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Iran Drops Charges Against Tehran Prosecutor Over 2009 Protests

One of the photos circulated on social media as part of a campaign that demanded information on the whereabouts of former Tehran Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi after the Public Prosecution announced his disappearance in April 2018. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
One of the photos circulated on social media as part of a campaign that demanded information on the whereabouts of former Tehran Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi after the Public Prosecution announced his disappearance in April 2018. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Iran Drops Charges Against Tehran Prosecutor Over 2009 Protests

One of the photos circulated on social media as part of a campaign that demanded information on the whereabouts of former Tehran Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi after the Public Prosecution announced his disappearance in April 2018. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
One of the photos circulated on social media as part of a campaign that demanded information on the whereabouts of former Tehran Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi after the Public Prosecution announced his disappearance in April 2018. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

A former Tehran prosecutor convicted in 2009 for his role in the death of detained protesters has been acquitted by Iran’s supreme court.

Thousands of supporters of the reformist leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi took to the streets in 2009 to protest “rigged” presidential elections that favored Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s candidate. The Green Movement lost steam after Mousavi and Karroubi were put under house arrest in February 2011, which continues to this day.

Saeed Mortazavi was one of the security officials who jailed many detainees in Kahrizak prison. Four of the detainees died after reported torture and beatings.

His lawyer, Saeed Ayyoubi, announced the acquittal, saying his client’s record is now clean.

The acquittal took place after the election and inauguration of Ebrahim Raisi as president and Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei as head of the judiciary.

In April 2011, the EU sanctioned both Ejei and Mortazavi, along with 32 security and judicial officials, in connection with the repression of demonstrators.

Mortazavi was released from prison in October 2019 after 17 months on the grounds of “good behavior.”

In December 2017, the Iranian judiciary upheld a two-year prison sentence against him, following his conviction for participating in the murder of Mohsen Amini, one of the detainees in Kahrizak.

State-owned ISNA news agency said a judicial memorandum last month had dropped the accusation of participating in the arbitrary arrest against Mortazavi. The order, in turn, dropped the charge of complicity in murder.

In October 2014, the court dropped the murder charges against Mortazavi. However, he was permanently dismissed from all judicial positions and banned from holding government positions for five years on the charge of unlawful detention.

In April 2015, his case was reopened. He was charged with preparing false reports and complicity in the murder of Amini.

Initially, Mortazavi, an ally of hardline former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was relieved from his post in 2010 over the killing of protesters under torture.

Human Rights Watch described Mortazavi as a “serial human rights abuser.”

Mortazavi is one of the most prominent opponents of former parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, an ally of former President Hassan Rouhani.

He was arrested under pressure from Larijani after Mortazavi leaked an audio recording of a conversation he had with the speaker’s brother. The latter promised him to use the former speaker’s influence to acquire commercial deals.

The timing of Mortazavi’s arrest was viewed as a sign of the deterioration of the relationship between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

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Ukraine Says Ceasefire Accords Brokered by US Take Immediate Effect

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
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Ukraine Says Ceasefire Accords Brokered by US Take Immediate Effect

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a press conference, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2025. (Reuters)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a truce with Russia covering the Black Sea and energy strikes was effective immediately on Tuesday and that he would ask Donald Trump to supply weapons and sanction Russia if Moscow broke the deals.

The United States said earlier it had made separate agreements with Kyiv and Moscow to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on attacks on energy facilities in the two countries.

"The US side considers that our agreements come into force after their announcement by the US side," Zelenskiy told reporters at a news conference in Kyiv, adding that he did not trust Russia to honor the arrangements.

The accords are the first ones aimed at halting energy strikes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, triggering Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two. The fighting rages on across a 1,000-km (600-mile) front line.

The Ukrainian leader cautioned that the agreements did not set out a course of action if Russia broke them and that he would appeal directly to the US president if that happened.

"We have no faith in the Russians, but we will be constructive," he said.

He said US officials saw the energy ceasefire as covering attacks on other civilian infrastructure too and that ports should be covered by the Black Sea agreement.

Nightly Russian drone attacks have been a feature of life in big Ukrainian cities for many months. So have power outages as missiles have hammered the power grid. Kyiv has used drones to hit Russian oil refineries to raise the costs for its much larger foe.

Ukraine, Zelenskiy said, presented US officials during talks with a list of facilities that should be covered by the moratorium on energy strikes.

The deals were announced following two days of talks in Saudi Arabia between US and Ukrainian officials on the one hand and US and Russian officials on the other.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who took part in the talks, wrote on X: "All parties agreed to develop measures for implementing the Presidents’ agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities of Ukraine and Russia."

The White House said in a joint statement with Russia that it would help Moscow restore its access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine had not agreed to put that in its statement with the US side.

"We believe that this is a weakening of position and sanctions," he said.

BLACK SEA WARNING

Kyiv will regard any movement of Russian naval vessels beyond the east of the Black Sea as a violation of the spirit of the agreements, Umerov said.

In such an event, Kyiv will have the right to self-defense, he said, implying that Ukraine could retaliate.

Kyiv, which has used naval drones and missiles to push Russia's Black Sea fleet back towards the east of the Black Sea, would welcome third countries supporting the implementation of the accords, Umerov said.

"The American side really wanted all of this not to fail, so they did not want to go into many details. But in any case we will have to understand answers to each of the details," Zelenskiy said.

Zelenskiy said that Türkiye could potentially be involved in monitoring in the Black Sea while Middle Eastern countries could track the energy truce, though he noted that had not been discussed yet with those countries.

Separately, Zelenskiy said the United States had presented Ukraine with an expanded version of a bilateral minerals deal that went beyond the initial framework agreement that the two sides agreed earlier but never signed.

Zelenskiy had been expected to sign a minerals deal opening up Ukraine's critical minerals to the United States during talks with Trump in the Oval Office last month, but did not when the meeting spiraled into acrimony in front of the world's media.

Zelenskiy said he had not been able to fully review the new proposal in detail yet, but that it did not include greater US involvement in Ukraine's nuclear power sector, something that has been floated by Washington in recent days.