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The Following is the Informal list of Sentences to Berlin Conference Victims.

   1. Mr Akbar Ganji, journalist, 10 years in jail + 5 years exile in Bashagerd, in the southern       province of Hormozgan. 
   2.Mr Saied Sadr, translator at the German Embassy in Tehran, 10 years in jail in Birjand,      eastern Iran. 
   3.Mr Khalil Rostamkhani, translator,  8 years in jail in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas and       1 year in Tehran.  
   4.Mr Ali-Reza Afshari, student leader, 5 years in jail. 
   5.Mr Ezatollah Sahabi, opposition politician and journalist,  4.5 years in jail. 
   6.Ms Mehr-Anguiz Kar, lawyer and human rights activist, 4 years in jail. 
   7.Ms Shahla Lahiji, publisher and women's rights activist, 4 years in jail. 
   8.Mr Fariborz Raies-Dana, economist, 3 year jail sentence, suspended for 5 years. 
   9.Mr Hassan Yussefi-Ashkevari, clergyman, being tried by the Special Court for Clergy for "waging war against god " a death sentence for penalty. No information of trial process.
  10.Ms Khadijeh Moghaddam, environmentalist,No inforamtion of the sentence. 
  11.Ms Shahla Sherkat, journalist, No inforamtion of the sentence.
  12.Mr Hamid-Reza Jalaiepour, newspaper publisher, acquitted. 
  13.Mr Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, novelist, acquitted. 
  14.Mr Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou, poet, acquitted. 
  15.Mr Ai-Reza Alavitabar, journalist, acquitted. 
  16.Ms Moniru Ravanipour, novelist, acquitted. 
  17.Ms Jamileh Kadivar, journalist, acquitted. 
  18.Mr Kazem Kardevani, university professor, currently living abroad - case still open. 
  19.Mr Chanquiz Pahlevan, university professor, currently living abroad - case still open. 
  20.Roshanak Daryoush, translator, currencyly living abroad - case still open. 
  21.Mr Bahman Niroumand, university lecturer resident in Germany - case still open. 
  22.Mr Mehdi Ja'fari-Gorzini, political activist, resident in Germany - case still open. 
  23.Mr Ahmad Taheri, journalist, resident in Germany - case still open. 
  24.Mr Navid Kermani, jounrliast, resident in Germany - case still open.

  25.Ms Katayoun Amirpour, journalist, resident in Germany - case still open. 
  26.Ms Shohreh Badi'i, political activist, resident in Germany - case still open.
  27.Mr Mehdi Sardari-Taromi, political activist, resident in Germany - case still open.
  28.Mr Mohammad Rafi', human rights activist, resident in Germany - case still open. 
  29.Ms Nassrin Bassiri, journalist, resident in Germany - case still open. 

Those sentenced due to file their documents for  appeal by February 1st. The appeals for Khalil Rostamkhani and Saied Sadr, who have been sentenced under Article 186 of penal code which deals
with those who have "waged war against God", will be heard by the Supreme Court [Divan-e Ali-ye
Keshvar]. The rest of the appeals will be heard by the Tehran Province Appeal Court.

Iran hands down long jail terms, strains with Germany on horizon

Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji has been given 10 years in prison and a further five years of exile from Tehran for attending an "un-Islamic" political conference in Germany, sources told AFP Saturday.

They said a Tehran revolutionary court also handed down long jail terms to other reformists over the controversial meeting, which the tribunal announced last month was aimed at overthrowing Iran's clerical regime.

The case is certain to further strain ties between Iran and its largest European trading partner, Germany, whose chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, has now called off a visit to the Islamic republic, according to German press reports.

Ganji, a longtime thorn in the side of the regime's conservatives, will be banished from the capital for five years after serving his prison time, said sources in a family of one of the accused.

Said Sadr, an interpreter with the German embassy, was given 10 years while Khalil Rostam-Khani, a translator who reportedly did not attend the conference, got nine years, they said.

Student leader Ali Afshari, political head of Iran's largest pro-reform student group, was given a five-year sentence, they said.

A Tehran newspaper earlier Saturday, citing the Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU) student group, said Afshari had disappeared from prison on January 3 after being taken for interrogation by court officials.

Dissident nationalist Ezatollah Sahabi of the secular Iran Freedom Movement (IFM) got four-and-a-half years, while two women, lawyer Mehrangiz Kar and editor Shahla Lahiji, were given four years each, the sources said.

Economist Fariborz Raiss-Dana was given a three-year suspended sentence, while the punishment for two other women, editor Shahla Sherkat and journalist Khadija Hajjdini-Moghadam, was not immediately known.

The verdicts have yet to be made public by the court.

The sources said seven other people -- including Jamileh Kadivar, wife of former culture minister Ataollah Mohajerani -- were acquitted.

There was also no immediate word on the fate of dissident cleric Hassan Yussefi-Eshkevari. Like several of the other defendants, he is a close ally of reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

The Berlin seminar, organised by a foundation with links to the German Greens party, outraged conservatives here after state television broadcast excerpts of the proceedings.

Footage from the conference, which was disrupted by the Iranian opposition in exile, showed a man disrobing in protest and a woman dancing with bare arms.

The conference had been organised to consider the future of the reform movement after reformists won control of parliament in February elections.

The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, in its edition appearing on newsstands Monday, reports that Schroeder has called off a planned visit to Iran.

"The positive political context needed for the visit is lacking," the magazine quotes a source close to the chancellery as saying

AFP Story on Yahoo

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Iran warns Germany after Berlin conference verdicts

Iran warned Germany on Monday to act "wisely" after jail terms were slapped on reformists who attended a conference in Berlin, saying any link between the case and Tehran-Berlin relations was unacceptable, the state IRNA news agency reported.

"German leaders must treat this matter wisely in order to avoid damaging bilateral relations," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said a day after Germany summoned Tehran's ambassador in Berlin over the affair.

"Any link between this trial of Iranian citizens and relations between Iran and Germany is unacceptable and unreasonable," he said.

AFP Story on Yahoo

Copyright © 2000 AFP. All rights reserved. All information displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.

Introduction          Letter from Khalil Rostamkhani's wife          Interview

Introduction: Khalil Rostamkhani was recently convicted for his involvement with the
Berlin conference and sentenced to 9 years in prison and exile.
Following the publication of the English translation of Berliner Zeitung
interview with Rostamkhani, we received the following email from
Roshanak Daryoush, Rostamkhani's wife, in which she made some
clarifications and corrections about her husband's interview. We are
publishing Mrs. Daryoush's email along with the revised interview:

Letter from Khalil Rostamkhani's wife.   Dear Friends, I wanted to thank you that you put the interview of my husband, Khalil Rostamkhani, in your website in Payvand. But I have to inform you that Khalil Rostamkhani was not in Berlin and did not participate in the conference. He only made the appointments for the delegate from the Boell-Foundation in Tehran and translated their discussions with the guests whom the foundation wanted to invite to the Berlin Conference . There are also some mistakes in the translation in English and German, and I would be grateful if you could correct them: - Khalil Rostamkhani was imprisoned 1990-1992 and the leadership of the organization Vahdate Communisti (Communist Unity) has not existed since 1990 as every member of that organization was imprisoned in Iran. (The mistakes happened when converting the Iranian dates to the Western calendar.) - The article in Islamic Law of Mohareb is 186 and not 185. - Khalil has not had to pay a cash fine. Best Regards Roshanak Daryoush

Interview:
Mrs. Daryoush was scheduled to appear in an event in Washington DC on
January 27. However, she wasn't able to obtain her visa in time. Instead
she sent a statement (in Persian - pdf) to be read in the meeting.

Khalil Rostamkhani's interview with Berliner Zeitung

Berliner Zeitung, 18 January 2001

Q: What exactly were/are the claims against you?

A: There were two charges against me: "1. Conducting activities and
efforts to advance the goals of the hostile and mohareb [definition has
been given below] opposition groups abroad by means of receiving
statements of the said groups, publicizing and distributing them in
Iran;

2. Acting as deputy in preparing and forming an association under the
title of Berlin Conference by means of negotiations, inviting,
encouraging and enticing the invited persons to participate in that
conference the principal goal of which was to disrupt the national
security and to make publicity against the Islamic system."

Q: Some of the defendants and participants in the symposium of the
Heinrich Boell foundation were acquitted, some got prison terms of 4 or
4.5 years. You, Mr. Ganji and Mr. Sadr got exceptionally high prison
terms - how do you explain those differences?

A: I am glad that they were acquitted. Three, i.e. the writers (Ms.
Ravanipur, Mr. Dowlatabadi and Mr. Sepanlu) had not been able to make
readings in the Conference any way. My case and the charges against me
are different from Mr. Ganji's. I have been given 8 years of prison in
the tropical town of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf coast. The first
charge against me and the relevant part of the sentence are based on
Article 186 of the Islamic Punishment Law.

Article 186 is as follows: "Any organized group or association that has
an armed uprising against the Islamic government, as long as the central
leadership of that group is in existence, all its members and followers
who know the stands of that group or association or organization and
conduct in some way effective activity and efforts to advance its goals,
are mohareb, even though they may not be involved in the armed wing..."

Articles 183 of the same law define mohareb as: "Anybody who takes up
arms to create fear and to deprive the people of freedom and
security..." Also Article 186 defines: "An armed robber and bandit is a
mohareb when he disrupts security of the people or the road by means of
arms."

Furthermore, Article 190 of the same law has provided for 4 types of
punishments for that charge. Article 191 of the same law has empowered
the judge to decide upon any of the four. The judge in my trial has
decided upon the softest option which is: [internal] banishment or
exile. Nevertheless, he has also based his sentence on a fatwa of the
Leader that the banished persons can be kept in prison, as well as on
Article 167 of the Constitution.

Article 167 provides: "A judge has a duty to try and find rulings for
any case in the existing laws and if he does not, he shall issue
sentence by invoking valid Islamic sources or valid fatwas. He cannot
refuse to examine a case nor refuse to issue a sentence on the excuse
that the existing laws are silent, or incomplete or brief or in conflict
with each other."

The judge's reasons for his decision are based on finding statements and
publications of the hostile and mohareb groups in my house; those
statements containing the goals and plans of those groups to overthrow
the system; my record of membership in the Communist Unity Organization
and my previous conviction. The judge stated in the sentence: "The fact
that those statements, according to remarks of the defendant have been
given to members of the Writers Association and a viewing of the goals
of the Berlin Conference which were stated in the procedure of the case,
the Court deems this much of actions of the defendant to be covered
under and to conform with Article 186 of the Islamic Punishment Law of
1991."

I assume Mr. Sadr is also facing a similar situation, but I have not
seen his sentence.

Concerning the second charge against me, I have been given one year in
prison which I assume to be in Tehran. Unfortunately, I am unable to
explain the judge's reasoning for this punishment, because at the moment
I do not have the text of the relevant part of the sentence and I hope
to get it later.

Q: How fair was the trial? What are your plans? Are you going to file an
appeal?

A: I will certainly appeal, because of the following reasons:

First: I have never ever been involved in any armed action or armed
uprising. I was convicted for membership of an illegal group (namely
Communist Unity Organization) and served two years in prison from
1990-1992 for it. Even then the group of which I was a member was not
involved in armed activity or armed uprising as the Article of the law
requires.

Second: Neither that group nor its central leadership has been in
existence since 1990.

Third: I myself have always worked with nothing but pens, typewriters
and later computers; I have been involved in journalism and translation
for the past 22 years since the revolution in Iran. The closest I have
ever come to any firearms has been when I saw such arms in the hands of
policemen!

Fourth: I have not been involved in organized activities against the
government ever since I was freed from prison in 1992.

Fifth: The publications found in my house were for records and archive
of my wife as a sociologist, a translator of German literature and a
member of the Iranian Writers Association. I have not distributed those
publications (of which there was only one copy of each in our house) to
anybody and the prosecution did not cite even one single piece of
evidence to substantiate the claim and I have not said that I gave any
publications to anybody. Furthermore, nobody can at one and the same
time be a follower of about 10 totally different groups in a wide
political spectrum ranging from the nationalist democrats to different
conflicting leftist groups to Mr. Banisadr, as the prosecution claimed
about me.

Sixth: I do not think my previous conviction for which I have already
served, or having the publications in my house qualify me for the title
of mohareb under the law.

Finally: It is clear that the other provision of the law does not apply
to me either as I am clearly neither an armed robber nor an armed
bandit.

Regarding the second charge, I have only done my usual job of arranging
appointments with participants of the Conference and going along to
those meetings to help with translation. As I said earlier I cannot
comment on the relevant part of the sentence at present.

Q: If you file an appeal, do you expect that your prison term might be
reduced? Or that you could even get acquitted?

A: I can only say that I hope to have a drastic reduction of the
sentence or even total abolition of it. But I do not know what it would
mean to be acquitted at this stage, because I have already served six
months and five days in detention.

Q: You are out on bail . Have you received any formal note by the
judiciary as to be sent back to jail?

A: No. I have not received a notice to go back to jail. As long as the
appeal is pending and it has not been examined and the verdict has not
been finalized, I will stay out.

Q: What would you wish for yourself personally?

Courts Of Islamic Republic hand down long term jail sentences to pro-freedom participants of Berlin Conference.

January 13, 2001: Courts Of Islamic Republic hand down long term jail sentences to pro-freedom participants of Berlin Conference.

January 15, 2001: German Chancellor Schroeder has called off a planned visit to Iran 
Reports from 2  news-services.

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