Despite the Iranian regime’s struggle to bury the history of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners and even not possible to minimize this event which is one of the worst human rights violation cases after World War Two but its henchmen in the regime’s prison are warning the political prisoners that they would repeat such an action if they support the protests, write a letter to the outside world or issue statements about the regime’s actions in the prison and the country.
Hengaw Iranian human rights organization announced Sunday that the family members of the chief editor of its website Arsalan Yarahmadi were questioned by Iran’s intelligence ministry agents who threatened to kill him if he did not stop his political activities. Soleiman Yarahmadi and Omran Yarahmadi, father and brother of Arsalan were summoned on Sunday to the local intelligence ministry office in Kermanshah, Western Iran, where there is a large Kurdish population, and threatened for several hours.
Iranian security forces resorted to unlawful use of force, including birdhsot, and mass arrests to ruthlessly crack down on predominately peaceful protests that have erupted in various locations across Iran in recent weeks, said Amnesty International. Activists, protesters and bystanders swept up in the wave of arrests, including, children have been subjected to enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment. According to photographs, footage circulated on social media and eyewitness accounts, security forces unlawfully fired birdshot at peaceful protesters from Iran’s Kurdish minority in the city of Naqadeh in Western Azerbaijan province on 7 August…
Following protests held on August 7 where military forces opened fire in a protest gathering in Naqadeh, in northwestern Iran, there were reports of over 40 injured, and over 50 were summoned and interrogated. According to the Hengaw Organization website, protest gatherings continued for three days and anti-riot police reinforcements were sent from Urmia and Miandoab to control the protests. Protests started following a gathering by locals outside the Police Station building to demand justice after “thugs” killed a 31-year-old man identified as Fardin Ebrahimi.
Two women are in critical condition after an angry driver targeted them on a busy street in northwestern Iran because they were not wearing full hijab head coverings, according to Iran’s Labor News Agency Ilna. The vehicular assailant reportedly first yelled at the women that they were being “un-Islamic” because he did not think they were sufficiently well-covered. All females over the age of 9 are required to cover their heads and curves after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, but it is increasingly common for women in Iran’s larger cities to defy the ruling.
On August 8, the human rights center No to Prison – No to Execution reported that authorities in Iran have hanged at least seven inmates in the prisons of Birjand, northeastern the country, and Isfahan, central of the country. They were charged with drug-related offenses. Furthermore, the Resanak human rights website identified the executed inmates as Zabihollah Hormozi and Majid Galeh-Bacheh in Birjand prison; and A’zam Mohammad Hassani (Kiazehi) and Esmail Kordtamini in Isfahan prison. These victims were all from the Baluch minority.
On July 31, 19 days into a strike, workers from the Haft Tappe sugarcane processing plant in southwest Iran took to the streets. The focus of their strike was delayed wages and poor working conditions. But they were also protesting against the Islamic Republic’s latest effort for curtailing online freedoms. “They fear the internet [since] they back the corrupt,” marching workers chanted in Khuzestan Province, southwest Iran.
In a statement Wednesday, Amnesty International said Iran’s security forces had resorted to unlawful use of force and mass arrests to crack down on predominantly peaceful recent protests in Naghadeh (Naqadeh), Western Azarbaijan province, August 7. According to the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI), the protests occurred in front of a police station in Naghadeh after Fardin Ebrahimi was killed and Mohammad Alizadeh − both Kurds − was wounded by Azaris who also damaged Kurdish shops(link is external) and homes.
In the past three weeks Iranian forces have reportedly executed at least more than a dozen Baloch and Kurdish citizens in different prisons across Iran. The Hengaw Human Rights Organisation reported that seven Kurds have been executed in various prisons in Iranian-occupied Kurdistan. Similarly, Baloch human rights and social activists have reported that in the last three weeks Iranian forces have executed at least eight (8) Baloch citizens in different jails in Iran under the pretext of drug-related charges.
Iran’s Supreme Court issued a ruling in full support of former prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, overturning an earlier two-year jail sentence, which had found him guilty in connection with the death of a political detainee. His lawyer confirmed the acquittal on Tuesday. In 2017, the hard-line ex-prosecutor was convicted of “accessory to murder”, following a protracted trial in Tehran which ultimately led to his imprisonment. Mortazavi’s sentence, which Iran’s judiciary reluctantly issued under mounting public pressure, came to a premature end after 17 months, as prison authorities found him to be in “good conduct.”
On Wednesday, Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi presented a list of his cabinet nominations(link is external) to Iran’s parliament for its confirmation. While foreign policy decision-making is driven by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) exerts a great deal of control, the members of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) play a role in building consensus in the Iranian system. This is where the presidency can put a thumb on the scale—albeit in a limited fashion—with ministerial nominations.
A senior Iranian official has said that Tehran would take preemptive strikes against opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region unless Baghdad expels the groups, days after an opposition group based in the Region accused Tehran of murdering one of its members in a hotel room in Erbil. Iran’s Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani told Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein that Iran “asks the Iraqi government to have more serious moves to expel these [opposition] groups from Iraqi Kurdistan so Iran doesn’t have to take preemptive actions to prevent the continuation of the wickedness of the armed terrorists in Iraqi Kurdistan,” Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.
A group of Democratic senators introduced a resolution Tuesday condemning four Middle Eastern states for the unjust imprisonment of women. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sponsored the resolution along with eight other Senate Democrats, including Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. The resolution included condemnations of Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia for alleged political imprisonment of women. The senators demanded the release of the following women the lawmakers said were political prisoners.
Prominent Iranian human rights activists blasted French President Emmanuel Macron for his Monday congratulatory statement to the Iranian regime’s new president Ebrahmin Raisi. Masih Alinejad, Iranian-American journalist and women’s rights activist, tweeted “We the people of Iran will never forget this historical betrayal . President of a democratic country congratulates a mass murderer like Raisi, who’s ordered the execution of more than 5000 political prisoners in the 80s. He also approved the execution of French-Iranian journalist.”
A senior Iranian security official urged Iraq on Tuesday to expel Iranian rebels from Iraqi Kurdistan, or expect Tehran to take “preventative measures” against the armed groups, Iranian state media reported. Iran has in the past shelled armed Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq, mostly in areas controlled by the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). “We call on the Iraqi government to take more serious action to expel these groups from Iraqi Kurdistan so that Iran does not have to take preventative measures against…these armed terrorists,” said Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s top national security body, the state news agency IRNA reported.
Swedish prosecutors Thursday read the names of Iranian political prisoners hanged in 1988, in the third trial session of a former assistant prosecutor who was arrested in Sweden in November 2019. Hamid Noury who was one of the prison officials in Gohardasht detention center in Iran, has been accused by several former prisoners and hundreds of families for allegedly having had a direct role in summary executions of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) and leftist dissidents following an order from Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader at the time.
Some say the next Iranian foreign minister’s views are as hawkish as the fiercest hard-line elements within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and that improving relations with Western countries will be difficult. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s selection as Tehran’s top diplomat appears to present myriad challenges to already deeply frayed relations in the Middle East and beyond, amplifying a hard-line consolidation with the new presidency of Ebrahim Raisi.
The Iranians are thirsty. In the past few weeks, thousands have taken to the streets in cities and towns throughout the Islamic Republic to protest the country’s deepening hydrological crisis — and the Iranian regime’s chronic mishandling of it. Beginning in mid-July in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, protests broke out over water shortages brought about by deepening drought conditions and longstanding governmental mismanagement. Since then, the unrest has spread throughout the country.
Political prisoners in Iran and the Iranian diaspora see the current Iranian president’s term in office that began on August 3rd as a validation ceremony of his oppressive efforts on behalf of the regime. In 1988, Raisi was a key member of the Death Commission in Gohardasht Prison and a deputy prosecutor in Tehran. On that commission, he approved the execution of thousands of political prisoners, particularly those of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). In a firsthand account from one of the political prisoners who met him during 1988, it is clear that his strength was his willingness to protect the Supreme Leader and his corrupt government at all costs.
علی شمخانی، دبیر شورای عالی امنیت ملی ایران در دیدار با فواد حسین، وزیر خارجه عراق درخواست کرده گروههای مخالف جمهوری اسلامی از کردستان عراق اخراج شوند. به گزارش رسانههای ایران، آقای شمخانی در دیدار با وزیر خارجه عراق که در تهران انجام شد گفت: «از دولت عراق میخواهیم که نسبت به اخراج این گروهها از کردستان عراق تحرک جدی تری داشته باشد تا ایران مجبور به اقدام پیشدستانه برای جلوگیری از تداوم شرارت تروریستهای مسلح درکردستان عراق نشود. دبیر شورای عالی امنیت ملی جمهوری اسلامی به اسامی یا جزئیات این گروههای مورد نظر خود، اشاره نکرده اس. رویترز در گزارشی میگوید در گذشته درگیریهایی در مرز شمالی عراق میان نیروهای نظامی ایران و احزاب کردستان ایران (پدکآی)، حزب حیات آزاد کردستان (پژاک) و حزب کارگران کردستان (پکک) روی داده است.
نخستین جلسه محاکمه حمید نوری از مقامهای سابق قوه قضائیه جمهوری اسلامی ایران روز سهشنبه در استکهلم سوئد برگزار شد و در جریان آن دادستانهای سوئدی گفتند این مقام سابق زندانهای ایران در بخشی از سرکوب منتقدان سیاسی در سال ۱۳۶۷ احکام اعدام برای آنها صادر میکرد. به گزارش روزنامه گاردین، حمید نوری از طریق مترجم به فهرست موارد اتهامی خود که از سوی دادستانها قرائت شد، گوش میداد؛ اتهامهایی مانند ارتکاب به قتل و جنایت جنگی در فاصله ۳۰ ژوئیه و ۱۶ اوت ۱۹۸۸، زمانی که گفته شده او دستیار معاون دادستان زندان گوهردشت در کرج بود. گروههای مدافع حقوق بشر برآورد میکنند حدود پنج هزار زندانی در سراسر ایران کشته شدند و گفته میشود به فرمان آیتالله روحالله خمینی بنیانگذار جمهوری اسلامی و به تلافی حملات سازمان مجاهدین خلق ایران در اواخر جنگ هشت ساله ایران و عراق در دهه هشتاد میلادی انجام شد.