The Iranian Diaspora Brief

The Iranian Diaspora Brief: February 11, 2021

Top Stories

Iran ‘Hides Spyware In Wallpaper, Restaurant And Games Apps’ | BBC News

Iran is running two surveillance operations in cyber-space, targeting more than 1,000 dissidents, according to a leading cyber-security company. The efforts were directed against individuals in Iran and 12 other countries, including the UK and US, Check Point said. It said the two groups involved were using new techniques to install spyware on targets’ PCs and mobile devices. And this was then being used to steal call recordings and media files. 

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Iran’s Dissidents Plead With US To Keep Up “Maximum Pressure” | Gatestone Institute

Taking huge personal risks, 38 Iran-based dissidents have asked the Biden administration to retain “maximum pressure” on Iran. In a letter dated February 1, they urge President Joe Biden to maintain “maximum political, diplomatic, and financial pressure on the regime” and to support the Iranians’ “determination in seeking a secular democratic government through a non-violent, free, and fair referendum.” “Following the JCPOA agreement, when Iran received substantial financial benefits, the Islamic Republic lost a major opportunity to implement meaningful welfare reforms for its people…” the Iranian dissidents write in their letter.

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Human Rights Group Releases Documentary On Iran’s Hostage-Taking | Arab News

The International Observatory for Human Rights has released a documentary highlighting Iran’s use of hostage-taking in order to gain leverage over its adversaries. The 30-minute documentary, titled “Iran’s high stakes game of hostage diplomacy,” draws upon testimonies from past victims and their families, who reveal what happened behind closed doors and prison bars. Included in the documentary are Finnish-Iranian Ana Diamond, Chinese-American Xiyue Wang and Lebanese Nizar Zakka — a permanent US resident.

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Regime Abuses

Iranian Professor Jailed After Attending Training Course In Prague | Radio Free Europe

A Revolutionary Court in Iran has sentenced a law professor to seven years in prison after convicting him of “cooperating with an enemy state.” The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported on February 8 that Reza Eslami, a professor at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, had been also banned from teaching and leaving the country. The sentence, subject to appeal, was issued by Judge Abolghassem Salavati, who presides over Branch 15 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. Salavati was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2019 for issuing harsh sentences against journalists, activists, and others.

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Three More Arrested In Iranian Kurdistan As Oppression Continues | Morning Star

Three more people have been jailed in Iranian Kurdistan on charges of membership of opposition parties, rights groups reported today, as oppression in the region intensifies. Environmental activist Faranak Jamshidi, who is a member of the Green Kurdistan Society, has been sentenced to four years in prison, accused of “membership in one of the Kurdish opposition parties,” the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KMMK) reported. She was detained in a raid on her home in Sandaj last year but released on bail.

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Iranian Authorities Secretly Bury Executed Political Prisoners In Ahvaz | Iran Focus

Political prisoners executed in various prisons in Ahvaz, a city in the southwest of Iran, are buried in complete secrecy in a secret cemetery. The purpose of this is for families not to learn where their children are buried or to move their bodies. The regime refuses to deliver the bodies of the executed political prisoners to their families: “Most political prisoners are executed in Sheiban Prison without the knowledge of their families,” said a source who asked not to be identified. Judicial and intelligence agents do not deliver the body of an executed prisoner to his family at all. They are buried without the presence of his family and friends. The prisoner’s family must also promise that they will not hold any ceremonies for their loved ones.”

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Political Prisoners Denied Medical Care In Iran | Iran Focus

One of the longest detained political prisoners in Iran is suffering from severe and painful burns on his neck and back after being suddenly covered in boiling water whilst taking a shower, but the prison authorities refused to take him to the hospital, which has led to the infection of the blisters.  Gholam-Hossein Kalbi, 61, who has now spent 21 years in prison, was arrested in January 2000 in Dezful. He was held in solitary confinement for 14 months in Ahvaz’s Ministry of Intelligence building and subject to brutal torture before being sentenced to life in prison in 2002 and moved to Ward 209 of Evin Prison. 

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Sentencing Of Eight Baha’is Sets Dismal New Legal Precedent | Iran Press Watch

On February 2, 2021, Branch Two of the Hormozgan Court of Appeal upheld the prison sentences of eight Baha’i citizens. The court, presided over by Judge Mashaleh Afsharpour and Counsel Ebrahim Mohammadi, rejected the group’s appeal and each of them remains sentenced to between one and two years behind bars. Maral Rasti, Arash Rasekhi, Nasim Ghanavatian, Mahnaz Janansar, Mehrollah Afshar, and Omid Afaghi are each sentenced to two years in prison while Farhad Amri and Adib Haghpajooh are sentenced to one each. Their only crime is being adherents to the Baha’i faith.

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In the News

Biden Must Not Ignore Iran’s Human Rights Record | Hadi Ghaemi For Foreign Policy

Less than a month into President Joe Biden’s first term, Iran is already in the headlines, most recently with the news that another dual national, identified as Iranian-American businessman Emad Sharghi, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on dubious spying charges. One of the most pressing foreign-policy priorities for the Biden administration will be to formulate its approach toward Iran.

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Iranians Are Trapped In A Sunni-Shiite Détente | Foreign Policy

…Some hailed that agreement, and the resulting bilateral thaw between Iran and Turkey, as a sign of maturity and an omen for the region. But for the Iranian dissidents who had traditionally sought refuge in Turkey, the rapprochement posed a threat. As the Turkish-Iranian relationship has improved, abductions, deportations, and assassinations of prominent Iranian human rights activists in Turkey have increased. Eisa Bazyar is one of the thousands of Iranian dissidents who fears execution if he returns to Iran but who now finds himself unsafe in Turkey.

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Terrorist’s Guilty Verdict Creates Opportunities For Broader Pressure On Iranian Regime | NCRI

In a statement posted to Twitter, the Iranian Resistance’s president-elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi welcomed news of a guilty verdict in a Belgian court case of Iran’s diplomat-terrorist by saying, “Conviction of the regime’s terrorist diplomat… represents the conviction of the entire clerical regime.” The verdict in question was for the former third counsellor at the Iranian regime’s embassy in Vienna, Assadollah Assadi, and it served to confirm that he was the mastermind of a 2018 terrorist bomb plot targeting Resistance activists on Western soil. 

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Opinion

Iranian Americans Want Smart Pressure On Iran | Mohammad Reza Alizadeh For South Florida Sun Sentinel

Iranian ex-pats in Florida closely followed a trial in Belgium, which concluded on Feb. 4 in a guilty verdict and 20-year sentence for Assadollah Assadi, the first Iranian diplomat to face terrorism charges in Europe. You wonder how a court ruling in Europe could affect our lives here in South Florida? Dozens of us, including my family and me, attended the event two years ago that he had targeted. In November, the trial began in Antwerp for the four individuals, including Assadi, who had plotted to set off explosives at a gathering of Iranian dissidents outside Paris in 2018. 

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US Should Focus On Iranian Regime’s Human Rights Violation | Dr. Majid Rafizadeh For Weekly Blitz

When Joe Biden was running for president, Navid Afkari, the 27-year-old Iranian champion wrestler, was executed by the theocratic establishment. Biden tweeted at the time: “Iran’s cruel execution of Navid Afkari is a travesty. No country should arrest, torture, or execute peaceful protesters or activists. Iran must free its other political prisoners, including Nasrin Sotoudeh, and release unjustly detained Americans.” Biden also stressed in an opinion piece for CNN that he would work on “calling out the (Iranian) regime for its ongoing violations of human rights… and wrongful detention of political prisoners.”

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Non-English Language Media

‘جاسوسی مجازی علیه بیش از هزار نفر از مخالفان حکومت ایران با اپلیکیشن‌های بازی و غذا’ | BBC News

یک شرکت بین‌المللی امنیت مجازی گزارش داده است که ایران در دو عملیات تجسسی در فضای مجازی، بیش از هزار نفر از مخالفان حکومت را هدف قرار داده است. شرکت آمریکایی-اسرائیلی “چک‌پوینت” در گزارش خود گفته است که این دو عملیات برای جاسوسی علیه مخالفان جمهوری اسلامی در داخل ایران و ۱۲کشور دیگر از جمله بریتانیا و آمریکا انجام شده است. بر اساس این گزارش دو گروهی که در این دو پروژه فعالیت می‌کنند، از تکنیک‌های جدید برای نصب جاسوس‌افزار‌ها یا بدافزارهای جاسوسی در کامپیوترهای شخصی و گوشی‌های موبایل افراد استفاده کرده‌اند.

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 ایید حکم شش سال زندان سها مرتضایی فعال دانشجویی| BBC News

یک دادگاه تجدید نظر در استان تهران حکم شش سال زندان سها مرتضایی، فعال دانشجویی و دبیر سابق شورای صنفی دانشگاه تهران، را تایید کرده است. خانم مرتضایی که با تحصن در محوطه دانشگاه تهران به “ستاره‌دار” شدن و محرومیت از تحصیل در مقطع دکترا اعتراض کرده بود جزو ده ها فعال مدنی بود که در هفته های بعد از سرکوب خشن اعتراضات آبان ماه سال ۱۳۹۸ دستگیر شدند. حکم شش سال حبس تعزیری او سه ماه پیش در شعبه ۱۵ دادگاه انقلاب تهران صادر شده بود، که اکنون در شعبه ۵۴ دادگاه تجدید نظر استان تهران تایید شده است. جلسه محاکمه ۱۹ شهریور ماه با حضور محمدهادی عرفانیان کاسب و مصطفی نیلی وکلای مدافع او برگزار شده بود.

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 مجید اسدی، زندانی سیاسی در زندان اوین، در یک پرونده جدید به یک سال زندان دیگر محکوم شد| Voice Of America

مجید اسدی، زندانی سیاسی که در حال حاضر در اوین نگهداری می‌شود، برای یک پرونده دیگر به یکسال زندان محکوم شده است. یک منبع نزدیک به آقای اسدی به صدای آمریکا گفته که آقای اسدی اتهامات وارده را رد کرده و در جلسات دادگاه حضور نداشته است. این منبع مطلع، که به دلایل امنیتی نخواست نامش فاش شود، به صدای آمریکا گفت، حکم یک سال زندان مجید اسدی، زندانی سیاسی محبوس در زندان اوین، توسط قاضی مظلوم، ریاست شعبه ۲۹ دادگاه انقلاب تهران به اتهام «تبلیغ علیه نظام» به صورت غیابی صادر شده است. وی افزود که این حکم روز شنبه ۱۸ بهمن ماه به وکیل مدافع آقای اسدی ابلاغ شده است. به گفته این منبع آگاه، آقای اسدی از اتهام «اجتماع و تبانی» که در بازجویی‌ها به او تفهیم شده بود، تبرئه شده است.

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