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 About
Age 68 Nationality Iran Religion Presumed Muslim Civil status Married Education university diploma Occupation high ranking official, armed forces Rank/Position Major General, former Head of Second Bureau (Army Intelligence), Chief Affiliation army, former regime Affiliation executive, former regime
Case Date of execution April 11, 1979 Location Qasr Prison, Tehran, Iran Mode of execution shooting Charges Corruption on earth; Treason About this Case
Lt. General Hassan Pakravan is one of 438 victims listed in a March 13, 1980 Amnesty International report. The report lists defendants who were convicted by Revolutionary Tribunals in the period from their inception until 12 August 1979. The list of victims and charges is drawn from sources including translations of indictments, reports of trials carried out by local and foreign media and the bulletins of the official Pars News Agency reports. Mr. Pakravan, is also one of 10 defendents mentioned in the Memoirs of Ayatollah Khalkhali, the first post-revolution religious judge and head of the Islamic Revolutionary tribunal. In its April 11th, 1979 issue, the newspaper Kayhan published a report on the trial of General Pakravan. Mr. Pakravan's Daughter, Saideh, provided Omid with additional information regarding his biography and his trial.
Background Information
As a high ranking security official, General Pakravan was familiar with the case of Ayatollah Khomeini before the revolution. According to Mr. Pakravan's daughter : "Hassan Pakravan was Head of Security during the riots of 1963 that were fomented by the mullahs against the Shah’s White Revolution. He had Khomeini, a
hodjat-ol-eslam at the time, arrested but when the military recommended a quick trial which would lead to his execution for treason, General Pakravan personally intervened and threatened to resign. The Shah, caught between conflicting advice, asked Pakravan to find a way to save Khomeini’s life. Pakravan sought the guidance of men familiar with religious matters and came back to the
Shah with the solution: If Khomeini were elevated to the rank of Ayatollah, he would become untouchable. The Shah agreed to the plan. Pakravan immediately went to Seyyed Jalal Tehrani and to the Ayatollah Shariat Madari’s residence in Qom (both men were marja’e taqlid or “source of emulation”) and obtained from
them that they pronounce the formula that made Khomeini an ayatollah. The cleric’s life was thus spared. Some time later, he was sent into exile, first to Turkey and then to Iraq."
Arrest and detention
According to the defendent's daughter, Mr. Pakaravan was arrested on February 16th, 1979, four days after the fall of the former regime. After his arrest by revolutionary guards, "his personal library, which numbered thousands of books with a
particular focus on history and philosophy, and his unique collection of travel memoirs of Europeans to Iran that went as far back as the sixteenth century, were looted along with the rest of his possessions."
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Trial
According to the newspaper Kayhan and the defendant's relative, the trial took place in the early hours of April 11th, 1979. It, reportedly lasted 15 minutes. There was no appeal.
Charges
Mr. Pakravan was charged with "treason" and "corruption on earth".
In his memoirs, the judge who tried Mr. Pakravan explained the meaning of "corruption on earth" in the following terms : "A Corruptor on earth is a person who contributes to spreading and expanding corruption on earth. Corruption is what leads to the decline, destruction and the deviation of society from its nature. People who were executed had strived in spreading corruption and prostitution, circulating heroin, opium and licencious behavior, atheism, murder, betrayal, flattery, and, in sum, all these vile qualities. These people’s problems were aggravated by the fact that they did not repent once they saw the people’s revolution."
The validity of the criminal charges brought against this defendant cannot be ascertained in the absence of the basic guarantees of a fair trial.
Evidence of guilt
No information is available on the evidence presented against Lt. General Pakravan.
Defense
The defendant was not allowed to hire a lawyer. According to Saideh Pakravan : "he pleaded no extenuating circumstance of any kind and made no attempt to shift the blame from himself to the system. Quite the opposite, he manfully said that any action he had undertaken in his official functions was his responsibility and his alone." The defendent reportedly asked the judge about the meaning of the term corruption on earth of which he was accused. "The judge, not realizing that he was invited into a etymological and philosophical discussion, cursorily replied that corruption of earth was what Pakravan had been guilty of."
Judgment
Tehran' Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal found Mr. Pakravan guilty of "treason" and "Corruption on earth". According to his daughter : "At a quarter to two in the morning, Pakravan was taken out to the yard of the prison and executed summarily by a direct shot through the heart from a semi-automatic and another shot through the neck after he fell.
Although there are many documented instances of family members of condemned officials visiting them a few hours before their execution, in the case of Pakravan, his son, the only family member still in Iran, was not allowed to see him.
His daughter reminisces: "General Pakravan’s body laid in the morgue for five days, as his family had been warned that the graves of officials of the former regime were often desecrated and the bodies pulled out. This brave officer and remarkable human being was finally buried under an assumed name."
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Human rights violations in this caseThe legal context
Read about the courts, the judges, and the procedure. The courts
Special courts, known as the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunals, were set up after the February 1979 revolution. Their jurisdiction encompasses a wide array of offences ranging from association with or support of the former regime, promotion of foreign influence, and enmity with the revolution to possession, use or sales of narcotic drugs, murder, and profiteering. In the 1980s, a penal court, presided over by one judge, was created to handle some of the offenses punishable by death, such as theft or adultery. These tribunals’ decisions must be confirmed by a chamber of the Supreme Judicial Council.
The judges
Prosecutors and judges are not necessarily jurists. By 1981, the judiciary was purged of judges trained in law schools. They were replaced by seminary graduates and students, as well as by political appointees (an estimated 2000 by 1989). Since by law judges are only required to have a high school diploma and must be faithful to the Islamic Republic’s tenets, new recruits often have little formal training in the law and are chosen because of their political affiliation.
The procedure
The procedures of these ecclesiastical tribunals fail to meet the minimum guarantees for fair trial as established by international human rights instruments and by sha’ria (the Islamic system of law). In addition to executions ordered by revolutionary tribunals, extra-judicial executions are carried out, targeting dissidents and opposition leaders. In some cases, both inside and outside of Iran, these executions have been traced back to Iranian officials. It is, however, not known if in these particular cases trials are held in absentia.
Sources (Among others): Amnesty International, Law and Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, February 1980; Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, The Justice System of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1992; E/CN.4/1989/26 p.14; UNCHR, Resolution 1984/54 , Abolition of Torture - Iran - 1; 28 November 1984; Report on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Special Representative of the Commission, Mr. Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, 28 January 1987. Amnesty International, A SHOCKED WORLD WATCHES IN DISBELIEF, VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 1987-1990. Memoirs of Ayatollah Khalkhali, religious judge and former head of revolutionary tribunals (2001), and Ayatollah Montazeri, dismissed successor to Ayatollah Khomeini (2001). UNCH, E/CN.4/1994/50, Final report on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran prepared by the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, pursuant to Commission resolution 1993/62 of 10 March 1993 and Economic and Social Council decision 1993/273. E/CN.4/1994/50, 2 February 1994.
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 close... Detentions, interrogations, and trials: 1979-1980
Read about the conditions in which individuals were detained, tried and sentenced. Pre-trial detentions
The charges upon which the accused were arraigned were often extremely broad. Defendants generally had no access to legal counsel nor to their file and the evidence against them prior to the trial.
Trials
Witnesses might be called, or the statement of persons with relevant information read into the court’s record. Accusation witnesses could come forward the day of the trial to give evidence against the accused, but in most cases, defense witnesses were not allowed in court. There was no automatic right of a defendant to cross-examine witnesses or to know the source of the evidence against him. The defendant had an opportunity to state his side of the matter and attempt to refute what was said against him, but the final decision was solely up to the discretion of the religious judge.
Appeal processes
The judgments of the Revolutionary Courts were not subject to appeal. The convicts were generally executed within a few hours of the judgment.
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close... Based on the available information, the following human rights have been violated in this case:
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The right to liberty and security of the person. The right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3 ; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 9.1.
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The right not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor and reputation.
UDHR, Article 12, ICCPR, Article 17.1.
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The right not to be punished for any crime on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence, under national or international law, at the time it was committed.
UDHR, Article 11.2; ICCPR, Article 15, Article 6.2.
The right to due process :
b. The right to be presumed innocent until found guilty by a competent and impartial tribunal in accordance with law. ICCPR, Article 14.1 and Article 14.2.
Pre-trial detention rights
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a. The right to know promptly and in detail the nature and cause of the charges against one.
UDHR, Article 9(2); ICCPR, Article 9.2 and Article 14.3.a
d. The right to counsel of his own choosing or legal aid and the right to meet with one’s attorney in confidence ICCPR, Article 14.3.d ; Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, Article 1 , Article 2 Article 5 , Article 6, Article 8.
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c. The right to adequate time and facilities for the preparation of the defense case.
ICCPR, Article 14.3.b.
Trial rights
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e. The right to a fair and public trial without undue delay.
ICCPR, Article 14.1, Article 14.3.c.
f. The right to examine, or have examined the witnesses against one and to obtain the attendance and examination of defense witnesses under the same conditions as witnesses for the prosecution. ICCPR, Article 14.3.e.
h. The right to have the decision rendered in public. ICCPR, Article 14.1.
i. The right to appeal to a court of higher jurisdiction. ICCPR, Article 14.5.
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j. The right to seek pardon or commutation of sentence.
ICCPR, Article 6.4.
Judgment rights
Capital punishment
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The inherent right to life, of which no one shall be arbitrarily deprived.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 3 ; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 6.1; Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, Article 1.1, Article 1.2.
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The right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.
ICCPR, Article 7; Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Article 1 and Article 2.
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