Arrest of oil industry employees and setting of exorbitant unreachable bails on charges of acts against security, insolence toward Khamenei, having contact with PMOI, and advocating separation of religion and state

Through bringing heavy charges against three imprisoned employees of Bandar Abbas Refinery and setting exorbitant bails for them, the clerical regime is planning to justify their arbitrary arrests and refrain from releasing them.
On December 14, agents of mullahs’ intelligence arrested three senior employees of Bandar Abbas refinery at work and transferred them to Bandar Abbas central prison. These three were Mohsen Zebardast, 44, Abbas Hassanpour, 34, and Vahab Moqadassei, 32. Henchmen transferred the three, all known labor activists, to solitary confinement and through various pressures and tortures attempted to extract forced confessions from them. Clerical regime’s prosecutor general charged Mohsen Zebardast with “acts against regime’s security through propaganda, insolence toward the leader, and having contact with PMOI” and set a 500 million rial bail for him. Vahab Moqadassei and Abbas Hassanpour were also charged with “acts against regime’s security through propaganda, insolence toward the leader, and advocating separation of religion and state” and a 200 million rial bail was set for each of them. Setting these exorbitant bails that country’s deprived workers and employees cannot afford is a scheme to continue the arbitrary arrests of these three employees.
In order to prevent spread of workers’ protest moves, the antihuman regime of mullahs has intensified suppressive measures against them. Sattar Beheshti, the progressive worker, and Jamil Soveidi, the imprisoned worker in Ahvaz, were slain due to severe tortures during recent months shortly after being arrested. Mr. Reza Shahabi, a worker from Tehran Bus Company, who has been in prison since 2011, is on the verge of getting paralyzed for being deprived of medical care.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
January 26, 2013