For more than two decades, Hossein Yazdi, a political activist, has campaigned in Iranian presidential elections, determined to bring about change in the conservative theocratic state. But now, 42-year-old Yazdi, who was born a few months before the revolution that created the Islamic republic in 1979, has all but given up. This time round, he will not be putting up posters or knocking on doors explaining the merits of his preferred candidate. He will not even vote.
The European Union on Thursday called on Iran to review a case of a prominent female human rights activist who was sentenced to 30 months in prison and 80 lashes on charges of protesting against the killing of protesters during the country’s 2019 unrest. A spokesperson for the bloc urged Iran to look into the case of Narges Mohammadi under “applicable international human rights law and taking into account her deteriorating health condition.” Earlier this week, Mohammadi confirmed her sentence in an Instagram post and said she does not “accept any of these sentences.”
Candidates in Iran’s presidential elections have always been strictly vetted, and those deemed insufficiently loyal to the Islamic Revolution were disqualified. Within those limits, contenders held differing views on easing domestic restrictions or dealing with the West, and sometimes the victor was even a surprise. Now even minor differences that give voters some semblance of a choice appear to have been erased.
Human rights defender Narges Mohammadi says Iranian prison authorities use sexual abuse and harassment systematically to break the will of incarcerated women — and that she herself has been a victim. Fear, shame, and a culture of avoidance may keep many victims of such practices from speaking out. But Mohammadi and other former detainees in Iran shared their experiences during a May 27 group discussion on the Clubhouse social-media app — an online gathering that also was joined by the exiled Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
Iran will put a French citizen that it detained last year on trial on charges including espionage, his lawyer said on Sunday, a crime that can carry the death penalty. The French citizen, Benjamin Brière, who is in his mid-30s, was arrested in Iran in May 2020 on suspicion of flying a drone and taking photographs in a prohibited area. Saeid Dehghan, a human rights lawyer who represents him, said on Twitter on Sunday that Iranian prosecutors had confirmed his client would be tried on two counts of espionage and “propaganda against the system.”
Iranian rights activist and journalist Narges Mohammadi, released from jail in October, has been handed a new sentence of 80 lashes and 30 months in jail, her lawyer said Thursday. Mohammadi, 49, a campaigner against the death penalty, was spokeswoman for the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran — founded by lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi — when she was arrested in May 2015. At that time, the mother-of-two was handed a 10-year prison sentence for “forming and managing an illegal group,” among other charges, but was released last year after her sentence was reduced.
Iranian authorities arrested a Chinese man for allegedly posting pictures of women he met in Iran on social media without their consent, a prosecutor in the central city of Kashan told local news agencies on Tuesday. Police and intelligence forces detained the man, who has not been named, at a road toll booth in the city, prosecutor Ruhollah Dehqani told the semi-official ILNA news agency. After he was accused by multiple posters of boasting on social media that it was easy to meet Iranian women, the man issued a videotaped apology on YouTube, saying he had deleted all the images.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned Iran’s use of the judiciary to harass and prosecute journalists for “simply doing their job” and warned of increased harassment of media workers ahead of a presidential election next month. The watchdog noted pressure put recently on some journalists who had sought to report on the background and alleged human rights violations committed by Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric in charge of Iran’s judiciary, as evidence of growing harassment on independent reporting.
An appeals court in Iran has sentenced four Iranian Baha’is to 12 years of prison solely for being members of their religious community. Branch 36 of the Tehran Provincial Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of the Baha’i citizens Mona Mehrabi, Elham Karampisheh, Afsaneh Yadegar Ardestani, and Ehsanullah Yadegar Ardestani. According to the verdict, which is recently notified to these citizens, they were each sentenced to three years in prison on charges of “membership in an illegal organization with the aim of disrupting the national security.”
An Iranian jailed protester who is detained in the Greater Tehran Penitentiary (GTP) was transferred to another ward alongside common criminals immediately after he disclosed the dire conditions in the prison. Under the excuse of interrogation, political prisoner Hossein Hashemi was summoned on Tuesday, June 1. He was then transferred to the 4th ward of the prison where he has been locked up in the same area as criminals who had committed serious offences, such as murder, in breach of Iranian law and international standards.
Iranian political prisoner Soheil Arabi was taken into arraignment through a video conference on Monday for a new case opened against him in prison. During the session, which was held on Monday, May 25, 2021, via video conference by Branch 3 of the Evin Prosecutor’s Office, Mr. Arabi was charged with “propaganda activities against the regime and disturbing public opinion,” for a new case opened against him in prison.
Senior leaders of the Gaza Strip-ruling Hamas terrorist organization and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) worked reportedly in close coordination with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Hezbollah to discuss military operations during the 11 days of fighting with Israel. The editor-in-chief of the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, Ibrahim Al-Amin, said during an interview with Hezbollah-operated Al-Manar TV that the IRGC, Hezbollah and Hamas set up a joint military operations room in Beirut during the May hostilities in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
The imprisonment of 18-year-old Iranian Sara, who is being held incommunicado because she sings as a rapper, has stoked new worries about her condition. “This poor female rapper from Iran still remains in detention,” women’s campaigner and journalist Masih Alinejad tweeted Friday. “Because her rap music uses rebellious words, neither her family nor domestic news outlets are supportive of her. She’s alone. Help us raise her voice and be her voice.”
Diplomats from Iran and New Zealand discussed human rights in a meeting yesterday. Political adviser Mohammad Reza Mofatteh from the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs participated in the Wednesday meeting with diplomats from New Zealand’s embassy in Tehran and other Iranian and New Zealander officials, the semi-official Tasnim News Agency in Iran reported. The topics of discussion included Islamic views on human rights, the rights of women and indigenous people in New Zealand and human trafficking, according to Tasnim.
Babak Namazi, whose brother and father are detained in Iran, is living in fear that his family members could be left behind again as the Biden administration is engaged in a diplomatic effort to salvage the Iran nuclear deal. Namazi’s deep concerns are not unfounded: While American prisoners have been released from Iran three times in the last six years, each time his family members remained there. The first instance occurred in 2016, when Americans were freed on the day that the Iran nuclear deal went into effect.
A judge has thrown out a lawsuit from a former Marine who was jailed in Iran for more than four years and then denied a multimillion-dollar payout from a special U.S. government victims’ fund after an FBI espionage investigation into his travels. Judge Richard Hertling of the Court of Federal Claims said in a ruling dated Friday that the court lacked jurisdiction to overturn decisions of the special master who oversees the fund. A lawyer for Amir Hekmati said Tuesday that he was disappointed by the ruling.
Twenty-nine years ago today, on May 30, 1992, Iran’s state-run radio suddenly declared “The riots in Mashhad were quelled.” As a renowned method, the Islamic Republic Broadcasting Organization (IRIB) did not elaborate on the details and only bragged about the State Security Forces’ power and firmness in the confrontation with fed-up citizens. The IRIB also described oppressed citizens as rioters and hooligans, paving the path for violence and severe punishments against detainees.
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), Iran’s largest dissident organization, revealed on Sunday that its independent tally of Chinese coronavirus cases in the country shows that over 300,000 people have died there since the pandemic began. Public health experts consider Iran’s response to the coronavirus crisis among the world’s worst. Iran allowed mass Islamic gatherings at the height of the first wave of the pandemic worldwide and has repeatedly promoted non-existent or unproven coronavirus “cures,” such as a vaccine allegedly developed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a jihadist terrorist organization.
Iran’s former intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi has said that during his tenure (2009-2013) the ministry was put at the disposal of the extraterritoral Qods (Quds) Force commander Qasem Soleimani. Moslehi, who served under former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said in a video interview with Rooz Plus online channel in Iran that the intelligence ministry staff were happy about Soleimani’s role but did elaborate further.
Iranian communists condemned this week a prison sentence of 30 months and 80 lashes handed to a woman for protesting against police violence. Narges Mohammadi’s “crime” was “to campaign for justice for the hundreds of innocent protesters killed in cold blood by the Islamist regime’s security forces over the course of a few days in November 2019,” the Tudeh Party of Iran pointed out following the sentence. Mohammadi had only been released from jail in October last year, the party pointed out, after serving eight-and-a-half years for “planning crimes to harm the security of Iran, spreading propaganda against the government, and forming and managing an illegal group.”
Iraq’s leader has been under intense pressure to rein in the dozens of paramilitary groups that are nominally under the command of the Iraqi government but have proved seemingly impossible for him to control. That was made abundantly clear this week, when Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi ordered a move against one militia leader and quickly paid a price.
Iran and the Central African Republic are in arrears on paying their dues to the United Nations’ operating budget and will lose their voting rights in the 193-member General Assembly, the U.N. chief said in a letter circulated Wednesday. In the letter to General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said three other African countries — Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, and Somalia — are also in arrears. But he said the assembly passed a resolution saying they can still vote in the current session which ends in September.
While it appears that the cease-fire between Israel and Gaza is holding, the latest eruption of violence between Israel and Gaza was just the latest illustration that this long-simmering conflict remains unresolved. It is a conflict that has deep roots in historical grievances and geopolitical fault lines, and would be challenging enough were it not for the encouragement and direct enabling of violence by a third party, one that has continued to escape accountability: Iran.
As the Iranian election looms for this year, the question of candidates is coming to the forefront. Since the Guardian Council, made up of 12 members who are directly or indirectly chosen by Khamenei, chooses the candidates, it is assumed that whoever they choose will be loyal to the regime and Khamenei. However, as the Iranian people continue to speak out against the regime in uprisings, protests, and boycotts, it is clear that the regime is splintering under the pressure.
A defining news headline in the early days of the Biden administration is the president’s pledge to re-engage Iran in a nuclear deal. However, a very different discussion is taking place on Capitol Hill. In March, Senator Bob Menendez, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham led forty-one of their colleagues in a letter to President Joe Biden on Iran policy. The letter notes that while they disagree on the nuclear deal, they remain united on “addressing the wide range of illicit Iranian behavior,” and list Tehran’s support for Shia militias and terrorism across the region as priority items of concern. The Biden administration has made a commitment to work with Congress on matters of foreign policy. Harkening the bipartisan concern about Iran is an important place to start.
اتحادیه اروپا خواستار بازنگری در حکم جدید نرگس محمدی شد| BBC News
اتحادیه اروپا روز پنجشنبه از ایران خواست پرونده نرگس محمدی، فعال برجسته حقوق بشر، که به تازگی در یک پرونده دیگر به ۳۰ ماه حبس و ۸۰ ضربه شلاق محکوم شده را مورد بازنگری قرار دهد. به گزارش آسوشیتدپرس یک سخنگوی اتحادیه اروپا ایران را ترغیب کرد “براساس قوانین بین المللی حقوق بشر و در نظر گرفتن وضعیت رو به وخامت سلامتی او” این پرونده را مورد بازنگری قرار دهد. اتحادیه اروپا گفت: “محکومیت اخیر خانم نرگس محمدی مدافع ایرانی حقوق بشر به زندان و شلاق یک تحول نگران کننده است.
برای سیزدهمین بار پرونده جدیدی علیه سهیل عربی، زندانی سیاسی گشوده شد | Voice Of America
مادر سهیل عربی زندانی سیاسی میگوید، برای سیزدهمین بار پرونده جدیدی برای این زندانی سیاسی در دادگاه انقلاب گشوده شده و قاضی اتهامات اجتماع و تبانی» و «فعالیت تبلیغی علیه نظام» را به او تفهیم کرده است. فرنگیس مظلوم، مادر سهیل عربی، زندانی سیاسی محبوس در زندان رجایی شهر در گفتگوی اختصاصی خود به صدای آمریکا گفت، جلسه دادگاه روز دوشنبه ۳ خرداد در شعبه سوم بازپرسی شهید مقدس اوین با حضور وکیل پرونده در دادگاه برگزار و آقای عربی نیز به صورت مجازی از زندان در این جلسه حضور داشته است. خانم مظلوم مصادیق اتهامات وارده را، نوشتن بیانیههایی در رابطه با وضعیت نامناسب زندان و بیانیههایی در رابطه با انتقاد از دادیار ناظر بر زندان عنوان کرد و گفت، قاضی در دادگاه از سهیل عربی در رابطه با این افشاگریها سوال پرسیده است که او در جواب گفته است: « بروید تحقیق کنید و یک خبرنگار بی طرف بیاورید آنجا ببیند، اگر من دروغ گفتم اتهامات شما را قبول میکنم.