Appeals Court Upholds Six-Year Prison Sentence for Salman Sima

RAHANA

Branch 54 of the Appeals Court upheld the six-year prison sentence for Salman Sima, member of Advare Tahkim Vahdat (student alumni organization).
Sima’s lawyer Reza Zarei said that branch 54 of the Revolutionary Court has rejected the appeal filed on his six-year prison sentence issued by the lower court.
The current file is related to Sima’s student activities in Azad University from the years 2002 to 2007.
Sima was arrested on two separate occasions, on November 14, 2009 and June 12, 2010. He spent a total of 130 days in prison after the 2009 Iranian Presidential election. He was released on July 5, 2010. Sima has a separate judicial case opened [in court] for the charges of “Disrupting public order and attending illegal gatherings” and “collusion and conspiracy.”

Background

Student activist Salman Sima was arrested outside his home in the early hours of November 4, 2009. Security agents had been lying in wait for the Azad University student who had stayed away from the apartment for several days.

The regime has been rounding up student activists and leaders in a desperate attempt to prevent widespread protests planned for December 7 2009, Student Day in Iran. (NB Student Day in Iran is different from International Student Day which is on November 17. Student Day in Iran is December 7 -- 16th of the Iranian month of Azar -- and, while celebrating student activism in general, it is also a commemoration of the slaying of three Tehran University students by the Shah's police in 1953, shortly after the coup that brought the Shah back to power.)

Salman Sima is a member of the Advareh Tahkimeh Vahdat, the national alumni association. The Advar is an associate organization of the Daftareh Tahkimeh Vahdat, the Office to Consolidate Unity, which is Iran's largest student organization.

Sima spent 34 days in solitary confinement last year and was released on $60,000 bail in early August 2008. He had been arrested in early July 2008, prior to demonstrations marking the 9th anniversary of the student uprising and regime crackdown of July 9, 1999.

Sima graduated with a degree in industrial engineering from the Azad University - South Tehran Branch and is currently a graduate student in energy economics at Azad University - Central Tehran Branch.

As an undergraduate student, he published Sokhaneh Tazeh (New Comment) newspaper which was subsequently banned. After organizing a December 7 ceremony in 2006, he was deprived of the right to study for two semesters and was forced to relocate to Azad University - Karaj. But in Karaj, he was instrumental in organizing another December 7 event in 2008, the only such ceremony in a university in Tehran province that year.

تایید شش سال حبس تعزیری سلمان سیما
شعبه ۵۴ دادگاه تجدیدنظر حکم شش سال حبس تعزیری سلمان سیما، عضو سازمان دانش آموختگان ایران را تایید کرد.
خبرگزاری حقوق بشر ایران – رهانا
رضا زارعی وکیل سلمان سیما گفت که درخواست تجدیدنظرخواهی نسبت به رای بدوی صادره از شعبه ۱۵ دادگاه انقلاب اسلامی در خصوص سلمان سیما که منجر به محکومیت وی به ۶ سال حبس تعزیری شده، از سوی شعبه ۵۴ دادگاه انقلاب اسلامی رد شده است.
به گزارش ادوارنیوز، زارعی افزود: در لایحه تجدیدنظرخواهی خود، به‌طور مبسوط ایرادات شکلی و ماهوی دادنامه شعبه ۱۵ دادگاه انقلاب را مورد اشاره قرار داده بودیم که متاسفانه دادگاه تجدید نظر به این نقایص توجهی نکرده است.
گفتنی است فعالیتهای دانشجویی سلمان سیما در دانشگاه آزاد طی سالهای ۸۱تا ۸۶ اتهامات اصلی وی در این پرونده هستند.
سلمان سیما همچنین پس از انتخابات سال گذشته در دو نوبت مجموعا قریب ۱۳۰ روز را در زندان بوده و پرونده مفتوحی نیز در این ارتباط دارد.