Iranian justice, Kafka-style

guardian.co.uk

The case of Ebrahim Hamidi underlines how in Iran, as in Kafka's The Trial, citizens are victims of the legal system

Since its publication in 1925, critics have offered numerous interpretations of Kafka's enigmatic book The Trial. They have read the novel as a prescient warning of the horrors of the 20th century, a furious indictment of modernity, an allegorical account of the futility of religious faith.

But the most compelling of these readings is also perhaps the most banal and obvious one: Kafka was simply concerned with procedural due process and the lack thereof. The novel's protagonist, Josef K, stands in for all those victimised by legal systems unresponsive to the rights of criminal defendants and unconcerned with judicial neutrality.

This reading best explains why The Trial continues to resonate with average Iranian readers all too familiar with being deprived of due process.

Take the case of Ebrahim Hamidi, an 18-year-old youth convicted as a juvenile of attempting to sexually assault another male and sentenced to death by a court in East Azerbaijan province. As in many similar cases, the authorities are refusing to adhere to even the minimal procedural safeguards afforded to criminal defendants by Iran's own laws.

According to the advocacy group Gay Middle East, Ebrahim's confession was obtained after he was beaten by police interrogators. And his accuser has admitted to lying and has withdrawn his complaint. Taking note of these procedural irregularities, Iran's supreme court has twice vacated Ebrahim's conviction and death sentence. Yet the provincial court is refusing to comply with the appeal court rulings, leaving Ebrahim on death row.

The injustice perpetuated against Ebrahim doesn't stop there. He also lacks legal representation in this life and death matter since his lawyer is also subject to an Iranian arrest warrant – a plot twist that could have been penned by Kafka himself. The lawyer's crime? Zealously representing Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the mother of two sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, whose plight moved the international community into action and forced the regime to back down.

Persecution by the Iranian government of gay men and women and those, like Ebrahim, who are not gay but have been smeared with sexual charges, has been well-documented by the human rights community.

Iranian leaders should be reminded that providing citizens with procedural protection ensures long-term stability. The American constitutional regime, for example, has endured for more than two centuries precisely because it has assured generations of Americans of the right to "tell their side of the story" – even if they end up with an unfavourable outcome in a particular case. Likewise, a shared emphasis on procedural as well as substantive rights has been a source of unity and pride for a Europe otherwise divided along cultural and political lines. Even China has of late sought to bolster its judicial system in the interest of social cohesion.

Conversely, the absence of due process is a source of tension – a key lesson of modern Iranian history. That history has been as much about the struggle for the individual right to due process before the law as it has about the struggle for popular sovereignty and national self-determination.

Iran's 1905 constitutional revolution was initially driven by common folk seeking a fair hearing from royal authorities indifferent to their plight. And in 1979, the mullahs themselves rode a wave of popular anger to power. That anger was not only inspired by the Shah's subservience to the west, but also by his penchant for arbitrary detention and torture as substitutes for fair adjudication.

Alas, Islamic republic elites did not learn the lessons of their own revolution. Less than a decade after seizing power, they summarily executed thousands of Iranians accused of political thought-crimes. The "courts" that handed down those executions relied on the flimsiest evidence and callously disregarded norms of due process. As cases such as Ebrahim and Sakineh's show, not much has changed. Kafka is likely to remain immensely popular among Iranians for other than merely literary reasons.