Geneva – SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties stated that it is closely monitoring, with deep concern, the rulings issued by the Specialized Criminal Court against a number of defendants, which sentenced eight individuals to death and a ninth to imprisonment on charges of espionage and collaboration. The organization affirmed that these rulings represent an extremely dangerous development in the course of criminal justice and reflect the instrumentalization of the judiciary as a political and security tool to eliminate opponents within an exceptionally complex context, rather than as an independent authority tasked with upholding justice and the rule of law.
The organization reported that available information indicates these cases were marred by serious violations of fair trial standards, beginning with vague and ill-defined charges, continuing with a lack of transparency in investigative procedures, and culminating in death sentences issued during hearings that lacked the fundamental guarantees enshrined in domestic law and international conventions, foremost among them the right to defense, public hearings, and judicial independence.
SAM emphasized that the charges brought against the defendants were arbitrarily fabricated in an environment characterized by the criminalization of any communication or activity interpreted politically outside the permitted framework. This has turned the concept of “collaboration” into a ready-made instrument to justify the harshest penalties without presenting credible material evidence or subjecting such evidence to independent judicial scrutiny, and without enabling defendants to effectively challenge the evidence or the procedures of arrest and investigation.
The organization added that the recent cases involved grave violations, including prolonged arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, denial of access to lawyers, and preventing defendants from fully reviewing their case files, in addition to ignoring allegations of torture and ill-treatment and failing to open any serious investigations into them. It noted that reliance on coerced confessions—whether explicitly declared or inferred from the conditions of detention and interrogation—constitutes a flagrant violation of the absolute prohibition of torture and renders any rulings based on such confessions legally null and void.
SAM stressed that issuing death sentences under these circumstances, and linking their implementation to public spectacle or mobilizing rhetoric, constitutes a serious violation of the right to life and entrenches a policy of collective intimidation rather than the pursuit of justice. It further undermines public trust in judicial institutions and transforms the judiciary into a party to the conflict rather than an impartial arbiter.
The organization explained that the confiscation of property, the expansion of criminalizing intentions, and the linkage of judicial rulings to ideological or mobilizing calls reveal a clear politicization of judicial procedures. This confirms that these cases cannot be separated from the broader context of the collapse of judicial independence, in which exceptional trials are used as a means to provide a superficial legal cover for premeditated punitive and retaliatory measures.
SAM for Rights and Liberties called for an immediate halt to the execution of death sentences issued in these cases, a review of the rulings before an independent and impartial judiciary, full and unrestricted access for defendants to all their legal rights, and the opening of an independent and serious investigation into allegations of torture, enforced disappearance, and related procedural violations.
The organization also urged the international community and international and human rights organizations to assume their responsibilities in monitoring these violations and exerting pressure to uphold the right to life and fair trial guarantees. It affirmed that justice cannot be achieved through exceptional courts and rulings issued under torture and in the absence of safeguards, but rather through an independent judiciary that respects human dignity and the inalienable right to life, as a fundamental prerequisite for any genuine path toward justice and peace.