Iran executed a man on Thursday who had been convicted of murder 12 years ago when he was 16, a Western rights group said, drawing condemnation from the U.N. rights office which said it was prohibited under international law. There was no report of the execution on Iran’s media and judiciary officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday, the start of the weekend in the country. “This is the fourth confirmed execution of a child offender in Iran in 2020.
They go from cemetery to cemetery, looking for unmarked graves. Wherever there is one, they squat over it, hoping that their children might be resting in peace down there. They mark the tombs with flowers or pieces of stone. Soon after, Iranian agents rush in and demolish the markings. For their part, they go back and replace the marks. Wherever there is a broken tombstone, they replace it with a new one. It’s an endless challenge between bereaved relatives and people hired to destroy dissidents’ graves.
An Iranian court on Monday sentenced an activist to six years in prison for propaganda against the Syrian regime and membership to an opposition front, Anadolu reports. Ali Azizi, an Iranian-origin Azerbaijani activist, got one year in prison for propaganda against the Bashar al-Assad regime and five years for membership of the South Azerbaijan National Liberation Front (GAMAC), Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported. Azizi intends to file an appeal.
On December 27, Iranian authorities executed 43-year-old Zeinab Khodamoradi at Sanandaj Central Prison in Kurdistan province, western Iran. According to human rights activists, she was from Qorveh county. The human rights association No to Prison – No to Execution reported that the State Security Forces (SSF) had detained Zeinab Khodamoradi for killing her children on August 31, 2015—meaning that she spent more than five years on death row.
Iran has sentenced a rights activist from its Azerbaijani Turk ethnic minority to an effective five-year prison term for his peaceful campaign against discrimination of his minority group by the Islamist rulers of the Persian-majority nation, according to a knowledgeable source. In a Wednesday interview with VOA Persian from Iran, the source familiar with the situation of activist Ali Azizi said a Revolutionary Court in the northwestern city of Tabriz handed the sentence to Azizi in a Saturday ruling verbally communicated to Azizi’s lawyer, Asghar Mohammadi.
Iranian authorities once again filed a new accusation against political prisoner Soheil Arabi. Following a period of ignoring this political prisoner’s fate, on December 23, he was informed of the new charges through a video conference at Shahr-e Rey court. According to reports provided by the human and civil rights advocate website fa.iranfreedom.org, Judiciary officials from Branch 8 of Shahr-e Rey jurisdiction accused Soheil Arabi of propaganda against the state. This is while since 2015, Arabi has had no access to outside the prison and has not been afforded furlough even during the coronavirus pandemic.
Iran hanged two men on Sunday for “terrorist acts” and another for murder and armed robbery, the judiciary’s official Mizan Online news agency said. The three were executed early Sunday morning in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province. Two were named as Hassan Dehvari and Elias Qalandarzehi, arrested in April 2014 after being found with “a large amount of explosives” and weapons, AFP reported. The pair were convicted of the abduction, bombing, murder of security forces and civilians, and of working with the militant Jaish Al-Adl (“Army of Justice“) group, according to Mizan.
In a statement released on Thursday, OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani pointed out that the execution of Mohammad Hassan Rezaiee was the fourth confirmed for a child offender this year and urged Iran to end the “appalling practice”. Despite the fact that the execution of child offenders is categorically prohibited under international law, Mr. Rezaiee’s execution took place in Iran in the early morning. The statement noted that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet strongly condemned the execution and expressed dismay that it was carried out in spite of interventions and OHCHR engagement with the Government of Iran on the issue.
In a horrible violation of human rights and international conventions, Iranian authorities executed juvenile offender Mohammad Hassan Rezaei at the Lakan Prison, in Rasht city. Security forces arrested Rezaei 12 years ago, accusing him of murdering a man. However, in the lack of reliable evidence, interrogators severely tortured him and coerced him to accept the crime. Afterward, Iran’s judiciary filed forced confessions as testimony and sentenced him to death. Mohammad Hassan Rezaei was the fourth juvenile offender, hanged in 2020.
On Thursday, December 31, 2020, the mullahs’ regime hanged three Sunni prisoners, Hamid Rastbala, Kabir Sa’adat Jahani, and Mohammad Ali Arayesh, on the charge of being “outlaws” in Vakil-Abab Prison in Mashhad, northeast Iran. They had endured five-and-a-half years of imprisonment and torture. These prisoners were abruptly taken to solitary confinement on Wednesday and hanged the next day without notifying their families. They had been arrested by Mashhad’s intelligence department and transferred to Vakil-Abad Prison after months of torture and harassment.
An appeals court in Iran has sentenced eight Baha’i citizens to a total of nine years in prison for being members of their religious minority. According to the verdict issued by the Branch 36 of Tehran’s Appeals Court presided over by Judge Seyed Ahmad Zargar, the Baha’i citizens Houman Khoshnam, Elham Salmanzadeh, Payam Sha’bani, Kianoush Salmanzadeh, Soruosh Agahi, Parvan Ma’navi, Jamileh Pakrou, Peyman Ma’navi and Neda Shabani were each sentenced to one year in prison for “propaganda against the state through proselytizing Baha’ism.”
Nima Moradi says he is “lucky and thankful” to be raising his two children in Australia. Growing up in Iran as a child of the Baha’i faith, Mr Moradi was often beaten at school. He was one of five Baha’i children who would cower each morning as they were lined up for assemblies at his school in the Islamic Republic. He said the principal would lecture the children on the evils of the US, Israel and the “dirty” Baha’i faith.
As the coronavirus pandemic ravages Iran, home to the Mideast’s worst outbreak, a women’s group hopes to empower its members by helping them make and sell face masks. The organization called “Bavar,” or “Belief” in Farsi, formed in 2016, allowing women looking for work to make handicrafts with donated sewing machines. It gave widows and others a way to earn cash in a country whose anemic economy only worsened since, two years later, President Donald Trump withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
On December 22, in a debate hosted by the state-run Mafel-e Dal internet channel, two professors of Tehran Imam Sadegh University discussed Iran’s social developments. In his comments, law professor Ali Saber Toulaei blamed the regime for applying an atmosphere of suffocation and killing many innocent people during the gas protests in November 2019. “You know your decision-makers make a lot of mistakes, and you say I give the right to the people to protest my decision-makers’ decisions. However, they must get permission from the decisionmaker.
The British Foreign Office has said it is not legally obligated to provide assistance to a British-Iranian woman held in Iran since 2016, a position that raises questions about how much protection a Western power is willing to offer its citizens at risk, and what Britain’s international role should be after its exit from the European Union. The ministry’s position was articulated in a letter sent in October to the lawyers of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian citizen held in Iran since 2016, and whose treatment there may have amounted to torture, according to United Nations experts.
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.”
On Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement condemning the execution, earlier that same day, of a juvenile offender in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The incident stood out as a late addition to the country’s catalogue of human rights abuses for the year 2020. Three other juvenile offenders had been executed by the Iranian judiciary earlier in the year, and Thursday’s case seemed to reaffirm the clerical regime’s rejection of foreign criticisms of this practice and of other widely reported irregularities in Iranian jurisprudence.
During the final week of December, Resistance Units and supporters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI) in various cities in Iran posted leaflets and placards. They also wrote graffiti on walls in crowded areas, conveying the messages and calling the Iranian people to rise for freedom by the Iranian Resistance leadership. In addition to Tehran, these activities were carried out in Isfahan, Mashhad, Karaj, Babol, Naein, Eslamshahr, and Abadan, while the State Security Force was on alert and the security measures were
Most Americans have no idea who Nahid Shirbisheh is. But in Iran, she has become a powerful symbol of resistance. A little over a year ago, she witnessed her son’s murder at a government protest in Tehran. Last month she released a video made at the location of his killing that went viral in Iran. When I spoke to her last month, she surprised me by thanking the Trump administration. “They mentioned my son’s name and my own name and they supported my voice when my son was killed and I was in prison,” she said. President Donald Trump’s Iran policy was designed mostly to coerce the regime into a better nuclear deal than the one it joined in 2015.
Today, Iran sees a widening gap between the nation and state as systematic human rights violations grow day by day. This situation has created controversial debates on the intervention of the U.S. administration, whether the U.S. should take action to convince, or rather force, Iran’s leadership to address its misconduct against civil society activists and political dissidents. Although, since 1979, the U.S. government has stood in protest of the violation of basic rights in Iran, and during the Donald Trump presidency imposed more sanctions on individuals and organizations involved in these atrocities, some in Iran believe the actions are not sufficient and expect more drastic steps from U.S. government.
The hanging of Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam continues to make waves among Iranian exiles in the United States and Europe. Part of the reason is the sheer audacity of the plot: Zam apparently was lured from exile in France, where he lived under police protection, to Iraq, from where he was kidnapped and smuggled to Iran. But the major surprise was the speed at which Iranian authorities executed Zam after his appeal against his death sentence was denied. Within four days of that sentence being upheld, it was carried out.
مجموعه فعالان حقوق بشر در ایران گزارش داده است که در سال ۲۰۲۰ تاکنون دست کم ۲۳۶ نفر در ایران اعدام شدهاند. به گزارش هرانا، سایت خبری این مجموعه، بیش از ۷۰ درصد از این اعدامها به صورت مخفیانه اجرا شده است. بخشی از گزارش تازه این گروه درباره وضعیت حقوق بشر در ایران که امروز منتشر شده، به “حق حیات” اختصاص دارد که در آن آمار و ارقام مربوط به مجازات اعدام منتشر شده است. بر اساس این گزارش در سال ۲۰۲۰ یک نفر در ایران در ملا عام اعدام شده و صدور این حکم در ۸۰ درصد موارد به اتهام قتل مربوط بوده است.
آرش گنجی، مترجم و منشی هیئت دبیران کانون نویسندگان ایران طی حکمی به ۱۱ سال زندان محکوم شد. ارگان خبری مجموعه فعالان حقوق بشر، هرانا، با اعلام این خبر نوشت که ناصر زرافشان، وکیل مدافع آقای گنجی، گفته است که او به اتهام «اجتماع و تبانی به قصد اقدام علیه امنیت ملی» به پنج سال، به اتهام «تبلیغ علیه نظام» به یک سال و از بابت اتهام «عضویت و همکاری با یکی از گروههای مخالف نظام» به پنج سال حبس و در مجموع به ۱۱ سال حبس، محکوم شده است..
کمیته حفاظت از روزنامهنگاران در گزارش تازهای با اشاره به اعدام «روحالله زم» از سوی جمهوری اسلامی، این اقدام را «قتل» نامیده است. کمیته حفاظت از روزنامهنگاران که مقر آن در نیویورک قرار دارد، روز سهشنبه ۲ دی ماه با انتشار یک گزارش درباره قتل خبرنگاران و روزنامهنگاران در جهان، به ایران اشاره کرد و نوشت، جمهوری اسلامی که مدتهای مدیدی است از حربه زندان برای سانسور مطبوعات استفاده میکند در قتل روحالله زم، روزنامه نگار ایرانی و مدیر کانال تلگرامی آمد نیوز دست داشته است..
دادگستری سیستان و بلوچستان اعلام کرد امروز یکشنبه ۱۴ دیماه سه نفر اعدام شدند. نهادهای حقوق بشری و فعالان بلوچ میگویند اتهام حسن دهواری و الیاس قلندرزهی همکاری با گروههای مخالف حکومت عنوان شده اما مقصود “زیر فشار قرار دادن خویشاوندانشان” بود. پیشتر نهادهای ناظر بر وضعیت حقوق بشر در ایران از انتقال حسن دهباری و الیاس قلندر زهی به قرنطینه، برای اجرای حکم اعدام خبر داده بودند. وزارت اطلاعات حسن دهواری و الیاس قلندرزهی را در سال ۱۳۹۳ بازداشت کرده بود..
فعالان حقوق بشری از اعدام محمدحسن رضایی خبر دادهاند، کسی که برای قتل عمد در ۱۶ سالگی مجرم شناخته شده و ۱۲ سال در نوبت اعدام بود.
سازمان عفو بینالملل میگوید محمدحسن رضایی صبح روز پنجشنبه ۱۱ دی در زندان لاکان رشت اعدام شده است. ایران پس از چین بیشترین شمار سالانه اعدام و به نسبت جمعیتش بالاترین آمار اعدام را در جهان دارد. بسیاری از اعدامها به طور مخفیانه و بدون اطلاعرسانی انجام میشوند و ابهامهای جدی درباره دادرسی عادلانه در برخی از این پروندهها وجود دارد..
آرش گنجی، مترجم و منشی هیئت دبیران کانون نویسندگان ایران، به ۱۱ سال زندان محکوم شد. ناصر زرافشان، وکیل مدافع آرش گنجی، در رابطه با حکم صادره به صدای آمریکا گفت که اتهامات عنوان شده در پرونده موکلش هیچ ارتباطی به مضمون پرونده ندارد. به گفته آقای زرافشان، حکم ۱۱ سال زندان آقای گنجی روز سهشنبه ۹ دی ماه توسط شعبه ۲۸ دادگاه انقلاب تهران به ریاست قاضی محمدرضا عموزاد به اتهام «اجتماع و تبانی علیه امنیت داخلی/ خارجی کشور»، «تبلیغ علیه نظام» و «عضویت و همکاری با یکی از گروههای مخالف نظام» صادر و روز چهارشنبه ۱۰ دی ماه ابلاغ شده است.