The holy month of Ramadan arrived and he was in prison. November 1 was the first day of the holy month of Ramadan. In the evening, at the time of adhan, he was waiting for someone to bring him food for iftar, but no one came. The fact is that in that military camp they did not count for Ramadan.
Half an hour after the adhan, someone brought him a cup of tea and a little later dinner. He couldn’t eat much more. He left the rest for the dawn. This was the second Ramadan he spent in prison. He adorned his soul by reciting the Holy Quran and enlightened it with prayer and remembrance.
More than forty days have passed since Ayatollah Khamenei’s arrest. There was no word on interrogation and setting up a military tribunal. There was no distance between him and the court. The military court was placed in the middle of the camp.
Major Esmaili was working on preparing an indictment. The investigations were showing that Ayatollah Khamenei’s accusation is “acting against the internal security of the country.” According to him, the defendant’s responses to the SAVAK interrogators, the confessions of one of the arrested seminary students, and SAVAK reports indicated that Ayatollah Khamenei had been working with Ayatollah Khomeini, which means undermining the country’s security. After seeing the report, Colonel Mo’atakef, the prosecutor, stated that it is incomplete. The prosecutor emphasized that the accused has been objected to the land reform and the equality of men and women, and this is nothing but an insult to the head of the country. Also, a person who calls Ayatollah Khomeini a scholar, and a certain and just mujtahid, and has a long history of imprisonment, cannot be acquitted of this accusation.
Colonel Mo’atakef considered it necessary to reconsider the case. Major General Esmaili began writing letters to SAVAK, the military tribunal, and the identification department asking for more information regarding the background of Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Also, on November 14, he was again taken to the courthouse and being questioned about the accusations which had been proposed by the prosecutor to intensify the punishment. Finally, because of another report prepared for the prosecutor by the Major General, Ayatollah Khamenei was found guilty of the crime of insulting the head of state. Thus, a new criminal charge was ready to be sent to the court with more charges.
Pre-Trial
Preparations were in place for the trial to begin. The case had been sent to court. On December 3, Ayatollah Khamenei went to court to appoint a substitute attorney. Colonel Shafiei was appointed as his lawyer. It was decided that Ayatollah Khamenei would be given five days to study the case. Because he was aware of the case and the charges since December 6, he soon came to the conclusion that he had to prepare a strong defence. Probably, he started writing it the same day. He kept coming and going under close guard.
On January 15, 1971, a preliminary hearing was held in which it was approved that the contents of the case file are enough for holding the trial. Perhaps most of Ayatollah Khamenei’s time in the fifteen days leading up to the court’s formal meeting was spent in writing a defence bill.
The Day of the Trial
The military court set January 11, 1971, as the time for the hearing. At 9 a.m., Ayatollah Khamenei was brought to the court. The indictment was initially read out on two counts of acting against the security of the country and insulting the head of the state. The defence attorney then read out his defence bill, and while pointing to the available documents (SAVAK reports and the confessions of the arrested seminary student), he asserted that they are not conclusive evidence to substantiate the allegations. Afterwards, Ayatollah Khamenei read his defence bill.
At the end of the trial, he was asked to leave the courtroom and wait outside. “I was counting the time to find out about the court order.” It was clear to both SAVAK and the court that he will be sentenced at most to three months in prison. The military concluded that the civilian Sayyed Ali Khamenei “is not guilty of insulting the head of the country and will be sentenced to three months of correctional imprisonment beginning from the day of his arrest on the charge of acting against the country’s internal security. when the judgement was issued, twenty days of his imprisonment have already been passed.
That day was also a day for prisoners and their families to meet. His family was waiting behind the barracks walls. They spent a lot of time. Some got tired and went back home whereas others stayed there. One of the members of the court, who was aware of the judgement, while leaving the barracks, found out about the presence of some members of Ayatollah Khamenei’s family and informed them of his imminent release.
After two hours of waiting at the court entrance, Ayatollah Khamenei was informed about the court ruling. He was released on January 12 after spending three months and twenty days in prison. Both the defendant and the prosecutor objected to the sentence and demanded an appeal. Ayatollah Khamenei opposed all that has happened to him in these one hundred and ten days. Also, the prosecutor, as usual, objected to the sentence, believing that it should have been more severe.
One week after his release, the Ordinary Court sent Ayatollah Khamenei’s 190-pages case to the Court of Appeals to hear the prosecutor’s and the defendant’s objections and issue a new judgement. It is not clear why the Court of Appeals was postponed until eight months later and was held in September 1971. Ayatollah Khamenei spent February in Mashhad reorganizing his affairs. With the arrival of Muharram, he decided to go to Tehran again, like last year. He has been invited by the founders of the Ansar al-Husayn procession. He probably didn’t know that he has been banned from delivering lectures, and if he did, he didn’t care.
SAVAK banned a significant number of clerics including Ayatollah Khamenei from delivering lectures during Muharram and Safar that year.
Before Muharram, Sayyed Mohammad Mousavi-Vaez sent a letter to the head of the Intelligence and Security Organization requesting the lift of the ban on delivering lectures which had been imposed on Sayyed Abdorreza Hejazi, Shaykh Abbas Kabiri, Sayyed Mahmoud Sadahi, Sayyed Mortaza Salehi, Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Abdolmajid Maadikhah, Mir Eslam and Shaykh Abdollah Moballeghi. Mousavi-Vaez had promised in the letter that the speeches of these people would not be outside the framework which the government favours. SAVAK officials agreed to allow Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Sayyed Mortaza Salehi and Abdolmajid Maadikhah to deliver speeches.
Ayatollah Khamenei had been in Tehran and used to give lectures at Ansar al-Husayn procession before finding out about the lifting of the ban on February 28. On February 28, 1971, the second day of Muharram, Ansar al Hussain held a mourning ceremony at the house of Haj Abolqasem Bakhtiar in Tehran.
During this trip, Ayatollah Khamenei became aware of the issues of the husayniyyah Ershad; The disagreements of Mr. Motahhari and Naser Minachi over how to run Husayniyyah. Ayatollah Khamenei had promised to deliver four lectures at Husayniyyah Ershad before knowing about this matter. But when he heard that the speakers and lecturers in the husayniyyah had stopped giving lectures there in support of Mr. Motahhari, he sent a message that they should not wait for him, and he did not go there as well. After returning to Mashhad, he resumed his educational activities. He did not abandon the translation either. During his free time, he used to study books.
Archive of Ayatollah Khamenei
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