On June 22nd the Iranian regime’s Supreme Court finally did its job and asserted its supremacy over Branch No1 of Esfahan’s Revolutionary Court. The regime’s highest court revoked the lower court’s death sentence against Toomaj Salehi, a rapper and metalworker.
Toomaj Salehi’s plight mobilised a wide range of activists and groups throughout the world, from Amnesty International and Index on Censorship to trade unions and organisations like Internationalist Standpoint.
These campaigns obviously exerted some pressure on the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran, particularly during its ‘election’ charade, as it tries to obscure its genuine nature as the most vicious and brutal form of capitalist dictatorship on the planet.
The ‘election circus’ – as the Khuzestan Vanguard Socialist Workers’ Cell has called this charade – has included candidates promising free petrol, 20 grams of gold for each family and so on. We hope that revoking Toomaj’s death sentence is not yet another of these electioneering promises. In any case, the fact that a lower court can defy the Supreme Court shows the turmoil inside this regime and how far it is from a territory where there is rule of law.
Above all, we should bear in mind that this criminal regime has no right to arrest or imprison anyone. All those who were arrested in the aftermath of the state killing of Jina (Mahsa) Amini on September 16th 2022, as well as all jailed workers and political prisoners must be freed immediately and unconditionally.
Free all political prisoners in Iran!
Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign
24 June 2024
