Esmail Bakhshi

He is among the leaders of workers’ protests of Haft-Tapeh. Esmail Bakhshi was arrested due to his serious participation in Haft-Tapeh workers’ protests and his advocacy for running of the company by workers’ councils.. Security bodies identify him as a communist activist who maintains relations with groups abroad

• <coverage-outsourcing id='23855'> After the filmed footage of his speeches as a trade unionist were published on cyberspace, he was attacked by masked men who came with two automobiles </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23852'> After the first meeting of families with Esmail Bakhshi and Sepide Qoliyan, numerous sources, including the Telegram channel of the Haft-Tapeh Trade Union, HRANA and CHRI reported that the two are in solitary, without access to lawyers and with marks of beatings on their bodies </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23851'> Twenty Haft-Tapeh protesters, including every member of the Workers’ Representative Assembly and some workers and civic activists, were arrested. He was also arrested on the same day. Haft-Tapeh worker protests had begun a few days earlier and they had been noticed all over Iran. Most of the arrestees were released after a few days while the protests were going on but Esmail Bakhshi and Sepideh Qoliyan, despite rumors that spoke of their release, remained in custody. These arrests led to protests by workers of Haf-Ttapeh, Steel Company, and groups of students in the following days but the street protests died down in the following weeks </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23853'> Reports of his torture and his transfer to hospital were published </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23854'> He was released on bail. In the coming days, he spoke of having been tortured in the detention center run by the Intelligence Ministry. He had been charged with counts such as “disrupting public order,” “assembly and collusion against national security” and “taking part in forming groups aimed at disrupting security” </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23856'> He published a picture on his Instagram page, signalling his return to work at Haft-Tapeh Sugarcane Complex </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23857'> Esmail Bakhshi published a text on his Instagram and revealed the torture he and Sepide Qolyian had gone under in Ahvaz’s Intelligence Ministry detention center. This was widely spread on cyberspace and led to it being denied by the authorities of the Intelligence Ministry, the judiciary, and the government. Also, some social media users who had been tortured used the hashtag “I was also tortured” to describe their sufferings in the prisons of the Islamic Republic </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23898'> Asal Mohammadi wrote the following on her Instagram: “On the sixth day of my detention in Ahvaz, I was transferred to a small and wet cell which held seven prisoners. One of them was Sepideh Qolyan, as I realized quickly. I couldn't believe in such a short time her happy and bright face was getting so thin, weak, and tired. She still had bruises on her neck and scratch marks on her hands. She wrote in her text: I was witnessing her (Sepideh Qolian) long interrogations from 10 in the morning through midnight and this process was repeating almost every day. I could hear the sound of her interrogators cursing at her from the next room. We were witnessing so much pressure on her in order to get a false confession that she was scratching her face and wished for death. She wrote in part: “I could hear Esmail Bakhsi’s constant coughs and breath shortage from next door interrogation room and interrogators mocking him: “he is acting, he is alright.” When I was going to the detention center’s yard I could hear the insults and accusations by interrogators toward Esmaeil Bakhshi. I’m willing to testify about what I saw and what I heard” </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23858'> The IRIB broadcast “Foiled Designs,” a film based on the “confessions” of Asal Mohammadi, Esmayil Bakhshi, Maziar Seyednejad, Ali Nejati and Sepide Qolyan. The film led to broad reaction from social media users and was used as a document that proved political prisoners were tortured </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='23861'> Esmail Bakhshi and Sepide Qolyan were arrested again. This followed broad negative reactions to the film shown by IRIB. According to the reports published -- based on witness statements --, a large number of security forces were present for these arrests and violently attacked the houses of Esmayil and Sepideh. Sepideh’s brother, Mehdi Qolyan, was also arrested in the attack. According to her father, 12 male security forces and two female ones had violently attacked the house, breaking the ribs of his son and beating up him and his wife. He said: “My daughter, Sepideh, was shouting. They tied my son and threw him to the trunk of the car. I went to the Intelligence department in Shoosh and they told me I’d be arrested too if I resisted.” Mehdi Qolyan was freed a week later. Iranian authorities alleged that Esmail Bakhshi had tried to flee abroad to follow up his “project of fabricating torture against the system” </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='24691'> His lawyer, Farzaneh Zilabi, told IRNA that the prosecutor’s agents have taken physical action against Esmail Bakhshi’s sister and have put his mother in handcuffs. This treatment led to the mother’s nervous shock and her transfer to the hospital </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='24527'> Haft-Tapeh Sugarcane Workers Union reported that the case of Sepideh Qolyan and Esmail Bakhshi had been sent to the Branch Seven of Evin Prosecutors and the case’s investigator, Mr. Shahmohammadi, advised the families to refrain from hiring a lawyer because he would do the defense himself </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='24542'> Esmail Bakhshi, Sepideh Qolian, and Amir Amirgholi were transferred to Evin prison </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='25440'> Farzaneh Zilayi published a text to declare that Judge Moghise illegally refuses to accept her legal representation of Esmail Bakhshi and Ali Nejati. In the part of the text we read: They are doing all that they can; Not paying wages, heavy beating up, closing the case of torture without even one reference to the forensics or listening to the testimonies of witnesses and without attention to the testimonies of the doctors who treated the injured or the radiological pictures of broken ribs and injured ear lobes </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='25963'> Farzane Zilabi and Jamaloddin Heydarimanesh, lawyers for Esmail Bakhshi and Sepideh Qolian, published a note to demand an open trial for their defendants. This is a legal requirement in Iranian law and they should have an opportunity to respond to the charges laid against them in the TV program “Foiled Plans” </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='25599'> He has been stripped of his employment contract and salary </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='26377'> According to ILNA, his lawyers and those of other prisoners of the Haft-Tapeh workers’ protests have rejected the claims of Sayid Omrani, the judicial deputy of the national prosecutor who had claimed certain financial connections for Haft-Tapeh protesters: “As lawyers representing the defendants in this case, after reviewing the full 3000 page case in 9 volumes, we have seen no evidence that a single cent has been received by defendants. Nor is there any evidence elsewhere, in the report of the disciplinary officer, charge sheet of the prosecutor of minutes of trial” </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='26544'> Sentences of Haft-Tapeh prisoners, issued by Judge Moghise, were given to them. Esmail Bakhshi was sentenced to 14 years in prison and 74 blows of the lash (seven effectively years); Sepideh Qolyan, Amirhossein Mohammadi Fard, Sanaz Allahyari, Amir Amirqoli and Asal Mohmmadi were each given up to 18 years in prison (seven effective years) and Mohammad Khanifar was sentenced to six years in prison (five effective years.) Among the charges they were convicted of are the following: “Gathering and collusion against national security, propaganda activity against the regime, insulting the Supreme Leader, disrupting public opinion and publishing falsehoods” </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='27241'> Six of the Haft Tapeh and World Labour Day detainees released on bail. Marzieh Amiri, Amir Amirgholi, Sanaz Allahyari, Amir Hossein Mohammadi Fard, Sepideh Gholian, and Atefeh Rangriz were released from Qarchak and Evin prisons for several consecutive hours. At the same time, the release possibility for Esmail Bakhshi and Asal Mohammadi from the Haft Tapeh, and Neda Naji, one of the World Labor Day detainees, was also mentioned in cyberspace </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='27282'> He was released on bail </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='27953'> The Haft Tapeh defendants were convicted of “gathering and collusion to act against national security” and sentenced to five years in prison. The Branch 36 of the appellate court, headed by Judge Zargar, acquitted them of other crimes and ultimately the sentence can be applied to all of the defendants. The trial of these people was held without their knowledge or that of their lawyers </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='30587'> <reference source='https://www.magiran.com/article/4043389'> After oral notification about the cancellation of the prison sentences of some labor activists, Amir Raeisian (lawyer)told Shargh news agency: We were informed that the implementation of the sentences of Marzieh Amiri, Atefeh Rangriz, and several others had been canceled and the defendants had to wait for a written notification </reference> </coverage-outsourcing>
• <coverage-outsourcing id='30897'> According to IPA, some prisoners were pardoned by the head of the judiciary on the occasion of Eid Al Fitr. A few numbers of political prisoners have been released under the directive or will not return to prison to serve their sentences </coverage-outsourcing>