Back around Iranian Revolution the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran disappeared and is presumed dead. Subsequently a second National Spiritual Assembly was elected. The members of that Assembly were tried and executed. Recently a tape of that trial has surfaced. It was played on the BBC last night.
Trial of the Baha'i National Assembly in Iran
- Thread starter smaneck
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This happened nearly thirty years ago. Subsequently a third National Spiritual Assembly was elected but seven of its members were executed. Ayatollah Montazeri who at the time was Khomeini's right hand and head of the court system said that it wasn't illegal to be a Baha'i but our administrative institutions were illegal. So we shut them down. To our surprise the executions stopped. But then the government was unhappy because they no longer had the means to communicate with the Baha'i community so they asked us to form a committee for that purpose, which we did. They were known as the Yaran. A few years later they arrested all the members of that committee. They were eventually sentenced to 20 years. The law firm of Nobel Peace Price winner Shirin Ebadi represented the Baha'is in court with the result that the lawyer representing us was himself arrested. You may recall Roxana Saberi, the American journalist who was convicted of espionage and held for several months. She shared a cell with the female members of the Yaran. Afterwards she wrote this article about them:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...plight-of-baha-i-prisoners-of-conscience.html
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