A series of articles published recently in the Turkish, British, and American media indicate that Iranian intelligence is making effective use of major international crime organizations and drug cartels in several countries to advance its goals, notably capturing dissidents in the diaspora. These organizations have affiliates in other countries, for example Romania, a country where a senior Iranian judge was recently assassinated during a mysterious trip. British and American news outlets reported that Turkish police recently arrested at least 13 members of an international crime organization on charges of collaborating with Iran’s intelligence services.
Three prisoners were recently executed in Iran, two in the central prison in Zahedan, capital of Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan Province, and one in the central prison in Dozap, also in the province, all of whom were accused of membership in militant Sunni Muslim groups. The increase in the application of the death penalty in political cases in Iran has caused alarm among international rights organizations and the UN, especially given the consistent record of due process denials and the use of torture and forced confessions in the Islamic Republic’s judicial system.
Amnesty International is urging the Iranian government to call off plans to execute a man for a crime that took place when he was a teenager and whose trial the rights group said was grossly unfair. The family of Mohammad Hassan Rezaiee was informed on Thursday that his execution would be carried out “in a week” following his transfer to solitary confinement inside Lakan Prison in the northern Iranian city of Rasht.
According to human rights activists, the Iranian regime has carried out at least 12 executions in the past week. On December 20, the Human Rights Association No to Prison – No to Execution declared that Iranian authorities have executed 12 prisoners from December 12 to December 19. “There is a high figure of death-row prisoners who number their days, including, 14 inmates in Qom Central Prison and three prisoners in Zahedan Prison,” the human rights association reported.
Iranian authorities have damaged the gravesite of a wrestler-turned-opposition activist whom they executed in September, in the latest escalation of what an informed source describes as a government harassment campaign against the wrestler’s family. In a Friday interview with VOA Persian from Iran, the source close to the family of executed wrestler Navid Afkari said authorities in Sangar village in the southwestern province of Fars used heavy equipment to destroy two walls around Akfari’s gravesite the day before.
Iran has taken another punitive action against the outspoken family of a protester killed by security forces who crushed nationwide anti-government demonstrations last year, handing the protester’s uncle a suspended prison sentence for criticizing the nation’s Islamist rulers. In a Monday interview with VOA Persian from Iran, an informed source said Mehrdad Bakhtiari, uncle of slain activist Pouya Bakhtiari, learned that he had received a five-year suspended sentence when authorities released him from 47 days of detention on December 16.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says 21 journalists worldwide were singled out for murder in reprisal for their work in 2020, more than double the previous year’s figure of 10. Overall, at least 30 journalists were slain while on duty this year, the New York-based media freedom watchdog said in a report released on December 22. “It’s appalling that the murders of journalists have more than doubled in the last year, and this escalation represents a failure of the international community to confront the scourge of impunity,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon.
The Iranian regime executed European resident Ruhollah Zam on Saturday, sparking condemnation from France, Germany, and several other countries, and resulting in the government summoning their Ambassadors in Tehran, but why would Iran summon the ambassadors? Simply, the appeasement policy of the European Union has led Tehran to fear no consequences for their actions. Therefore, Iranian authorities feel emboldened to react in an extreme matter when they receive even the slightest pushback to their barbarism.
Iranian activist Maryam Rajavi said the regime has been delaying the purchase of the COVID-19 vaccine, describing it a “criminal policy” against its citizens. Rajavi, who leads the opposition group People’s Mujahedin of Iran, said President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have been “evading buying the vaccine, promising to produce their own domestic vaccine.” The activist said the local vaccine was being produced by the HQ Implementing the Orders of Khomenei, which she described as “one of Khamenei’s plunderous and extortionist foundations.”
Two daughters of British-Iranian nationals being held in Iran have come together for the first time to make a film discussing how much they want their parents back with them for Christmas. Elika, daughter of Anoosheh Ashoori, is shown sharing her emotional pain with Gabriella, the daughter of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The 6-year-old daughter of one of Iran’s most high-profile political prisoners has written a card to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson asking him to bring home her mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in time for Christmas. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who turns 42 on Saturday, is expected to spend her fifth Christmas away from her family, having been imprisoned since 2016 on highly contentious allegations of espionage and an attempt to overthrow the Iranian regime.
The exact whereabouts of Jamshid Sharmahd, the German-Iranian dissident who was arrested and apparently abducted by Iranian intelligence agents in July 2020, is still unknown, according to his daughter, and he has been issued the same court-appointed lawyer who “defended” the recently executed dissident Ruhollah Zam. The arrest of Sharmahd, who was director of a monarchist radio station known as Tondar, was first announced by Iran’s Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi on August 1, 2020.
For Shahram Karami, the prosecutor in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah, having a woman show her hair in a fashion advertisement is quite simply “immoral.” He consequently ordered security and judicial authorities to go after all individuals involved in the production and distribution of the video. Persian-language US broadcaster Radio Farda has since reported that four persons have been detained in connection with the clip. The arrests make clear the regime’s determination to enforce its strict, conservative dress code for women.
Iran’s headline-grabbing stories in the past several weeks about the assassination of a top nuclear scientist, the raging coronavirus pandemic and soaring prices have overshadowed the shocking scene of an isolated shanty house being razed to the ground before the eyes of its poverty-stricken dwellers. On Nov. 19, municipal workers of the city of Bandar Abbas demolished the tiny shelter of 35-year-old Tayyebeh amid desperate pleas among the wreckage from her three children, one of them disabled.
Ruhollah Zam’s father, a cleric who served as the head of Iran’s state propaganda agency in the 1980s, named him after the leader of the 1979 revolution and the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But as an adult, Zam turned against the clerical establishment that was created by his infamous namesake. Zam’s opposition activities — including his popular Amadnews Telegram channel with its more than 1 million followers — cost him his life as Iranian officials accused the channel of fomenting violence during the December 2017-January 2018 mass protests.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and United World Wrestling (UWW) — the global governing body for amateur wrestling—squandered a chance to save the life of Navid Afkari, the Iranian champion put to death in September on fraudulent charges by the regime in Tehran. “There is not one shred of evidence in this damned case that shows I’m guilty,” Afkari, 27, said shortly before his execution, but the regime’s hanging judges “are looking for a neck for their rope.”
یک منبع مطلع میگوید دادگاه انقلاب بندرعباس، ۸ شهروند بهایی را در دادگاهی ناعادلانه مجموعا به ۱۴ سال زندان محکوم کرده است.
این منبع مطلع که به دلایل امنیتی نخواست نامش فاش شود، به صدای آمریکا گفت، برای این هشت شهروند بهایی که در ماههای ابتدایی سال ۹۶ پروندهای با عنوان اتهامی «تبلیغ علیه نظام» در شعبه ۳ بازپرسی بندرعباس به ریاست بازپرس رحیمی گشوده شده بود پس از تغییر بازپرس پرونده و بدون تفهیم اتهام جدید از سوی شعبه ۲دادگاه انقلاب بندرعباس به ریاست قاضی علی بلادر مجموعا به ۱۴ سال زندان به اتهام «اجتماع و تبانی به قصد برهم زدن امنیت کشور» محکوم شدهاند.
قوه قضائیه ایران از اعدام عبدالحمید میربلوچزهی خبر داده است. آقای میربلوچزهی، زندانی سیاسی که در زندان زاهدان نگهداری میشد، امروز در .محوطه زندان اعدام شده است. مصطفی نیلی، وکیل این زندانی در توییتر خود اجرای حکم اعدام را تائید کرده است