A/HRC/25/61 Mr. “Aslan” Baha’i A Baha’i father, Mr. “Aslan,” described to the Special Rapporteur how his family repeatedly experienced discrimination related to their economic and social rights. He had been working as a carpenter for several years in a shop. In 2001 he started his own shop and applied for the appropriate license at the semi-governmental carpenter’s guild. Licenses, he said, were typically granted within six months. The guild initially presented seemingly neutral reasons for not granting him a license, such as that fact that his shop was “too small.” But when he would get a bigger workspace they would offer a different reason. After three years of back-and-forth guild staff allegedly told him that they actually were not approving his license because he was a Baha’i, a fact he had indicated on his initial application. He was forced to work without a license until 2009, when the mayor’s office finally closed his shop, causing him to lose his capital and tools. Also in 2009 his daughter wanted to enroll in a specialized public high school that offered classes in tourism, a subject she was interested in. Upon application the father asked the school’s principal if his daughter’s faith was an issue. A few days later the principal called the father and said that she had contacted the Ministry of Education and it instructed her not to grant admission to his Baha’i daughter. Mehdi Noorzar Political activist / lawyer Green Movement activist Mehdi Noorzar, a lawyer formally employed in a state agency, told the Special Rapporteur that authorities arrested him on 9 August 2011 when he responded to a summons to Evin Prison. He reported being held in solitary confinement for three months and subjected to various forms of torture including: punching, kicking, baton beatings, whipping, blindfolding, and a mock execution. He said that his interrogators were trying to make him confess to connections with monarchist groups or the MEK, both of which he purportedly told interrogators he opposed. He was formally charged 20 days after the start of his detention on charges of acting against national security, insulting the supreme leader, insulting the president, blasphemy, and insulting clerics. At the trial the judge advised him not to bring his lawyer into the courtroom in order to receive a lighter sentence. Yet, the trial purportedly only lasted ten minutes, with the judge taking a very hostile tone, and Noorzar was sentenced to three years in prison. An appeals court reduced the sentence to one year in prison, a one-year suspended sentence, and 74 lashes. On 7 August 2012 his one-year sentence came to an end, but as his release fell on a weekend, he was kept in prison for three more days until the flogger was at work to administer the lashes. 104