Qassameh, “an Oath to Kill” a defendant in Iran

Iran Human Rights –  Mojtaba Ghiasvand was hanged at Rajai Shahr Prison on October 30, 2017, while there was no hard evidence proving his guilt and his verdict was issued through Qassameh.

According to a close source, Mojtaba Ghiasvand was executed at Rajai Shahr Prison on Monday, October 30, 2017.
“A person was killed during a tribal dispute in Loshan, Guilan in 2008 and the victim’s family accuse Mojtaba of murder. Mojtaba always claimed that he was in Tehran at the time of the dispute. He was sentenced to death without any hard evidence or even a confession,” told one of Mojtaba’s cellmates to Iran Human rights (IHR).

Mojtaba’s brother has also told IHR that there was some kind of tribal dispute and since there was no hard evidence for the guilt of the defendant, dozens of the people from plaintiffs’ tribe swore that they know Mojtaba is the murderer.
Qassameh is a way to prove a crime (murder or injury) in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) which is practised in penal law of Iran. Qassameh which means “sworn oath”, is based on oath by a certain number of people and is performed when the judge decides that there are not enough pieces of evidence of guilt to prove the crime, but still, the judge thinks that most probably the defender is guilty. It must be noted that the people who swear in Qassameh, are not usually direct witnesses to the crime.
“Proving someone’s guilt based on oath by a certain number of individuals who even probably haven’t been witnesses of the offence,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, IHR’s spokesperson says, “is in conflict with the principles of due process and the rule of law and must be removed from the Iranian legal system.”