The Tehran Administrative Court will next week hold an open trial for three pro-reform MPs accused of libel, slander and disseminating lies, press reports said Wednesday, cited by the official Iranian news agency, IRNA.
The agency said that Fatemeh Haqiqat-Joo, a female deputy from Tehran, would stand trial on charges of libel and slander for a speech at an open session of Parliament, as well as for disseminating lies and inciting the public in the city of Qazvin, west of the capital.
She is accused of disgracing the oversight Guardians Council, the Expediency Council, and the judiciary, the report said.
Another MP from Tehran, Davood Soleymani, will be tried following a suit brought by former police head Farhad Nazari, who stood trial for his alleged role in a security force attack on a Tehran University hostel and later was exonerated.
Soleymani is also accused of inciting the public, libel and disseminating.
The parliamentary deputy from southern city of Bushehr, Mohammad Daad-Far, will stand trial over charges of disseminating propaganda against the Islamic republic and encouraging unrest through an article published in the pro-reform Hambastegi daily.
Daad-Far, also a member of a parliamentary commission, was summoned to the court last week and interrogated for four hours. He was released later after posting bail of 200 million rials.
The courts have previously issued summons to several other reformist deputies, including Ali Nazari, Hossein Loghmanian, Mohsen Armin, and Mostafa Taheri-Nadjafabadi, said the agency.
Loghmanian, an MP from Homedan in western Iran, was sentenced to 13 months in jail last month for "libeling and slandering Iran's conservative-dominated judicial system" in a parliamentary speech, but the verdict is now being appealed.
Another MP, Akbar Alami, a member of Parliament's national security and foreign policy commission who represents East Azerbaijan province, was summoned by a Tehran court for "insulting certain officials and publishing lies to distort public opinion" ahead of the election.
Reformist MP Mohsen Mirdamadi, who is also an executive for the reformist newspaper Nowrouz, was ordered to appear before a Tehran court, as was fellow lawmaker Ali Shakuri-Rad – Albawaba.com
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