Turkey has arrested an Iranian official suspected of instigating the killing of an Iranian dissident in Istanbul 15 months ago, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Confirming a report in Turkey’s Sabah newspaper, the sources said Mohammad Reza Naserzadeh was detained earlier this week on suspicion of planning the shooting of Masoud Molavi Vardanjani, a critic of Iran’s political and military leadership. The case could strain ties between Iran and Turkey, regional powers which have grown closer under Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan despite sometimes deep differences, including in Syria where they back opposing sides in the 10-year conflict.
Amnesty International has denounced the “gruesome” treatment of people in Iran’s justice system after an inmate was sentenced to 60 lashes after a peaceful hunger strike, and had a sentence of amputation upheld despite confessing to a crime under torture. Hadi Rostami, who was convicted of robbery in 2019 after his confession, has attempted suicide twice while in Urumieh prison, according to Amnesty, leading to his sentence being extended by eight months and causing him to receive the lashes.
In a bipartisan initiative, 113 members of the U.S. House of Representatives this week declared their solidarity with the people of Iran in their struggle for freedom, justice, and basic human rights. “Expressing support for the Iranian people’s desire for a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran and condemning violations of human rights and state-sponsored terrorism by the Iranian Government,” read House Resolution 118. U.S. lawmakers who co-sponsored the resolution pointed out the volatile condition of Iran’s society and ongoing struggle by different classes for their inherent rights.
The family of a jailed Iranian dissident recently sentenced to 14 years in prison for peaceful activism has begun speaking out about his case, saying his health is worsening as Iranian officials deny him treatment for severe epilepsy after forcing him to confess to security crimes. In a Thursday Skype video interview with VOA Persian from her home in Iran’s northwestern city of Urmia, Hanieh Gharehoghlani said the health of her 34-year-old activist brother Hamed has worsened in the city’s central prison where he has been detained since July.
Activists on Wednesday expressed alarm that an Iranian “prisoner of conscience” jailed over a protest by a religious sect in 2018 had been hospitalized in a critical condition, alleging that his health had been weakened by torture. Behnam Mahjoubi, a member of the Gonabadi Dervishes, Iran’s largest Sufi order, was convicted after taking part in a demonstration they held in February 2018, and began serving his two-year sentence last June.
Iranian human rights activists and journalists said on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic killed a Dervish prisoner of conscience after he was forcibly sent to a psychiatric clinic that disrupted his medical treatment. Video footage reviewed by The Jerusalem Post showed the mother of Ebrahim Ketabdar, who was murdered during the 2019 massacre of Iranian protestors, stating: “Today, these murderers killed Behnam Mahjoubi. When I went to court they said: ‘We did a good thing by killing your son.’”
A UN report released Wednesday on widespread human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran contains shocking findings that the theocratic state imposed electric torture on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children. The UN Special Rapporteur for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javaid Rehman, wrote that he is “concerned at reports that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children were subjected to electric shocks and the administration of hormones and strong psychoactive medications.
The Iranian regime Islamic scholar Ahmed Abedi declared in a bombshell report in early February on Noor TV that the late IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani created centers to spy on Jews in the Islamic Republic. “Regarding the Jews in this country who spy for Israel, [Soleimani] established centers for monitoring the Zionist spies. He established many such centers,” said Abedi, according to a transcription of the Iranian Noor TV broadcast by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent, nonpartisan press-monitoring organization.
The Iranian authorities’ flogging of Hadi Rostami, an inmate at Urumieh prison in West Azerbaijan province, 60 times on 14 February 2021 is a gruesome reminder of the cruelty of Iran’s seriously flawed justice system, said Amnesty International, calling on the authorities to immediately quash his conviction and amputation sentence and provide him with the urgent medical care he needs. A criminal court in West Azerbaijan province convicted Hadi Rostami of robbery in November 2019 following a grossly unfair trial marred by torture-tainted “confessions” and sentenced him to having four of his fingers amputated.
The authorities of the Central Prison of Tabriz prevented medical treatment of political prisoner Massoumeh Senobari on Wednesday, February 10, 2021. She has developed cancerous mass in her breast while being interrogated under vicious torture. Presently, she suffers from severe pain and is suspected of breast cancer. An informed source says about Massoumeh Senobari: “The situation in the clinic of the Prison of Tabriz is not good and they provide any care for the inmates. There is only one nurse and a doctor visits this prison only once a week but does not do anything for the inmates.”
Two other prisoners were executed Saturday in eastern Iran following the recent increase in executions of Baloch minority prisoners. Iranian authorities on Saturday executed two ethnic Balochi citizens on drug related charges. Jamaluddin Brahui and Mohammad Barahui were executed in a prison in the eastern Iranian city of Birjand. An informed source said that the 40-year-old man was arrested about two years ago at the Salabad checkpoint in Birjand.
Iranian authorities executed seven prisoners today, bringing the total number of fatal those executed in February to at least 13. Six man and a woman convicted of murder were executed today in Rajaei Shahr Prison on Wednesday, February 17. Among the executed prisoners is “Zahra Esmaili” who was transferred yesterday from Qarchak prison in Varamin to Rajai Shahr prison in the city of Karaj west of the capital where she was prepared for execution.
The Iranian regime has sentenced three political activists, a mother and two of her children, to 20 years in prison, according to Iran Human Rights Monitor. In a trial at Tehran Revolutionary Court Branch 23, presided over by judge Mohammad Mehdi Shahmirzadi, political prisoner Zahra Safaei, her daughter Parastoo Moini, and her son Mohammad Masoud Moini were given harsh sentences for their activism. Safaei was sentenced to five years for “assembly and collusion”, one year for “spreading propaganda against the state”, and two years for “insulting [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei and [regime founder Ruhollah] Khomeini”, to make a total of eight years.
With the execution of an unidentified 23-year-old woman in Ardabil Prison on Monday, the Iranian regime has executed at least 113 women during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, a supposed moderate. This comes just over a month after the execution of Zeinab Khodamoradi in Sanandaj Central Prison on December 27 and follows on from at least 27 executions in January. The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has noted that most women in Iran are executed for murder, but this is actually another example of how the regime fails women because they are mostly victims of domestic abuse who kill in defence of themselves or their children because they have no legal recourse to end an abusive marriage.
The Iranian women’s alpine ski team flew on Wednesday to Italy for the world championships in Cortina d’Ampezzo without their coach, whose husband has barred her from leaving the country, Iranian media reported. The reports by the semi-official ISNA news agency and the pro-reform Shargh daily did not provide any details as to why Samira Zargari’s husband had not allowed her to leave. Iran’s ski federation also did not offer any information. Under Iranian law, husbands can stop their wives from traveling outside of the country.
In June 2018, agents of the Iranian regime attempted to carry out a terrorist attack near Paris. In November 2020 the mastermind of that plot finally went on trial alongside his three known accomplices, following a two and a half year investigation. Earlier this month, a Belgian court handed down guilty verdicts for all four and sentenced the principal defendant, Assadollah Assadi, to 20 years in prison. No doubt some Western policymakers are eager to think of this matter as settled and start the business as usual with the Iranian regime. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Iranian agents attempted to bomb an opposition rally in France in 2018, with the goal of assassinating Resistance leader Maryam Rajavi. All four agents were arrested over the course of two days and the attack was foiled. Following a two-and-a-half-year investigation, Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi and his three co-conspirators were found guilty at a court in Belgium earlier this month and given long prison sentences. But the Belgian court and other European authorities said repeatedly that Assadi was working on behalf of the regime, so the Iranian Resistance warned Western lawmakers from regarding the matter as settled and insisted that the West was still very much in danger from Iranian terrorism, so long as they appease the mullahs.
«امسال که نتایج آزمون سراسری را اعلام کردند، پاسخ برای من و خانوادهام قابل انتظار بود، “نقص پرونده”. بسیاری از دوستانم این عبارت را دیده بودند. اما برای من برخورد بسیاری از کاربران فضای مجازی و حتی دوستان و آشنایان غیربهائی ناراحت کننده بود که میگفتند: چرا در فرم تقاضای خود نمینویسید مسلمان تا به دانشگاه بروید؟ این حرفهای سمیرا است. دختری که برای اولین بار در کنکور سراسری شرکت کرده و مثل بسیاری از داوطلبان بهائی ورود به دانشگاه با تبعیض تحصیلی سیستماتیکی مواجه شده که بر چند نسل بهائیان اعمال شده است. نام سمیرا مانند بقیه کسانی که در این گزارش با آنها مصاحبه شده، برای امنیتشان تغییر داده شده است.
من را به شکل صلیب به تخت بستند. آمپول و قرص دادند. کارهای خلافی که رویم نمیشود بگویم انجام دادند. یک کار دیگر را نمیتوانم بگویم. آن را هم انجام میدادند. من [در امینآباد] افول و فنای انسانیت را دیدم. گروهی میگویند راوی این روایت هولناک؛ بهنام محجوبی، سه روز پس از انتقال به بیمارستان بر اساس مسمومیت دارویی ۲۸ بهمنماه ۱۳۹۹ درگذشته است. اما مسئولین زندان و قوه قضائیه تأکید دارند او هنوز زنده است. از سویی اداره زندانها اعلام کرده وی به دلیل مسمومیت دارویی به بیمارستان منتقل شده، درصورتیکه واقعیت این است؛ محجوبی مشکل اضطراب شدید داشت، اضطرابی که در فضای بسته و تحت تأثیر شکنجه روحی و جسمی تشدید شد، تا آنجا که بر تعادل روحی و روانی او اثری ویرانگر گذاشته و به دلیل لجاجت دستگاه امنیتی و اداره زندانها در نهایت منجر به قتل خاموش این درویش گنابادی شده است.
نا بر گزارشهای منتشر شده در شبکههای اجتماعی، وضعیت سلامت بهنام محجوبی، یکی از دراویش گنابادی و زندانی سیاسی در ایران که طی روزهای گذشته در پی «مسمومیت دارویی» به بیمارستان لقمان تهران منتقل شده بود، نامساعد اعلام شده و گفته میشود این زندانی سیاسی در حال حاضر با «دستگاه تنفسی» زنده است. ابراهیم الله بخشی، از دراویش گنابادی در توئتیر خود با انتشار اخباری از وخامت حال بهنام محجوبی نوشت: «با همراهی مردم در داخل بیمارستان، بالاخره مادر توانست فرزندش را ببیند. تنفس سی درصد بادستگاه، علائم حیاتی صفر. علیرضا روشن، شاعر و نویسنده و از مدیران وبسایت مجذوبان نور نیز با انتشار فایل صوتی در توئیتر خود نوشت که بهنام محجوبی به بیماری «پانیک اعصاب» مبتلا بوده و با وجود صدور برگهای از سوی پزشکی قانونی منبی بر عدم تحمل کیفر، این زندانی سیاسی نه تنها آزاد نشده است بلکه امکان دسترسی به داروهای مورد نیازش را نداشته و او را به بیمارستان روانپزشکی امین آباد تهران منتقل کردند.