Civil activist and journalist, Mohammad Nourizad, has been sentenced to 8 months in prison, 148 lashes and one year of exile in Tabas, by the Second Penal Court of Mashhad.
Mr. Nourizad is charged with “disruption of public order” by attending a protest outside the court that was reviewing the case of Kamal Jafar Yazdi. He was also charge of “dissemination of false news”.
The second part of the case filed against Mohammad Nourizad was examined on July 21, 2020, at Branch 1101 of the Second Penal Court of Tehran and the case was forwarded to Branch 149 of the Second Penal Court of Mashhad.
Mr. Nourizad was arrested by security forces on August 11, 2019, along with a number of other civil activists outside the Appeals Court hearing for university professor, Kamal Jafari Yazdi, who is imprisoned in the Central Prison of Mashhad.
The activists had signed a petition calling on Ali Khamenei to resign. The signatories of the petition were all arrested, and eight of them were put on trial without due process of law and access to a lawyer. The detainees were sentenced to a total of 72 years in prison by a court in Mashhad in February.
Mohammad Nourizad had sent an audio message from prison the previous month, saying he was contemplating suicide to protest the harassment of his family by Iranian security forces.
His lawyer, Mohammad Hossein Aghassi, said: “I believe that the verdict handed down for the charge of disruption of public order is completely wrong and it is not compatible with the actions of my client outside the court hearing of Kamal Jafari Yazdi.”
Previously, Mohammad Nourizad had been sentenced to 15 years in prison, 3 years of exile to Izeh, and three years of ban from leaving the country for the first part of his case. The charges against him included insulting the founder of the Islamic Republic, insulting the sanctities, insulting the leader, distortion of public opinion, collaboration with foreign media, and participating in illegal gatherings.