It was a sweltering July afternoon in 1983 when more than a dozen Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members knocked down Farideh Goudarzi’s aunt’s door, guns drawn. At nine months pregnant, the twenty-one-year-old could barely run, let alone walk. Under surveillance for her opposition endeavors and distribution of anti-regime leaflets, all Goudarzi could do was wait. “I was taken straight away into an interrogation room about three by four meters with just one table in the middle used for flogging prisoners,” she said. “The floor was covered with blood. I did not know then that a lot of that fresh blood was from my husband, who disappeared two days earlier.”
The Iranian diaspora, supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Belgium, held a rally today (14 June) in front of the US embassy in Belgium. They held posters and banners with the picture of Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the Iranian opposition movement who has declared a non-nuclear Iran in her 10-point plan for the free and democratic Iran. In their posters and slogans, Iranians asked the US and the EU to work harder to hold the mullahs’ regime accountable for its human rights violations too.
Ebrahim Raisi, the favourite in Iran’s presidential election, has used his position at the heart of the judiciary for grave rights violations, including mass executions of political prisoners, activists say. They say Raisi — who now has victory in his sights on Friday after even conservative rivals were disqualified in vetting — should face international justice rather than lead his country. At 60, the mid-ranking cleric is still relatively young for a figure who has held a succession of key positions, starting almost immediately after the fall of the shah in the Islamic revolution of 1979.
A British dual-citizen scribbled his defence to criminal charges in Iran with a borrowed pen and cardboard ripped from a box after he was released from solitary confinement only 24 hours before his trial, his supporters said on Monday. Mehran Raoof, 64, and four other suspects, including German-Iranian Nahid Taghavi, 66, went before a judge on Sunday accused of involvement in banned political groups after being rounded up in October last year. The trial – due to be heard while G7 leaders were meeting in the UK – was adjourned for 10 days after Mr Raoof complained he had not been able to meet his lawyer or prepare a proper defence.
As Iranians prepare to go to the polls this Friday reports from inside Iran paint a picture of growing resentment aimed at what many are calling an illegitimate election. This comes as Iranians are standing up to the regime, risking life and limb as a boycott of the presidential poll is reportedly gaining steam. On Wednesday a video doing the rounds shows an unnamed woman protesting a town hall event in Tehran. The video captured by the news website The Foreign Desk shows a woman speaking out, and taking aim at the seven presidential candidates. In the translated remarks she is seen and heard saying, “They put seven bananas in front of us, and they say take one. What’s the difference? A thief is a thief.”
Ebrahim Raisi, the favorite in Iran’s presidential election, has used his position at the heart of the judiciary for grave rights violations, including mass executions of political prisoners, activists say. They say Raisi — who now has victory in his sights on Friday after even conservative rivals were disqualified in vetting — should face international justice rather than lead his country. “Raisi’s only place is in the dock, not the presidency,” said Justice for Iran Executive Director Shadi Sadr.
Ebrahim Raisi, the favorite in Iran’s presidential election, has used his position at the heart of the judiciary for grave rights violations, including mass executions of political prisoners, activists say. They say Raisi — who now has victory in his sights on Friday after even conservative rivals were disqualified in vetting — should face international justice rather than lead his country. At 60, the mid-ranking cleric is still relatively young for a figure who has held a succession of key positions, starting almost immediately after the fall of the shah in the revolution of 1979.
Ebrahim Raisi’s record of fierce loyalty to Iran’s ruling clerics helps explain why the senior judge is a front-runner in Friday’s presidential election, a contest the authorities have limited almost exclusively to hardline candidates like him. A win for Raisi, 60, an implacable critic of the West whose political patron is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would burnish his chances of one day succeeding Khamenei at the pinnacle of power, analysts say. Accused by critics of human rights abuses stretching back decades — allegations his defenders deny — Raisi was appointed by Khamenei to the high-profile job of judiciary chief in 2019.
A notorious cleric poised to be named Iran’s next leader is a torturing killer who will spread terror and bloodshed across the world, claim those who say they suffered at his hands. Ebrahim Raisi, 60, is the runaway favourite of seven contenders battling it out to replace sitting president Hassan Rouhani, 72, in an election due to be held this Friday. The Sun Online can reveal the hardliner allegedly ordered the torture of pregnant women, had prisoners thrown off cliffs, had people flogged with electric cords, and has overseen countless other brutal acts of violence. The so-called “Butcher of 1988” is the favoured choice of the Islamic Republic’s ruthless regime with the Iranian press now calling him the “unrivalled candidate”.
Iranian political prisoners who were interrogated, tortured and sentenced to die by Ebrahim Raisi have told of their horrifying experiences as Iran prepares to make him the country’s next president. Farideh Goudarzi, who was jailed for being part of a banned political group, told MailOnline how Raisi watched guards drop her baby on the floor as part of one brutal interrogation – after she was tortured while pregnant and forced to give birth in jail. Meanwhile Mahmoud Royaee, another political prisoner interrogated by Raisi during the execution of up to 30,000 opposition activists in a 1988 purge, said Raisi once handed down a death sentence to an inmate who was in the midst of an epileptic fit.
Two Baluch fuel carriers were killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces in Mirjaveh county, southeastern Iran. According to local sources, Tuesday, the two men were identified as Saeed Shahouzehi and Naeem. Saeed was killed at the same time, and Naeem, the driver, died of his injuries after being taken to hospital. Saeed and Naeem were taking fuel to Reg-i-malek area near the border when the IRGC forces opened fire on their vehicle without warning. According to a report by the Baloch Campaign, locals including women gathered at the scene.
Iran has expelled a 76-year-old Italian nun who worked for 26 years in a leprosy center in the Islamic republic. The Iran government refused to renew the visa of Sister Giuseppina Berti and asked her to leave the West Asian country, Vatican News reported on June 11. Sister Berti, a member of the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, worked in the leprosarium of Tabriz, the most populous city in northwestern Iran. She had recently been living in Isfahan in central Iran as a pensioner at her congregation’s house, which was built in 1937.
For Iranian rock musician Pooyan Ghandi, the roar of the crowd and the thrill of live performance are things he can only dream about. The 34-year-old lives in the religious city of Mashhad where concerts have been banned for more than a decade after hardliners in the theocratic state argued that they were against Islamic teachings. While such restrictions are rare elsewhere in Iran and in Tehran it is possible to see live music, Ghandi and musicians like him in Iran’s holiest city spend their days composing music that they are unlikely ever to play to a crowd.
With less than two days until Iranians head to the polls to elect a new president on June 18, Reformists and moderates have to make up their mind on whether to join the game or boycott it. After the Guardian Council — an unelected body charged with vetting candidates — disqualified the main Reformist and moderate presidential hopefuls, it became clear from the onset that the Reformist front in Iranian politics would face a bumpy road to participating in this year’s presidential elections.
Despite the refusal of the Reforms Front umbrella grouping to endorse any candidate in the June 18 presidential elections, some figures have broken ranks and endorsed Abdolnaser Hemmati, the former central bank governor. On Monday, Hossein Karroubi, son of the former general-secretary of the Etemad-e Melli Party Mehdi Karroubi, said his father urged all Iranians to cast their votes for Hemmati “in defense of the republic and the institution of presidency.”
Around 200 people protested against the Iranian government on June 13 in front of the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard. The demonstration, officially titled “No to the Islamic Republic of Iran Demonstration,” featured protesters chanting “Freedom for Iran,” “Down with Islamic Republic” and “President Biden, Do Not Deal with Mullahs,” among other slogans. “We have all different groups that are here,” Arezo Rashidian, one of the organizers of the protest, told the Journal. “We have the Jewish community, the Baha’i community, the Muslim community standing against the Islamic Republic of Iran. We’re here today to boycott the sham elections of Iran and say no to the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The elections will be held on June 19.
As the United States works to bring Iran back into compliance with the nuclear accord, the family of two Americans held by Tehran is appealing to the Biden administration to make their release part of any deal made with the Islamic Republic. US officials say they’ve engaged in indirect discussions — independently of the nuclear deal talks in Vienna — with Iran over unjustly detained US citizens, including Siamak and Baquer Namazi. The White House says their release is a top priority, but Babak Namazi worries his brother, Siamak, and father, Baquer, could once again be left behind.
Female street vendors are facing harassment – physical, sexual, and psychological – and violence every day on the metro in Tehran because of the misogynous policies that not only encourage the suppression of women but also prevent women from accessing organizational support. The number of women peddling in the metro has increased considerably in the past few years. Why? Well, because women prefer to peddle on the underground rather than the street because rising living costs and the economic crisis means that they are forced to take these insecure jobs but are facing pressure from officials who are trying to cut peddling, without fixing the reasons for this, so are just making the lives of these women worse.
Kurdish opposition parties in Iran on Wednesday renewed calls for a boycott of Iranian elections due to be held on June 18, and stated the wider public opposition in Iran against presidential elections has grown this year. “Free elections are fundamental to democracy and human rights and they show the free will of the people to choose a government. This does not exist in Iran,” said Abdullah Mohtadi, the leader of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat). Mohtadi spoke in a panel organized by Rudaw’s research center on Wednesday.
In the Persian puppet theater known as Shah Selim Bazi, tragicomic tales of court intrigue gave audiences a glimpse into the mind of their ruler and the workings of his administration. Behind the screen, the strings were pulled by the “morshed,” or spiritual leader, who also served as narrator. This allowed him to manipulate not only the marionettes but also public opinion. It is tempting to view Iranian presidential elections as a variation of this form, with the ruler himself playing the morshed. In the three decades he has been Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stage-managed the process by limiting the contest to candidates committed to the theocratic ideals of the Islamic Republic and personally loyal to him. Like Henry Ford, he has given voters the choice of any color — so long as it is black.
Two years after a popular uprising ended two millennia of dynastic rule in Iran, the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini scolded the country’s squabbling politicians for “biting one another like scorpions.” Four decades later, on the eve of a Presidential election, on Friday, Iranian politics are no less contentious. At the first of three campaign debates, the former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezaei vowed that his first act, if elected, would be to charge the leading centrist candidate, Abdolnaser Hemmati, who was seated a few feet away, with betraying the revolution. “If I become President, I will ban Hemmati and a number of other officials of the Rouhani government from leaving the country, and I will prove in court which treacherous roles they played,” he said, during a three-hour televised debate with six other candidates.
C’est un décret d’extradition qui pourrait avoir de lourdes conséquences pour l’intéressé. Le 31 mai, Mazen al-Atat, un Libanais installé en France, s’est vu notifier la décision du gouvernement Castex d’autoriser sa livraison à la justice américaine, qui l’accuse d’être un agent du Hezbollah. La milice chiite libanaise , bras armé de l’Iran au Proche-Orient, a des ramifications depuis longtemps en Europe, notamment en France. Mais ses activités y auraient augmenté de manière inquiétante ces dernières années.
بیش از یکصد فعال سیاسی و مدنی در اعتراض به آنچه «انتخابات مهندسیشده و تحقیرآمیز» خواندهاند، با انتشار بیانیهای گفتهاند همراه با مردم به نقض حاکمیت ملی، استبداد، ارتجاع، بیعدالتی، فساد و دروغ، «نه» میگویند. در ادامه فعالیت کارزارهای گوناگون برای تحریم فعال و هدفمند انتخابات ۱۴۰۰، دهها تن از کنشگران سیاسی، وکلا، اقتصاددانان و نمایندگان سابق مجلس، با انتشار بیانیهای با عنوان «نه ملی به استبداد، ارتجاع و نقض حاکمیت ملی» تاکید کردهاند که «انتخابات از معنای واقعی خود خارج شده است. آنها در این بیانیه از فعالان خواستهاند که به جای «ورود به عرصههای نمایشی و فرمایشی بر پایه منطق معیوب انتخاب مدام میان بد و بدتر یا درغلتیدن به مشی سرنگونی و اسقاط از راه قهر و خشونت و استقبال از جنگطلبی داخلی و مداخلهگری خارجی» راه «مقاومت مدنی و خشونتپرهیز» را در پیش بگیرند و اصلاح قوانین ساختاری و اساسی را در دستور کار قرار دهند.
تجربه تظاهرات از زمان «انقلاب سبز» تا به امروز نتوانست برای مردم ایران موفقیتآمیز باشد، به ویژه اینکه شهروندان معترض با سرکوبی، قتل و بازداشت روبهرو شدند و در نتیجه، مردم ایران دریافتند که در میان سکوت بینالمللی یا تقبیح بیاثر، دست به هرگونه حرکتی که بزنند، کنترل امنیتی رژیم آن را خنثی میکند. در اعتراضهای مردمی اخیر در ایران، بیش از ۱۵۰۰ نفر کشته شدند، اما هیچ تغییری در سیاستهای دولت نمایان نشد. شاید این یک روش معمول در کشورهای دموکراتیک باشد، اما تظاهرات برابر رژیمی که هیچ آمادگی برای تغییر ندارد و تنها تلاش آن برای حفظ و بقای قدرت است، هیچ سودی نخواهد داشت. شکی نیست که دموکراسی نمایشی در ایران که مبتنی بر اجرای انتخابات در مفهوم ظاهری آن است و در بعد واقعی و عمل تحولی به وجود نمیآید، همان عاملی است که توانسته است تداوم نظام جمهوری اسلامی را برای بیش از چهل سال حفظ کند.