“The court proceedings, the first of their kind in nearly two decades, have been criticized abroad and by opposition groups in Iran as “show trials” with coerced confessions, intended to terrorize the public into submission. At the same time, the trials have shocked the nation and galvanized the opposition…

In Tuesday’s court hearing, viewed online, 19 defendants, all well-known, appeared in court sitting in rows facing the judge, interspersed with security guards… They included a former deputy foreign minister, an ex-government spokesman, a former deputy speaker of parliament and two prominent newspaper editors, and an American citizen, academic Kian Tajbakhsh.”

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