ABC blog

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has called for “decisive action” and “professional and artful” public relations efforts to counter “foreign enemies” and “ignorant” domestic voices who criticize the country’s judicial system.

Khamenei made the comments in a joint June 27 session with top judicial officials held on the occasion of Iran’s judiciary week:

“When confronted with enemies, those who wish harm, plotters of conspiracy, and slanderers, we must act decisively. With the people, however, we must approach things with humility, sympathy, and tenderness, and we must seek understanding in order to win public opinion…

Effective promotional work in the Judiciary and countering such serious media operations requires a robust and artful media team…

Promotional and media work ought to be such that it wins over people’s over hearts, rather than just reaching their ears. Professional, artistic methods and different kinds of designs must be used continuously and credible, tangible facts and realities must be presented to public opinion.”

Khamenei singled out the case of Mohammad Salas, a member of the persecuted Gonabadi Sufi sect given a death sentence in less than a month for a fatal mid-February bus collision. Human rights groups in and outside the country, as well as Salas’ own legal team, heavily criticized Salas’ death sentence, issued on the basis of a confession which Salas’ lawyer claims was extracted under torture in a case with no other strong evidence:

“Today, the Judiciary is a target of the most intense kind of media and propaganda pressure from foreign enemies and ignorant domestic critics. Things are such that in this propaganda, a merciless killer who murdered a few young law enforcement officers and was investigated and tried in a months-long legal process has been painted as wronged, and the Judiciary – an institution of sympathy, which pursues the rights of those who have been wronged – has been presented as a tyrannical violator.”

The Supreme Leader further expressed approval of the Judiciary’s efforts in realizing the rights of the nation as a whole and countering “those who make claims of human rights.”

Khamenei also fired back against accusations of widespread corruption in the judicial branch and other institutions, clarifying that “In some institutions of governance, business, and “does exist; there is no general corruption, however, and this false perception should not arise in the public conscience.”