ABC blog

Iranian courts have set an extraordinarily high cumulative bail amount of 20 billion rials (c. 475,000 USD) for a group of defendants belonging to a single Ahwazi Arab family, reports activist Karim Dahimi.

The investigations division of Branch 12 of the Revolutionary Court in Ahwaz set the bail on December 17 as follows for members of the Zaheri Sari family: 7 billion rials for Hattab Zaheri Sari, 7 billion rials for Amin Zaheri Sari, and 3 billion rials for Ms. Ameneh Zaheri Sari. Branch 4 of the Revolutionary Court set a 3 billion rial bail for Ali Zaheri Sari.

Such hefty bail amounts were assessed despite the fact that the 57-year old Hattab Zaheri Sari receives monthly pension payments of only 10 million rials.

A 2018 report from Iran’s Center for Strategic Statistics and Information found that that in the Iranian year 1396 (March 2017 – March 2018), the average annual income of urban families in Iran was approximately 370 million rials and their cost of living approximately 330 million rials. For rural families, these values were c. 200 million and c. 180 million rials, respectively.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found that excessively high bail amounts set with no regard to a defendant’s flight risk or danger to a community, by contravening the right to liberty under human rights law, qualify a detention as arbitrary. Other human rights observers note that such bail and the lengthy pretrial detentions it may entail may infringe on the right to work guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly in the case of poor defendants.