Special Clerical Court

Special Clerical Court, or Special Court for Clerics (Persian: دادگاه ویژه روحانیت , dādgāh-e vizheh-ye ruhāniyat) is a special Iranian judicial system for prosecuting crimes, both ordinary and political, committed by Islamic clerics and scholars. The Special Clerical Court can defrock and disbar Islamic jurists, give sentences of imprisonment, corporal punishment, execution, etc. The court functions independently of the regular Iranian judicial framework, with its own security and prison systems,^[1] "generally secret and confidential" cases, proceedings and procedures,^[2] and is accountable only to the Supreme Leader of Iran, (Ali Khamenei as of 2024).^[3] The most senior Islamic politician to be prosecuted and sentenced to prison since the Iranian Revolution was Abdollah Nouri (Persian: عبدالله نوری) who was sentenced to five years in prison for political and religious dissent by the court in 1999.

The Court was established in the early 1980s on an ad hoc basis, subsequently phased out, and then re-established in 1987. It was fully institutionalized and endowed with a "code" in 1991 under Supreme Leader Khamenei.^[4] This code was revised and expanded in 2005. In addition to a Special Court for the Clerics, there is also a Special prosecutor for the clerics who is also appointed by the Supreme Leader and sometimes conflated with the court.

According to scholar Mirjam Künkler, "since the mid-1990s ... the court has been used increasingly as an instrument for the suppression of dissident clerics, and at times even non-clerical culprits."^[1]