protester in prison.

Javad Rouhi was detained for protesting in Iran's Noshahr city, Mazandaran province, last year. He spent his entire imprisonment -- 344 days -- under "temporary detainment".

Rouhi was one of the three Noshahr protesters who were sentenced to death.

His family said they were not given any information on where he was imprisoned for three whole months after his arrest.

In January, Amnesty International published a report saying that Rouhi and the other two protesters arrested in Noshahr have been subjected to torture and solitary confinement.

Three weeks before his death, Majid Kaveh, Rouhi's attorney, called on the judiciary to take his case into consideration for a trial -- a request which was ignored.

The Iranian judiciary has said it would perform an autopsy and investigate Rouhi's sudden death, whose cause is unclear.

Regime panics ahead of protests' anniversary

As the first anniversary of Amini's death on September 16 nears, the Iranian regime appears to be panicked about the possibility of further protests or a revival of last year's months-long uprising, which has for the most part subsided in the past months.

The regime has summoned family members of those killed by security forces while protesting peacefully. It has also recently fired a large number of university professors who are not overtly pro-regime.

Hundreds of Iranians, dozens of law enforcement officers among them, were killed during last year's protests. Thousands more, particularly young protesters, were arrested.

The regime has also been detaining journalists who have covered Amini's death and the ensuing protests, some of whom have defied the state's dress code.

One of these journalists, who was freed on bail this month, has been re-arrested on Wednesday for not wearing a headscarf in public.

Over the past year, an increasing number of women have been appearing bareheaded across Iran, especially in major cities.

"Nazila Maroufian has been arrested for wearing inappropriate clothing in public places, and for publishing photographs of the way she was dressed on social media," the hardline Tasnim news agency reported.

Maroufian interviewed Amjad Amini, Mahsa Amini's father, last year. In the interview, he accused officials of lying about the circumstances of his daughter's death.

She was released on bail on August 13 from Tehran's Evin prison after spending more than a month behind bars, and immediately posted a picture of herself without a headscarf.

The Tehran-based journalist is from Amini's hometown of Saqqez, and was first arrested in November 2022 and released in January.

Answering a question in court about posting her bare-headed picture upon release and whether she regrets it, she said, "No, I haven't made any mistake."