Iranian dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was convicted of fomenting violence during anti-government protests in 2017, was executed on Saturday, Iran’s state television reported. France reacted with anger to the hanging of the Paris-based journalist, which it called “barbaric and unacceptable” and said ran counter to Iran’s international obligations. Iran said on Tuesday its Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence against Zam, who was captured in 2019 after years of living in exile in France. His Amadnews feed had more than 1 million followers.
When exiled Iranian opposition figure Habib Chaab traveled from his home in Sweden to Turkey in October, he did not tell his friends, one of them said. “None of us would have accepted him going,” said the friend, Fouad al-Kabi. Turkey had become known as a “backyard” for Iranian intelligence agents, he said, and Chaab, a leader of a militant separatist group, was wanted by Tehran. Soon after he arrived in Istanbul, Chaab disappeared. Two days later, Iran’s state media reported he had been arrested and said he had confessed to his involvement in a deadly attack on a military parade two years ago in Iran.
Iran sentenced a British-Iranian anthropologist who has studied child marriage and female genital mutilation to nine years in jail and fined him over $700,000 in cash, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported Sunday. The report said Kameel Ahmady was sentenced by Iran’s Revolutionary Court on charges of cooperation with European embassies in support of promoting homosexuality, visiting Israel as a reporter for the BBC, cooperation and communication with foreign and hostile media, infiltration aimed at changing the law, and sending false reports about the country to the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights in Iran.
An Iranian court upheld the death sentence against dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam who was arrested last year, the country’s Supreme Court told reporters on Tuesday. Ruhollah Zam was found guilty in June of “corruption on earth,” a charge often used in cases of espionage or attempts to overthrow the government, and inciting violence that supported anti-government demonstrations. Through Zam and others, Iran accused the West of encouraging unrest over economic hardship that sparked mass demonstrations in late 2017. Over 20 people were killed and thousands were arrested.
Press advocacy and human rights groups have expressed outrage over the execution of Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam, with some campaigners calling it a “shocking escalation” in the use of the death penalty by Iran against dissidents. Zam, who was convicted for fuelling anti-government unrest during nationwide protests some three years ago, was captured in 2019 after years of living in exile in France. He was sentenced to death in June.
An Iranian woman who shared heavily distorted images of herself on social media has been jailed for 10 years. Sahar Tabar, 22, whose real name is Fatemeh Khishvand, gained a following on Instagram last year for posting photos of herself appearing gaunt and heavily made up, with many people comparing her to a zombie version of Angelina Jolie or the animated character, Corpse Bride. In 2019 Tabar was arrested for blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging youths to corruption for her now deactivated Instagram account which once had over 480,000 followers.
Western governments face a growing dilemma over how to secure the release of their citizens and dual nationals detained in Iran, with activists accusing Tehran of engaging in “hostage diplomacy” by seeking exchanges. Iran has in recent years repeatedly detained foreigners and dual nationals on charges campaigners and governments say are unfounded, with the prisoners only going free after months and sometimes even years of painstaking negotiation.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is urging Iran to cease jailing members of the press for their work after a 72-year-old journalist began a three-year prison sentence over his coverage of protests last year. “Jailing an elderly journalist in the middle of a raging pandemic shows how much contempt the Iranian judiciary has for the press,” CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said in a statement on December 8, a day after authorities arrested Kayvan Samimi and took him to serve a three-year sentence at Tehran’s Evin prison.
Kermanshah Prosecutor Shahram Karami says Iran’s security forces have arrested four people for advertising with live models in a promotional video. Stressing that the clips are “immoral,” he said that the arrest of “other agents” involved in the case is on the security forces’ agenda. The live models became the talk of the town on December 5, after photos circulated on social media showing a store using human mannequins for promotional purposes.
Iran’s Supreme Court has agreed to retry three men over links to last year’s anti-government protests and whose death sentences have been suspended, the state IRNA news agency reported on Saturday. It did not say when the trial would take place or identify the men, but Iran’s judiciary in July suspended the execution of Amirhossein Moradi, Mohammad Rajabi and Saeed Tamjidi. Those three were arrested during protests in November 2019 over gasoline price hikes that quickly turned political, with protesters demanding that top officials step down.
Mariam Claren’s last communication with her 66-year-old mother, Nahid Taghavi, included receiving some maternal advice about wearing a sweater on holiday. Claren gently chided her mother, a retired architect, reminding her that she was 40 years old and could probably make these big decisions on her own. Never has that been more true. Since that conversation, Claren’s life has been thrown into turmoil as she fights to free her mother from Evin prison in Tehran.
The Islamic Republic of Iran on Saturday imposed a two-year prison term and fine on Shahindokht Molaverdi, a former vice president for women’s affairs, because she allegedly undermined national security and posted a UN poster of same-sex couples on her Telegram account. Under the Iranian regime’s Sharia law system, the death penalty is applied to Iranian gays and lesbians. In July, according to the US government news outlet Radio Farda, the Rah-e Dana website wrote that Molaverdi was charged with “propaganda against the regime,” “encouraging corruption and prostitution” and “providing classified information and documents to disrupt national security.”
Earlier today, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 823, condemning the Iranian government’s persecution of the Baha’i community. The resolution, which enjoyed strong bipartisan support, called on the Iranian government to release all Baha’i prisoners, end its campaign of state-sponsored persecution, and reverse discriminatory policies against the Baha’i community.
Iran faces a UN investigation into massacres of imprisoned dissidents that the regime in Tehran has tried to cover up for more than 30 years. Thousands of mainly young people were executed without trial in Iran in 1988, as the war with Iraq was ending. Those killed were mainly supporters of the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), which had backed Baghdad in the conflict.
Amnesty International has hailed a letter sent by UN experts to the Iranian government pressing for accountability over notorious prison massacres of dissidents in 1988. The human rights experts warned in their letter that past and ongoing violations related to the massacres “may amount to crimes against humanity,” Amnesty International said on December 9 in a news release. Amnesty International and other rights groups have long pushed for accountability over what they describe as the extrajudicial executions of thousands of mainly young people across Iran in 1988 just as the war with Iraq was ending.
A French daily newspaper, founded by the famous philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in 1973, is the latest to join the ignoble list of so-called left-wing media organs to demonize the main Iranian democratic opposition movement. A Nov. 26 article trotted out the Iranian regime’s greatest hits about the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), like calling them an “Islamic-Marxist group” who “sided with Saddam Hussein” that has “been on the lists of terrorist organizations in the United States and in Europe for years.” All lies and all tired and weary propaganda that is fed into the system by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, a sinister KGB-style organization that is itself on the U.S. and European Union terrorist lists.
Treadstone 71, a cyber security monitor with special focus on the Iranian regime, has published an analysis of disinformation activities and social media manipulation related to an annual gathering of Iranian expatriates and dissident activists. The report notes that this analysis was motivated by Treadstone’s recognition of a spike in coordinated Twitter activity featuring hashtags that disparaged the organizers of the event, and its keynote speaker.
In his new memoir, Barack Obama recalls a moment that shocked the world. In 2009, as protestors swarmed the streets of Iran’s capital, the clerical regime’s Basij militia shot and killed a young woman named Neda Agha Soltan. The 26-year-old philosophy student became a symbol of the uprising after a video of her final moments, her blood gushing on a Tehran street, went viral. In the White House, however, the reaction was subdued.
Iran has been under the control of the Ayatollahs’ since 1979. The architect of the Iranian Revolution and the first leader of the Islamic republic established in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini and his religious grouping literally dragged Iran back and began a series of sinister moves with their neighbours. Although the reign of the first Ayatollah lasted about ten years, his policies were cemented by the clerical rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that followed. Iran’s belligerence translated into unprovoked adventures in Iraq and then began moving around the rest of the region.
At 24 years old, the Iranian Saba Kordafshari is currently serving a sentence matching her age for merely taking off her hijab on the streets of Tehran. She will spend her youth in prison for standing up for women’s rights in a country that regulates every aspect of a woman’s life. Soon after her arrest, she was joined by her mother, Raheleh Ahmadi. Raheleh, who had spent the previous two months seeking justice for her daughter, found herself in prison as a way of pressuring her daughter to make a false televised confession.
هفتاد و دو سال از تصویب و به رسمیت شناختن اعلامیه جهانی حقوق بشر در سازمان ملل میگذرد، ایران یکی از نخستین امضاکنندگان آن اعلامیه در سال ۱۳۲۷ بود. اما جمهوری اسلامی از جمله کشورهای عضو سازمان ملل است که عملکردش در زمینه رعایت حقوق بشر در دهههای اخیر در منافات با اعلامیه جهانی حقوق بشر بوده و موارد نقض حقوق بشر از سوی آن در گزارشهای سازمان ملل و سایر نهادهای بینالمللی مستند شده است. یکی از موارد پررنگ و مهم نقض حقوق بشر در ایران نقض حقوق اقلیتهای قومی و مذهبی از سوی جمهوری اسلامی است.
شیوه اطلاعرسانی در باره تایید حکم اعدام روحالله زم، مدیر کانال تلگرامی آمدنیوز، تازهترین نمونهای است که نشان میدهد تصمیمات و احکام دستگاه قضایی جمهوری اسلامی تا چه اندازه سیاسی و غیرحقوقی است. سخنگوی قوه قضاییه جمهوری اسلامی گفته است دیوان عالی کشور حکم اعدام روحالله زم را حدود یک ماه پیش تایید کرده است. یعنی حکمی که به شکل برگشتناپذیری به زندگی و مرگ یک شهروند مربوط میشود، با وجود همه حساسیتهایی که در مورد صدور احکام اعدام برای فعالان سیاسی پدید آمده، از نظر دستگاه قضایی آنقدر مهم نبوده است که نه تنها به اطلاع افکار عمومی، بلکه حتی به اطلاع وکیل مدافع و خانواده متهم رسانده شود.
خبرگزاری تسنیم میگوید کامیل احمدی پژوهشگر ایرانی-بریتانیایی با حکم بدوی شعبه ۱۵ دادگاه انقلاب اسلامی تهران به ۹ سال حبس و ششصد هزار یورو جریمه محکوم شده است. مراجع قضایی ایران این خبر را اعلام نکردهاند. دولت بریتانیا با اظهار “نگرانی شدید” خواستار توضیح بیشتر در این باره شده و امیر رئیسیان وکیل آقای احمدی گفته درخواست تجدیدنظر خواهد کرد و به نتیجه آن “امیدوار” است. آقای احمدی مردمشناس و پژوهشگر کرد ایرانی که به گفته شبکه حقوق بشر کردستان سالها بود در ایران زندگی میکرد، ۲۰ مرداد پارسال در تهران بازداشت و آبان همان سال با وثیقه آزاد شده بود.