An Iranian diplomat identified as an undercover secret agent was convicted Thursday in Belgium of masterminding a thwarted bomb attack against an exiled Iranian opposition group in France and sentenced to 20 years in prison, a legal outcome that infuriated Tehran. A Belgian court rejected the Vienna-based official’s claim of diplomatic immunity. The official, Assadollah Assadi, contested the charges and refused to testify during his trial last year, invoking his diplomatic status. He did not attend Thursday’s hearing at the Antwerp courthouse.
Former senior US political and national security figures have reiterated their support for an exiled Iranian opposition group, following a court verdict that found an Iranian diplomat guilty of plotting a terrorist attack against it. They did so just hours after Assadollah Assadi — who tried to bomb a rally organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Paris in 2018 — was sentenced to 20 years in jail by a Belgian court. Tom Ridge, former US secretary of state for homeland security, urged governments worldwide to back the NCRI, which he regards as Iran’s government in waiting.
Amnesty International is urging the international community to “urgently intervene” to save the lives of four ethnic Baluch and four ethnic Arab men who are on death row following what the human rights watchdog called “flagrantly unfair trials.” “The recent escalation in executions of Baluchis and Ahwazi Arabs raises serious concerns that the authorities are using the death penalty to sow fear among disadvantaged ethnic minorities, as well as the wider population,” Diana Eltahawy, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at the London-based group, said in a statement on February 4.
Iranian authorities must immediately halt any plans to execute four Baluchi and four Ahwazi Arab men amid an alarming rise in executions of ethnic minority prisoners in the past two months, Amnesty International said today. The international community, including UN human rights bodies and the EU must urgently intervene to save their lives. “The recent escalation in executions of Baluchis and Ahwazi Arabs raises serious concerns that the authorities are using the death penalty to sow fear among disadvantaged ethnic minorities, as well as the wider population.
Two Iranian dissidents imprisoned since 2017 were sentenced to prison by the Revolutionary Court of Tehran in connection with a new case against them while they were in prison. According to the verdict issued by Branch 29 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, Mohammad Bannazadeh Amirkhizi and Majid Asadi have been each sentenced to one year in prison on the charge of “spreading propaganda against the state.” This is a common practice by Judicial authorities in Iran to extend political prisoner’s sentence, without any semblance of due process, in order to keep them behind bars despite completing their sentences or being eligible for release.
The experts said they were “shocked” that the execution of Javid Dehghan, on 30 January, was carried out despite their urgent appeal last week to the Iranian Government to halt it, as well as calls by the UN human rights office (OHCHR) and the civil society. “We informed the Iranian Government of grave concerns that Mr. Dehghan’s death sentence followed serious violations of his fair trial rights, including claims he was tortured, held in prolonged solitary confinement, subjected to enforced disappearance and forced to confess, concerns that do not appear to have been investigated by the Iranian authorities”, they said.
We, the undersigned 36 civil society and human rights organizations, call for the urgent attention of the international community to an ongoing wave of arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detention, and enforced disappearances by the Iranian authorities, targeting scores of people from Iran’s disadvantaged Kurdish minority in the provinces of Alborz, Kermanshah, Kurdistan, Tehran, and West Azerbaijan.
Boris Johnson faces a moment of political risk next month when British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s five-year sentence on spying charges expires in Iran.The U.K. prime minister is inextricably linked to the case since he wrongly told Parliament in 2017 — when he was foreign secretary — that she had been in Iran to train journalists. The comments were seized on by an Iranian court as proof of her guilt, and Johnson later retracted his words and apologized.
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.”
Human rights groups and media watchdogs have condemned the separate arrests of two journalists in Iran on vague charges. The journalists are Reza Taleshian Jelodarzadeh, editor in chief of Tehran-based magazine Nour-e Azadi, and Mahmoud Mahmoudi, editor of the Kurdish Aigrin Roj Weekly. Jelodarzadeh used Instagram to post a photo of his feet in shackles, said the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), adding that his location is unknown.
On July 1, 2018, an Iranian diplomat and expert in explosives Assadollah Assadi was arrested while committing an act of terrorism. This type of arrest had never occurred in Europe prior to 2018, although there was evidence that Iran was using its embassies and diplomats as cover for its terrorist activities against Iranian dissidents throughout Europe. This attack, had it not been thwarted, could have been one of the largest terrorist attacks in Europe because over 100,000 people and political leaders from around the globe were gathered for the event.
س از اعدام جاوید دهقان خلد، شهروند بلوچ در زندان مرکزی زاهدان، کارشناسان سازمان ملل اعدام این زندانی را محکوم و در گزارشی افزایش اخیر اعدام زندانیان اقلیت بلوچ را نگران کننده دانستند. گروهی از کارشناسان سازمان ملل، روز پنجشنبه ۱۶ بهمن ماه در گزارشی از جمهوری اسلامی خواستند، فورا اعدام اقلیت قومی بلوچ را متوقف کند. آنها از ایران خواستند کلیه احکام اعدام صادر شده که مغایر با قوانین بینالمللی حقوق بشر هستند را لغو کند. این کارشناسان که پیشتر نیز از مقامهای جمهوری اسلامی ایران خواسته بودند، اجرای حکم اعدام جاوید دهقان خلد، زندانی سیاسی بلوچ، را برای بررسی دوباره پرونده متوقف کند، در این گزارش اعلام کردهاند: «ملاحظات مطرح شده در این پرونده درباره نقض جدی اصول دادرسی عادلانه، از جمله فقدان حق تجدیدنظر مؤثر و اعتراف اجباری ناشی از شكنجه، به این معنی است كه اعدام وی یک اعدام خودسرانه بوده است
صبا آذرپیک، روزنامهنگار، روز یکشنبه و در پی مراجعه به پلیس فتا، بازداشت شد.عطاالله حافظی، همسر صبا آذرپیک، ضمن اعتراض به غیرقانونی بودن بازداشت این خبرنگار در حساب کاربری خود در توییتر نوشت: «بدون احضاریه و ابلاغیه، با تماس تلفنی پلیس فتا، به فتا مراجعه میکند. بلافاصله به طور غیرقانونی بازداشت و به دادسرای جرایم رایانهای منتقل میشود. از ساعت ۱۳ تا ۱۸ در دادسرای ناحیه ۳۱ به بهانه واهی نداشتن ثنا، وقتکشی کرده و هیچ اقدامی نکردند درحالیکه صبا، ثنا داشت ساعت ۱۸ درخواست کفالت من یا وکیل این پرونده خانم رزاقی پذیرفته نشد و ساعت ۲۲ درحالیکه به اتاق سرپرست دادسرا پناه برده بود و فریاد تظلمخواهی سر میداد که صورتجلسه وقایع تنظیم شود با خشونت تمام با حضور چهار مأمور بهصورت غیرقانونی بازداشت شد.