According to this source, the Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority, and the transfer of Judge Moghiseh from the Revolutionary Court to this court is a significant promotion, a promotion that happened at his insistence and was requested by Moghiseh himself since the time of Amoli Larijani’s presidency of the judiciary.
A judicial lawyer has told Iran Gate that the presence of Mohammad Moghiseh in the Supreme Court is very dangerous. He explained that Mr. Moghiseh was a very illiterate judge and yes, the victim of security agencies’ breathing down his neck at Branch 28 is very good, but because he didn’t know the law, we hoped to go to the Supreme Court and overturn his rulings. But now, he himself has gone to the Supreme Court as an advisor, meaning he is a decision-maker there, and that is dangerous.
Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court, alongside Branch 15 of this court, in recent years, were special branches that handled most political and security cases, referring them for heavy sentences, including death, imprisonment, and flogging. These two branches have been responsible for the trials of many political and civil activists, journalists, and protesters since 2009.
According to the calculations of the Atlas of Iranian Prisons website, Mohammad Moghiseh has issued 1653 years of prison sentences in 335 cases in recent years. The image presented by the narratives of civil political activists and journalists who have been tried by Judge Moghiseh indicates a picture of illiteracy, violence, cruelty, and issuing very severe sentences. Zia Nabavi, an activist and student, wrote that in a court session in 2009, addressing two defendants who were co-defendants, he said, ‘Tell the truth, which one of you had a blog found in your house?’
Shahabeddin Nazari, a political activist, wrote that the court didn’t last more than 1015 minutes, was nervous and aggressive, and my lawyer was threatened with expulsion from the session, and eventually I was sentenced to one year in prison. According to the Campaign for the Defense of the Detainees of Haft Tappeh report, Judge Moghiseh explicitly stated during the presence of the defendants of the Haft Tappeh case in court that the sentences issued against the defendants of the Haft Tappeh case were very divine and fair, and by issuing these judgments, he has secured his afterlife.
Death sentences have been issued for Jafar Kazemi, Hamed Rouhinejad, Shahram Ahmadi, Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaie, Saeed Malekpour, and Mohammad Amin Valian. Seven Baha’i community leaders have been sentenced to 140 years in prison. Narges Sotoudeh has been sentenced to 148 lashes and 33 years in prison. The suspects of the Aparat website have been sentenced to 20.5 years in prison and 198 lashes. Mehdi Mousavi and Fatemeh Ekhtesari have been sentenced to 45 years in prison. The detainees of the Haft Tappeh case have been sentenced to prison terms. Absentia prison sentences have been issued for several Iranians abroad, including Googoosh. These are among the verdicts issued by Mohammad Moghiseh, who has handled the cases of Majid Tavakoli, Bahareh Hedayat, Abolfazl Ghadyani, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Mehdi Hashemi, and many protesters of recent years’ protests.
Prior to 1396, no photos of Mohammad Moghiseh had been published by the court handling the case of Babak Zanjani. Less information was released about his background until before he became the head of Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court. Saeed Mortazavi, a former human rights activist and political prisoner who spent ten years in Evin, Qezel Hesar, and Gohardasht prisons from 1360 to 1370, stated in interviews with the human rights campaign in Iran that the reason for such secrecy is due to the dark and indefensible records of Mohammad Moghiseh, or as remembered by prisoners of the sixties and seventies, the interrogator or judge Naserian.
According to Mr. Mosadaqi, Mohammad Moghiseh was one of the most sinister figures in Islamic Republic prisons. He explained that Moghiseh or Naserian began working in the Islamic Revolutionary Court since 1981. He was a branch judge there and actively participated in torturing political prisoners. He was in Branch 3 of Evin prison, then became the supervising judge in Qezel Hesar prison in 1985. After the closure of Qezel Hesar prison, he became the supervising judge in Rajai Shahr prison. During the massacre of 1367, he played an active role in killing prisoners in Gohardasht prison. At that time, besides being a prison judge, he was also the head of Gohardasht prison.
In fact, without any legal or educational qualifications in this regard, he reached the position of deputy in prison just because he had taken a very limited number of seminary courses. After the 1967 massacre, he was transferred to Evin Prison, where he served as a deputy in the prison, with some deputies working under him. Later, he was transferred to the central prosecutor’s office building on Ma’alem Street. It was in the 1980s that he took over the leadership of Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court, where he issued many verdicts against political prisoners.
On December 19, 2019, the US Department of the Treasury placed Mohammad Moghiseh, along with Abolqasem Salavati, the head of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, on its sanctions list for their involvement in the punishment of the people of Iran and dual-national citizens. They are accused of manipulating the trials of the Islamic Republic regime, where journalists, lawyers, political activists, and members of ethnic and religious minorities have been sentenced to long prison terms, flogging, and even execution for exercising freedom of expression and assembly.
