By Leslie Acevedo
LOS ANGELES, CA — Four Iranian brothers—Mostafa, Mohsen, Mojtaba and Mohammad Mirmehdi—are now filing a hearing request with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights after they claim they were wrongfully detained for more than three years on falsified evidence and testimony by ICE.
The UCLA School of Law’s Human Rights Litigation Clinic and Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes LLP filed the request for the brothers, charging they were arrested based on their religious and national backgrounds.
The three were working as real estate agents in San Fernando Valley in Southern California in October 2001, during “mass arrests in Muslim communities in the weeks after 9/11,” according to the filing.
In the process of their bond revocation hearing where the Mirmehdis’ bonds were later revoked, the FBI, said their lawyers “falsified evidence,” using “the sign-in list for a Colorado event years prior, attended [by many people] who peacefully protested in support of democratic reforms in Iran.”
Coincidentally, the four Iranian brothers were forced to leave Iran for the U.S. after their “pro-democracy beliefs had made them targets of prosecution and violence.”
The four Iranian brothers were detained until 2005. They said their release “ took place after work hours on the eve of the Attorney General’s Office of the Inspector General’s scheduled interview of Mohammad Mirmehdi about the severe beating he endured in detention.”
U.S. courts dismissed the brothers’ claims based on their immigration status, but denied them the chance to seek remedy in domestic courts.
Mojtaba Mirmehdi, one of the four Iranian brothers, states he was a political prisoner in Iran and no one should be held in custody based on false accusations.
Steffi Colao, a former law student in the Human Rights Litigation Clinic, noted the four Iranian brothers are one example on how “hundreds of Middle Eastern, Muslim people held in indefinite detention under [unsupported] terrorism charges.”
The Inter-American Commission in 2021 determined the Iranian brothers’ petition was admissible to be heard by the Commission. The Commission found the “petition presented plausible allegations of violations of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.”
The U.S., as a member of the Organization of American States, is required to abide by the violations against the Iranian brothers that are deemed human rights abuses, and may have to compensate the brothers, and publicly admit to any wrongdoing.
If the case is accepted, it will be “heard before the Commission in March 2023 during the body’s 186th Period of Sessions in Los Angeles, California”
The petition for the brothers also recommends the U.S. “should amend the laws that permit claims of abuse to be dismissed based on a claimant’s immigration status.”
The four Iranian brothers deserve justice as their human rights were violated, said Tessa Baizer, an attorney with UCLA School of Law’s Human Rights Litigation Clinic, adding the “American Commission will finally afford them the opportunity to be heard in a public forum.”
Representing the Iranian brothers are Lawyers Catherine Sweetser and Tessa Baizer of the Human Rights Litigation Clinic at UCLA School of Law and Paul Hoffman and Michael Seplow of Schonbrun Seplow Harris & Hoffman LLP. The Human Rights Litigation Clinic is part of the Promise Institute at UCLA School of Law.
