Abolqasem Salavati: The Judge of Death

Few details about Salavati’s background have been published. It is unknown whether he has a law degree or even if Abolqasem Salavati is his real name (according to Iran expert and academic Faraz Sanei, some Revolutionary Court judges use aliases). Rod Sanjabi, former executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, commented, “Even within that context [the Revolutionary Court], he has a reputation of being a hanging judge with no apparent legal knowledge.”

The NGO United for Iran claims that Salavati served in the Basij, a paramilitary force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), during the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War and was wounded. In 1987, he joined Iran’s judicial police in Kurdistan province. He then became a prosecutor and judge in 1991 in Kurdistan’s provincial capital, Sanandaj.

As a judge, Salavati first attained notoriety in 2006, when he presided over the trial of two Iranians accused of assassinating fellow judge Hassan Ahmadi Moghadas, a serial oppressor of political dissidents. Salavati sentenced the two, Majid Kavousifar and his nephew, Hossein Kavousifar, to death, and they were hanged the following year.

In 2002, Salavati was appointed as head of Branch 15 of the Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Court by Saeed Mortazavi, a notorious judge in the Islamic Revolutionary Courts.

In 2009, Salavati oversaw the trial of Dr. Arash Alaei; his brother, Dr. Kamiar Alaei; NGO official Silva Harotonian; and documentary filmmaker Mohammad Ehsani The four were accused and convicted of colluding with an enemy government (in this case, the United States) to overthrow the Iranian regime—even though such purported collusion consisted of publicly partnering with an American NGO and participating in a medical conference run by the Aspen Institute think-tank and funded in part by the U.S. State Department.

Salavati, as he often does, cited as evidence a report from the intelligence ministry and “confessions” repudiated by the defendants. He sentenced Arash Alaei to six years in prison and the others to three years each.

Salavati became famous by presiding over the public show trials of demonstrators who took to the streets after Iran’s 2009 presidential election to protest incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dubious victory. The defendants included not only grassroots-level protesters but also former government officials like former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, former deputy speaker of the Majlis Behzad Nabavi, and former government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh. Salavati handed out lengthy prison sentences to over a hundred demonstrators and condemned at least six to death. 

2022–24 Repression

In early January 2023, Salavati became the center of a false death rumor spread across social media. The claim, originating from an anonymous Twitter account, alleged that Salavati had been assassinated, triggering widespread speculation and misinformation online. A swift response from Mahdi Keshtdar, CEO of Mizan News Agency, disputed the rumor, affirming Salavati’s health after a direct phone conversation. 

In March 2023, Salavati sentenced Iranian women and children’s rights activist Samaneh Asghari to 18 years and three months in prison. Asghari, a student at Kharazmi University in Tehran, was initially arrested during nationwide protests in October 2022 and accused of various charges, including disrupting public order, spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic system, and violating religious dress codes. Although she was initially released under a judicial amnesty, she was rearrested in September 2023 and subjected to periods of solitary confinement in Evin Prison. According to her husband, Asghari is serving a one-year prison sentence in Evin as of April 2024.

In the fall of 2023, Salavati sentenced Iranian journalists Niloufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi by to lengthy prison terms—13 years for Hamedi and 12 years for Mohammadi—alongside bans on their journalistic activities. The court had convicted the journalists of charges including “collaboration with the hostile government of the United States,” “propaganda against the regime,” and “assembly and collusion to act against national security.” Such charges are frequently used to stifle dissent and independent reporting.

Niloufar Hamedi, a former correspondent for Iran’s reformist newspaper Shargh, and Elahe Mohammadi, a reporter for Ham-Mihan, were arrested in September 2022 while covering the death of Mahsa Amini in Morality Police custody, which sparked nationwide protests. Both journalists consistently denied the charges, stating that their reporting aimed to illuminate public issues rather than threaten national security. Despite legal challenges, including appeals against their sentences and accusations of judicial misconduct against Salavati, Hamedi and Mohammadi remained imprisoned until their release on bail in January 2024. Bail was reportedly set at $200,000 for each journalist. Following their release, Hamedi and Mohammadi faced travel bans preventing them from leaving the country.

In late January 2024, Mohammad Ghobadlou, a young protester in Iran, was executed despite his sentence being overturned by the Supreme Court. Ghobadlou had been accused of killing a policeman during the 2022 protests, a charge he and his defense consistently denied, presenting evidence of his innocence. His defense attorney, Amir Raisian, highlighted the irregularities in the judicial process, emphasizing Ghobadlou’s right to appeal. Despite hopes that a vigil outside the prison could delay his execution, the judiciary announced his death shortly after sunrise.

Salavati presided over Ghobadlou’s trial. The court announced that a trial session would be held on Monday, October 31, 2022, but it never occurred. Instead, the families of the defendants were summoned to court, where Salavati abruptly announced death sentences. He threatened the families with punishment if they informed anyone of the verdicts, adding to the atmosphere of fear and intimidation surrounding the trial proceedings.

In early February 2024, Salavati sentenced Baha’i citizen Kayvan Rahimian to nine years in prison. Rahimian received five years for “deviant education or propaganda activities that contradict or disrupt the sacred law of Islam” and four years for “assembling and conspiring to commit a crime against national security.” Additionally, he was fined 500 million rials ($1,000) and deprived of his “social rights”—his ability to participate fully in social, political, and economic activities—for six years. Rahimian, a translator, psychologist, and professor at the Baha’i Virtual University, has been in Evin Prison since his arrest on July 18, 2023.

Salavati has trampled on defendants’ rights in myriad ways. In many of his cases, the accused are jailed in hellholes like Evin Prison for months or years without being charged. While in detention, defendants are often subjected to physical and psychological torture, including beatings and tasings; threats of being killed or of family members being arrested or killed; threats of being injected with hallucinogenic drugs; and extended solitary confinement. They may be denied medical treatment for serious illnesses, including cancer, severe heart conditions, and cataracts. Family visits or phone calls are frequently not permitted. Salavati reportedly even threatened to execute journalist Jason Rezaian, an Iranian-American hostage, before Rezaian’s trial.

Not only has Salavati not intervened to prevent or end such abuses, but he has also guaranteed that they will happen by routinely denying bail to defendants or deliberately setting it too high for them to pay. Iranian-American hostages Karan Vafadari and Afarin Niasari, for example, sought to be released pending their appeal, but Salavati imposed bail equivalent to $13.5 million for each of them. When Vafadari’s family tried to post bail for Niasari, the judge reportedly refused, saying, “If I wanted her free, I wouldn’t have set [the bail] so high.”

Salavati also deprives defendants of due process before their trials. He frequently denies the accused access to their chosen attorneys or to any legal counsel, and has even sat in on meetings between defendants and their lawyers. Often, defendants are not told of the charges against them and the purported evidence of their crimes until trial or shortly beforehand. For example, Salavati refused to provide any evidence of wrongdoing to attorneys for imprisoned Iranian-British-American environmentalist Morad Tahbaz and his colleagues before trial and did not allow the accused to see the full indictments and evidence before they were convicted and sentenced. Some defendants also have not been provided with translators.

At trials Salavati presides over, the fix is in against defendants and he doesn’t try to hide it. On the first day of the trial of Iranian-Swedish doctor Ahmadreza Djalali, according to Djalali, Salavati read him the indictment and said, “Your sentence is death and it won’t change at the end of the trial.”

The trials frequently take place behind closed doors and run as short as a few hours. Salavati acts as judge, prosecutor, and jury. Sometimes few or no witnesses or pieces of evidence are produced against the defendants. Salavati unquestioningly relies on reports from Iran’s intelligence ministry. He also accepts coerced “confessions” later repudiated by the accused.

Finally, after such trials, and despite the absence of substantiating witnesses or evidence, Salavati frequently sentences defendants to death or long prison terms. Adding insult to injury, some defendants, such as Iranian-British hostage Aras Amiri, have only learned of their convictions and sentences, and of new charges against them, while watching television in prison.
In short, Salavati is not a judge, regardless of his job title. As U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo said, “He’s a tool of the regime’s oppression, not an impartial friend of justice.”

The European Union and the United States have sanctioned Salavati for human rights abuses. 

The European Council designated Salavati on April 12, 2011, under Council Decision 2011/235/CFSP, which enacted sanctions against “persons responsible for serious human rights violations in Iran.” Pursuant to that designation, any assets of Salavati’s in EU member states’ jurisdictions must be frozen, and “no funds or economic resources” may be provided to him. 

The U.S. only imposed sanctions on Salavati on December 19, 2019, more than eight-and-a-half years after the EU acted. The Treasury Department designated him under Executive Order 13846, freezing any property or property interests of his under U.S. jurisdiction, prohibiting U.S. persons from conducting any transactions with him. The designation also threatens foreign financial institutions that “knowingly facilitate significant transactions for” or foreign persons that “provide material or certain other support to” Salavati with their assets being frozen and with being cut off from the U.S. financial system.

According to the Iran Prison Atlas of the NGO United for Iran, as of September 15, 2020, Salavati has issued 25 death sentences and sentenced 250 defendants to a combined 1,277 years in prison and 540 lashes. Among other human rights abuses, at least 229 defendants in his cases have been denied access to legal counsel, no fewer than 166 have been put in extended solitary confinement, at least 104 have not been allowed family visits or telephone calls, and no fewer than 46 have been subject to psychological and physical torture.

Salavati has been assigned to judge numerous cases of Americans and other Westerners held hostage and used as bargaining chips by the Iranian regime. Salavati has sentenced hostages to death or long prison terms in cases with few or no witnesses or pieces of evidence and where the justice system has denied the defendants’ rights at every turn. These hostages include: