During 2012 the Iranian authorities arrested, detained, and harassed some of Iran’s most celebrated rights lawyers, and stepped up their assault on critical journalists, bloggers, and their families. The judiciary issued death sentences based on non-serious, vague, or ill-defined crimes such as moharebeh, or enmity against God, and authorities executed several hundred prisoners. Discrimination, both in law and in practice, against Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities led to the arrests of dozens of Baha’is, Christians, and Sufi Muslims.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch

“The Iranian people will neither forget nor forgive the abuses that the government has committed against human rights and minority activists, journalists and opposition leaders when it is time to head to the polls in June,” said the Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson. “Nor will they forget those such as Sattar Beheshti who have been made to pay the ultimate price in the struggle for a free Iran.”
Human Rights Watch