Iran: halted

The blog iran-human-rights.blogspot.com writes that August 20, 6 men are hanged in the prison of Birjand and 2 men are hanged in the prison of Karaj.
No further information is available.



Iranian statetelevision reported that in an accident with a truck in South-Iran 30 illegal Afghans were killed and 67 others got wounded.
The wounded were transported to hospitals in Shiraz.
The cause of the accident is still investigated.




ISNA reported that Iranian filmstar Golshifteh Farahani is banned from travelling to Hollywood. She was on the airport of Tehran to go to Hollywood to study an acting offer.
A reason was not given.

(Photo Payvand.com)



The daily Kargozaran writes that the filmstars and director Ezatollah Entezami, Parviz Parastooi and Kiumars Pour-Ahmadi are
summoned to appear for the prosecutor in Tehran for trying to save the life of a childoffender.
They started an action to fundraise money to pay the "bloodmoney" for Behnoud Shojaee.
Shojaee is convicted for a murder he committed when he was 17-years-old.
According to the newspaper the family of the victim lodged a complaint.



The deathsentence for Shabnam Parastes, 33 has been upheld by the Supreme Court.
In 2006 she is sentenced to death for murdering her husband.
She is imprisoned in Raja'i Shahrte prison in Karaj.
Amnesty International calls for urgent action.



In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: advisory

Yesterday are in the prison of Isfahan three men hanged.
Reza Hejazi (20) was sentenced to death for a murder he committed when he was 15.
Initially the family and lawyer was told that the execution was postponed, however he was executed later that morning.
Asghar A. an another not identified man were sentenced to death for rape.

August 19th, two men were hanged in the prison of Tehran.
Gholamreza and Amin were sentenced to death for drugstrafficking.


Iranian judiciary has approved the death sentence of Amir Amrollahi, a juvenile who unintentionally stabbed a young man to death in a fight when he was 16.
Daily Kargozaran writes that the execution order has already been sent to the prison.
The court in Shiraz sentenced Amir to death and the verdict has been approved by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.


According to a report of Iran Human Rights Committee the appeal court has confirmed the death sentence of Amir Karim Bahram. He is sentenced to death for murder during a group fight. At that time he was 17-year-old. Karim is being held in Mahabad prison.
On the request of the victim's family he was been sentenced to qesas (compensation through punishment fitting the crime).
He always denied the charges, also he had no lawyer during his trial.



President Ahmadinejad appointed Professor Hamid Molana as advisor.
Molana has a Masters degree journalism (1960) and a Ph.d. in Communication and Political Science (1964) at Northwestern University. He is founding director of the US-based International Communication Program.
He is among the top academics in the field of international relations and communications and has served as a professor for nearly 50 years in universities in the US and Europe.


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: activist

Shirin Ebadi told during a news conference that she has lodged a complaint against news agency IRNA over an article claiming that her daughter had converted to the Bahai faith.
Ebadi accuses the state news agency of "spreading lies, insults and defamation."
The allegation is a serious one in Iran, not only is the Bahai faith outlawed but any conversion from Islam is regarded as apostasy, an offence punishable by death. Ebadi thinks that the allegation is related to her decision to defend seven Bahais arrested in April.
Earlier this year she had received death threats pinned to her office door, one of which was signed "The Association of anti-Bahais".



In Sanandaj, Kurdistan province are the teachers Hasan Ghorbani and Kaveh Rostami released after paying bail.
Four teachers, from those arrested in April while pursuing the case of Farzad Kamangar are still detained.
Also Sama and Habib Bahmani, members of Collective Advocates for Human Rights in Iran, and Farzad Hasan-Mirzaei, civil rightsactivist in Bokan are still detained.



Iran is acting with harsher and stronger punishments against labour-activists.
Seyed Qaleb Hosseini, is sentenced to 50 lashes and 6 months in prison.
Abdullah Khani, is sentenced to 40 lashes and 91 days in prison.
Sousan Razani and Shiva Kheirabadi, are sentenced to 15 lashes and 3 months in jail.
Housseni, Khani, Razani and Kheirabadi were prosecuted in connection with an illegal May Day demonstration in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province.
Khaled Hosseini is , sentenced to 30 lashes and a suspended prison sentence for his attempts to aid imprisoned labour activist Mahmoud Salehi.
Labour activist Afshim Shams is imprisoned awaiting sentencing.
Shams is a member of The Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers’ Organizations, and The Committee in Defense of Mahmoud Salehi.
In Tehran, the ongoing struggle by bus drivers to form an independent organisation has resulted in a recent dismissal verdict against 9 members of the bus workers syndicate.
The leader of the syndicate, Mansour Osanloo, was sentenced to five years imprisonment last year.
Labour unions are theoretically legal in Iran although attempts to form independent labour unions are often attacked.
A corporatist labour organisation, The Workers' House, is the main mediating body between capital and labour. This organization occasionally challenges governmental decisions, but it is seen to be a tool against workers.


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: attack

In the prison of the city of Zahedan, Sistan-e-Baluchistanprovince is a man hanged.
Enkethab says that the man, Hasan Sadeghpour was having an illegal sexual relationship.



Elahe Amani wrote an article for Iran Women Solidarity in which she writes about the consequences and backgrounds of the 'Family Protection Bill'.
The Family Protection Bill passed last week almost silently the first discussionround of Iranian parliament.
The law is a violation of the human rights of Iranian women, reinforcing current discriminatory laws, and creating an encouraging environment for polygamy.
Women rights activists, feminists, human rights defenders, as well as secular and religious groups (including some conservative women’s groups) oppose against the law and demand that the government take action to prevent it from passing through parliament for a final vote.


Nahid Jafari who was sentenced along with three other women, to six months in prison and 10 lashes has been cleared by an appeal court.
The daily Kargozaran reported that the fate of the other three women is not known.
The women got arrested in 2007, along with 32 other women,during a protest against the trial of another five women's rights activists.


Sunday are 35 Pakistan nationals arrested by Iranian borderguards and handed over to the Taftan police. The men were crossing the border and entered into Iranian territory without any legal documents.



The daily Kayhan wrote that the release of Ahmad Qasaban, Ehsan Mansouri and Majid Tavakoli, three students of Amir Kabir university was because they were pardoned by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran Human Rights write that they were released by strong efforts of their families, citing article 18. They have been in prison 15 months. They were sentenced for publishing articles against islam. At the review of their case, it came out that the articles they were alleged to have published were fake.


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: official

The Music Office of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Iran has denied the news pertaining live concert of Irish singer Chris de Burgh in Tehran.
The report says that no official request in this regard has been submitted to Music Office.
The Music Office urges the mass media to make sure of the authenticity of any report before releasing it.



Zeynab Bayzeydi from Mahabad, Kurdistan, is sentenced by court to four years in exile in the city of Zanjan, in West Azarbaijan Province.
She was arrested July 9th.
The Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan criticized the judicial proceedings, particular the absence of a defense lawyer, and the unclear nature of the charges.Zeynab Bayzeydi submitted a letter objecting to the charges against her and the sentence issued in her case, except for her cooperation with the One Million Signatures Campaign.
According to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network there are now eight people sentenced to death in Kurdistan province.
Their names are:
Adnan Hasanpour (journalist)
Hava Botimar (civil rights activist and journalist)
Farzad Kamangar (teacher and civil rights and human rights activist)
Anvar Panahi (teacher and civil rights activist)
Farhad Vakili (civil rights activist)
Ali Hardarian (civil rights activist)
Arsalan Olyaei (civil rights activist)
Habibullah Latifi (student and civil rights activist)


Yaghoub Khezri, 81, an exile-Iranian, living in USA for thirty years, returned 2004 to visit Iran.He got arrested and was sentenced april 2005 to three and a half years in prison and 99 lashes on charges of "womanizing and immoral acts".
Last month he was released and after many difficulties returned to New York.
New York Times reports about it.

In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: dormant

This year over 6 thousand tons of grapes will be harvested from 1973 hectares of irrigated land in South Khorasan province.
The harvest will continue until late in september.
The most important species of grapes are “Askari”, “Yaghouti”, “Hosseini”, “Pikami”, “Shahroudi” and near 14 local species.
Also there are about 1400 hectares of non-irrigated land in the province, where grapes are grown, which have been suffering from drought since a few years ago.


The international teachersunion Education International calls for action to stop the execution of Kurdish teacher unionist Farzad Kamangar.
They ask the national teacher associations to publish a banner on their websites and give visibility to the situation of Farzad Kamangar and other teachers in Iran.
They also ask to appeal the Iranian government to:
review the case of Farzad Kamangar and to give further clarification about the charges against him and other teacher trade unionists currently detained,
commute Farzad’s death sentence
desist from the use of torture and allow Farzad Kamangar to have unimpeded contact with his family and his lawyer,
stop the harassment against the relatives of Farzad Kamangar and members of the Committee to stop Farzad Kamangar’s death sentence,
be open for a peaceful dialogue regarding the professional concerns of teachers in Iran.


Despite the denial last week by the chairman of the Education and Research Commission of Iranian parliament that the dismissal of elder professors at universities in Iran are political, more then 42 professors have been forced into retirement during the tenure of the current administration.
Based on unconfirmed news Dr. Karim Mojtehedi, Dr. Ali Sheikh Ulislami, Dr. Ghlamhosein Ebrahimi-Dinani, Dr. Mohammadreza Shafei-Kadkani, Dr. Reza Davari, Dr. Mohsen Jahangiri and Dr. Ebrahim Bastani-Parizi from the university of Tehran are dismissed.
Daily Etalaat expressed concern over the forced retirements of more than 30 prominent professors last Thursday in an interview with president Ahmadinejad. The president acted surprised, as if this was the first time he heard the news.
The undeniable fact of forced retirements began on July 22.

In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: environment

August 14 is a man hanged in the prison of Zahedan.
Hassan Sadeghpour was sentenced to death for rape.




The deathsentence for Mohammad Fadayee has been approved once again by Iran’s Supreme Court.
This means that he is in fear of imminent execution. Fadayee is sentenced to death for a murder he committed when he was 17.
The daily Etemaad reports that the execution was postponed two times for legal reasons, but since the verdict is approved again, there are no more options to go.
Also a new trial cannot take place.



IRIB reported that three mmembers of Kurdish PEJAK have been killed during clashes in Kurdistan near the border with Iraq.
One Iranian soldier was killed and two other PEJAKmembers, were injured in the clash.


Ali Hajipour,a political activist from Sardasht, detained the beginning of this year for involvement at the Kurdistan Free Living Party, is sentenced by the Revolutionary Court in Sardasht to five years imprisonment, two years of exile and a $215,000 fine.
Ayob Haghighi, a political prisoner from Orumieh, sentenced to seven years imprisonment began a hunger strike and has taken a vow of silence to protest harrassment by the prisonauthorities like not being allowed to have visitors or make telephone calls, as well as other basic rights he is entitled to as a prisoner. The prisonauthorities dismissed his claims and have threatened him.
Also they transferred him to a unsanitary section of the prison designed to hold newly arrived prisoners before being transferred to the general section.


Misagh Yazdan-Nejad,21, a student who was arrested September 2007, is hold since his arrest in section 209, Evin prison.He is accused of participating in commemoration ceremonies for political prisoners that died during mass executions, and for association with anti-regime organizations.
He is eleven months in prison now and still waiting for a trial.
Hoodyazrelo,,a student of Industrial Management at the University of Masomiah in Qum,
was summoned (via telephone) to Branch 2 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. There he was arrested and transferred to Evin prison, section 209.
He has been there for the past 76 days,of which 37 days in solitary confinement.
He is charged with contacting with a family member of his who is a member of an outlawed political organization.



Iran plans to enforce the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships to ban polluting ships from Persian Gulf and Oman Sea.
40,000 ships and vessels cross the waters annually and they pose a serious threat to the animals and environment of these waters.
MARPOL is one of the most important international marine environmental conventions and was designed to minimize pollution of the seas, including from dumping, oil and exhaust pollution.


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: about

Tapesh-2012 is not only a band but also a community whose aim is to bring democracy, peace and steadiness for Iran and the MiddleEast.
Therefore they started 100.000 Signaturesaction to collect 100.000 signatures within three months. December 2008 the signatures will be handed over to the European Union in Brussels.
By signing you say
No to the Islamic Republic of Iran and its human rights violations,
NO to War against Iran and YES to Democracy, secularism and Freedom in Iran.
The text of the petition is here (pdf)
Sign here.



Wednesday Iran asked Iraq to release Iranian pilgrims, currently detained in Iraq.
Each year thousands of pilgrims travel to Iraq, among them people without the right documents, some of whom are arrested over illegal entry.
Sources in Basra say that some 150 Iranian nationals are being held in detention in Iraq.



Turkey will increase its gasimports of Iran as the Russian-Georgian conflict has disrupted supplies from Azerbaijan.
BP announced on Tuesday that it had closed a natural gas pipeline running from the Azerbaijani field of Shakh-Deniz to Georgia and Turkey.
Reuters reported that a source at Turkish gascompany Botas told that the company would increase gas imports from Iran in order to compensate for a reduction in Azerbaijani supplies.He added that despite the BP decision, gas flow from the South Caucasus (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum) Pipeline would continue for at least another week.
The Caspian Energy Alliance says that the closure of the BTC pipeline cost $500 million.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was closed last week after it was damaged by bombings by Kurdish separatists.



Iran's controversial new interior Minister Ali Kordan said that he in 2000 received a honorary doctorate from Britain's Oxford University.
Several Iranian newspapers and Web sites reported over the apparently fake document and Monday the speaker for Parliament ordered an investigation to look into the degree's authenticity.
Wednesday the university of Oxford denied ever have handed out to Ali Kordan an honorary doctorate of law.
In Iran was a little uproar when the head of Majlis Research Center Ahmad Tavakoli published a copy of the document, with all its misspellings and grammatical errors on his news web site "Alef" and the site was blocked by the Chief prosecutor in Tehran.
The lawmaker said that the act was illegal behavior on the part of the Tehran prosecutor and that such moves heralds the government's intolerance towards criticism.


According to GlobalVoicesOnline Iranian blogger Varesh wrote (fa) that the three detained students of Amir Kabir university, Ghasaban,Tavakoli and Mansouri, have been released.




In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: statement

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Iranian authorities to make public any charges against Kurdish journalist and human rights activist Saman Rasaoulpour, 23 or release him immediately.
Rasoulpour was arrested July 27 in his house in Mahabad by 3 plain clothed officers and taken to the office of Iranian Intelligenceservice in Mahabad.
Since then he was not allowed to contact anybody. He only can contact a lawyer when he is formally charged.
Rasoulpour is a regular contributor to Rooz Online, a Farsi and English reformist news Web site where he has written about the lack of human rights for Iran’s minority Kurds.


The execution of Amir Amrollahi, 18 has been approved by Iran's head of Justice, Ayatollah Shahroudi.
Amrollahi is sentenced to death for the murder of another boy during a fight at the age of 16.
The approval means that Amrollah is in imminent danger of execution.



The according to newspaper Etemad Melli in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan province for homosexuality sentenced to death minors Mehdi Pouran (17), Hamid Taaghi, Ebrahim Hamidi, and Mohammad Rezai denied all charges of the plaintiffs against them and said the plaintiffs made up the story after they got in to fight with the boys because the plaintiffs were vandalizing the agricultural land of Mohammad Rezai's father.
They also say they were beaten and tortured by the police to obtain a confession.
The deathsentences were given based on Iran's Sharia Law which allows such sentencing without sufficient proof or witnesses but only based on "'Judges understanding" (Elme Ghazi) of the case.


During an interview with Mehragency the governor of Central Bank Iran said that Iran maybe removes three or four zero's from the Rial in a bid to revaluate the currency.
The most valuable banknote in the country is the 50,000 Rial bill, worth around $5.3.
People have no choice but to take stacks of money with them.
In Februar the CBI-chief told that Iran might introduce a 100.000 Rial banknote.
Printing money is the least effective of all reform policies.
Analysts think that Iran will act as Turkey did in 2005. That country lopped six zero's of its national currency to overcome a major economical crisis and to create the New Turkish Lira.


In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl

Iran: implementation

In the prison of Zahedan, Sistan-e-Baluchistan province, are four men hanged.They were convicted for drugstrafficking.
Newsagency Fars identified them as Gol Mohammad Saleh Zahi son of Gowara, Rahim Baranzehi son of Mohammad Rasoul, Lal Mohammad Zeyneddini son of Ebrahim and Asadollah Eshaghzehi son of Haji Gholam.


The daily Etemad writes that a man is sentenced to 6 months in prison and 74 lashes for stealing a pair of shoes from the keeper of a mosque in Tehran.
The keeper of the mosque had forgiven the thief, but upon his arrest, he was tried for theft.
The judge said that the man should be punished according to Iran’s Islamic penal code, item 656.
The actual sentence is 6 months to 3 years in prison with 74 slashes.


The analysis by "Iran Human Rights" showed that at least 71 people were executed in the month of July 2008. 65 of the executions were announced by the official governmental media, while 6 of the executions were reported by the Human Rights activists in Iran.
This is the highest number of monthly executions in the past several years.



An anonymous spokesman for the group Jondollah said Sunday that the group executed another two borderguards of the in June kidnapped policemen.
He said this was because of the failure of the contacts with Iranian authorities.
They also abducted three Revolutionary Guards officers, where this took place was not said.
The announcements were made to the satellite channel Al Arabya.



Iran made the first steps for implementing a economic plan that will make major economic changes.
There will be fundamental changes in banking, customs and taxsystems.It also includes changes in domestic supply systems, subsidization regulations and the national currency system.
It also foresees adjusting the country's currency, at a new rate against the dollar, thereby making imported goods cheaper.
The goal is to end rising inflation and ensure that low-income families pay less tax while benefiting from a greater share of government benefits.
The plan is strongly criticized by opponents who say that Iranian economy will be exposed to a surge of international competition, which they may not be able to survive.
A first step to implementation is made by distributing questioners among the public to gather the information it needs about their income.



In Iran there are childoffenders, still on death row.

Children are being hanged to death.
A child will be hanged to death.
Poster amnesty.nl