Iran: slide and shift

Saturday are three men hanged in the prison of Orumieh.
Arshad Mahmoudi, Saleh Malaki and Mohammad Ali Bimesal were convicted for drugs trafficking.



Shirin Ebadi of the Iranian Defenders of Human Rights Centre condemned Saturday the draft bill on Internet crime,warning that it could boost the executions.
The human rights organization opposes this law and says that if this bill is adopted, there will be further infringement of the freedom of expression, citizens' judicial security will be jeopardised and executions will increase.
The draft bill lists a range of crimes such as rape and armed robbery for which the death penalty already applies.
But it also includes "establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy".
Those convicted "should be punished as 'mohareb' (enemy of God) and 'corrupt on the earth'," and under Iranian law they are punishable by death.


The Iranian bank Sarmayeh plans to establish a branch in the Netherlands.
The managing director told reporters that the bank will be registered in The Netherlands and operate under the Dutch banking and monetary laws.
The bank is established in 2005 and is one of six Iranian private banks.
Fars newsagency said that the total revenues in the last Iranian fiscal year was $144 million.
The profits for the last Iranian calendaryear were $53 million.



The Iranian oil Minister announced Saturday the discovery of a new oilfield of about 525 million barrels near the port city of Assaluyeh in Bushehr province.
He called the discovery unprecedented because most of the discoveries in the Assaluyeh region have been gas fields.
Iran's oil reserves are estimated at around 136 billion barrels.


Iran's former ambassador to Sweden, Hassan Qashqavi, is appointed spokesman of the Foreign Ministry.
He was also Iran's ambassador to Kazakhstan and a lawmaker prior to ambassador in Sweden, which he was since 2004.
Mohammad-Ali Hosseini, who was spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, is currently deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs.

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: (re)search

The investigation into the death of Zahra Bani Yaghob is considered closed and put in the archives by the public prosecutor’s office of Hamedan’s Revolutionary Court, Branch 3.
The lawyer for the family, Shirin Ebadi, stated that they will appeal the case.
She submitted a request to the office of Ayatollah Shahroudi, to transfer the case to Tehran for a fair trial, because the officers and authorities involved in this case,are associated with Hamedan’s judicial office.
The request to transfer the case to Tehran was accepted, and a letter was sent to Hamedan. After this nothing happened.
Zahra Bani Yaghub was found dead in her cell the morning after she was arrested by the moral police. According to authorities, she committed suicide by hanging herself. Shirin Ebadi says she has reasons that show this was not the case.



Two days after confirmation of the deadsentence for the Kurdish teacher
Farzod Kamangar is July 14 another teacher in Kurdistan province
sentenced to dead.
Hosein Panohi is charged for mohareb (enemy of islam) and activities against national security.
He was brought to the jail of the Information Ministry in Gharaveh. He has been tortured and went into a hungerstrike to protest. After this he was transferred to Sanandaj.


July 17 four activists of the Movement for the Rights of South-Azerbaijan,
Sajad Radmekhr, Aydin Khajai, Daryus Khatami en Feraz Zekhtab, were arrested.
They were detained at the entrance to the Tabriz university and their flats were searched.
They are transferred to an unknown place.



Thursday, 70 teenagers were by the moralpolice from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Bassij arrested on a party in Shiraz.
The warrants for searching the premises and arresting the participants were provided earlier by the judicial authority.
The participating juveniles resisted arrest , but 70 of them got arrested.
The files for the seventy juveniles have already been referred to Shiraz prosecutor's office for 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: tie and untie

Wednesday struck two eartquakes measuring 4.2 and 4.0 on the Richter scale the city of Shahmirzad in Semnan province.
There are no reports of serious damage.



Last Sunday is the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mohammad-Ali Hosseini, appointed as Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs.
Also Abu Taleb Shafeghat is appointed governor for Bushehr province, Habibollah Dehmardeh governeur for Kerman province and Sha'bani governeur for Markazi province.


According to Kurd.net are after the 19th anniversary of the assassination of the Kurdish leader Dr. Abdulrhaman Ghassemlou (Qasimlo), who was assassinated in Vienna, 1989, 86 kurdish civilians arrested in Bokan.
Later they were transferred to prisons in the cities of Uromiyeh and Miandoab.
Iranian police also started a crackdown against satellite TV dishes.
Kurd.net reports that thousands of dishes have been confiscated by the Iranian security forces.

Asia Society writes that two leading Iranian experts on HIV/AIDS are arrested.
The brothers Arash and Kamiar Alaei are experts who have pioneered HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment activities in Iran. In the Asia-Pacific region they worked with Asia Society for years.
Since 1998 the brothers have been carrying out preventionprograms in Kermanshah province and since 1986 they work on ongoing programs concerning the prevention and care of HIV/AIDS, STI, and Drug-Related Harm Reduction into the Iranian National Health Care system.
They worked at a plan to regional cooperation among 12 Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries.


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: society

The Central Bank of Iran announced that the inflation rate in the week ending July 11 increased 45.82 percent compared to the same period last year.
Among the food groups rice, with 238 percent, had the highest rate of inflation.
This group also includes dairies, vegetables, meat and sugar.


Complete text of the draft bill to expand crimes punishable by death to include certain blogging and website activities can be found here (fa) and here (eng).



Ahmed Batebi,the student activist who became "face of Iran’s student protests" in 1999, because of the photo on the cover of The Economist, and was sentenced to death which was changed to 15 years in prison, has fled through Iraq to the United States.

Because of serious health problems following extreme torture he was temporarily released to get medical attention.
In The New York Times is an interview.


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: work

July 14 is a man hanged in the prison of the city of Orumieh.
He was convicted for murder on a security guard.




Soghra Najafpour (31) is again sentenced to death for a murder she alledgedly committed when she was 13.
At the age of nine, she was sent by her family to work as a servant in a doctor’s home. Four years later she was accused of killing Amir, the eight-year-old son of the family.
She was sentenced to death.
At the age of 17, she was taken to be executed, but the victim’s mother requested the authorities to postpone the execution to a later time.
Since Amir’s family didn’t take further steps to carry out her death sentence, Soghra was released from jail on a bail of $6000 in October 2007.
When Amir’s parents learned of Soghra’s freedom, they once again requested the court to ensure her execution.
Her lawyer submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court calling for a review of the case. The Supreme Court decided to send the case to another court for reconsideration.
The court has now once again sentenced Soghra Najafpour to death.


A new oil-field in Khuzestan province, which holds around 1.1 billion barrels of crude oil is discovered by Iran.
In northern parts of Khuzestan's Andimeshk city is a new extractable oilfield discovered.
According to Iran's Oil Minister more than 230 million barrels of the field's oil deposits could be extracted.



1200 workers of Alborz Elastics Factory in Tehran are on strike for several months of nonpayment of wages owed to the workers.
Through the country, are protests and strikes at large and small factories alike, particularly over the past two years.
According to the website Dastranj are workers in hungerstrike.They are pressured by management, supervisors, security personnel and military personnel to break their hunger strike.
According to Fars the workers of Khuzestan Pipe Factory closed the Ahwaz-Khorramshahr road on July 9, 2008 to protest nonpayment of their wages.
This strike was broken after the military forces of Ahwaz intervened and the management promised to pay two months of back wages. Up to this point, there is no report of these payments.
At the Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Factory in Khuzestan, is on Sunday, July 12, 2008, after months of strike and promises, agreed that the workers received two of five outstanding months of back wages.
There also are reports of strikes at Tehran blanket and Iran Therme blanket factories in Ghom, at Iranian Steel Industries in Tehran, at the Long Distance Communications Industries in Fars province, as well as worker unrest in the iron mines of Khorasan Razavi Province.


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: causal

In the city of Sabzevar are July 14, six men in public hanged.
The stateradio reported no details on names or convictions, but said
that they all were "arazel, troublemakers".




The wife of still missing American Robert Levinson plans to visit Iran in the coming weeks.
Although she has still no other news then that of the disappearing of her husband in March 2007, she is convinced her husband is alive.
She says that a lot of theories are floating around, but no concrete information is given.


Iranian automanufacturer SAIPA plans to export over 20,000 automobiles to Algeria in the next three years.
SAIPA has exported to Algeria various makes of its Pride and Rio line-up.
Since its establishment in 1966, SAIPA participated in projects with Citroen and Renault of France, Nissan of Japan and Kia Motors of South Korea.



Five students who were arrested last week following the anniversary of student protests in 1999, are released.
The newspaper Etemad reports that Mohammad Hashemi and Bahareh Hedayat are arrested and transferred to Evinprison, Tehran.
Both are members of the central council of the pro-reform student group The Office to Consolidate Unity.
A unnamed judiciary official told IRNA that they were arrested on accusation of "links with illegal and counter-revolutionary groups outside Iran".
He said also that their arrest has nothing to do with their studentactivities.
At least 18 students are still detained.


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: lawfully/unlawful

In the prison of Isfahan are Sunday two men hanged.
The website of the statebroadcaster said that the unidentified men were convicted for the murder on a couple in Damaneh.



Thursday is in the prison of Sanandaj a man hanged.The man, Ahmad Khalaj was sentenced to death by hanging by Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj.The sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court.
The way the execution was conducted, makes the execution order questionable and shows a lack of regards for the laws by authorities.
Ahmad Khalaj only learned of his execution on the morning of that day, and initially tried to commit suicide.
He suffered heavy blood loss and was rendered unconscious. He was transfered to a medical facility where his injuries were attended to.
Judge Baba'i, assigned to Sanandaj’s Revolutionary Court, Branch 1, insisted on proceeding with the execution order.
Iranian law states that in cases where an individual is not medically fit, the person cannot be put to death until the individual has fully recovered.
Furthermore, the law says that an execution should be done before sunrise, otherwise it must be postponed to another date.
Ahmad Khalaj’s execution occurred after 11:00 am while he was still suffering and bleeding to the extent that he was too weak to stand on his own.


In the city of Tehran the narcotic police have busted weapons, 800kg drugs and arrested drug dealers in an overnight operation.
A crackdown on drug and weapons dealers was launched last year to maintain social safety.
The spokesman for the police said that the crackdown was still in effect and that the police will continue tracking down drug cartels.



According to the newspaper Etemad, the death sentence of the juvenile offender Mohammad Fadaei, is going to be reconsidered by the Supreme Court.
He was scheduled to be executed June 11, but his sentence was postponed partly due to pressure from the international community.
Faeie alledgedly committed a murder when he was a minor.
He says he had confessed to the crime under torture.
Also he was convicted in a Court, where his defence lawyers were false lawyers.


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: Quantities

On the anniversary of the 1999 student riots, Iranian authorities arrested a number of student activists in Tehran and Mashhad
Ali Gholizadeh, secretary of the Islamic Student Association of Shahroud University
Ali Saberi, former secretary of Islamic Student Association of Polytechnical University
Salman Sima, Azad University student activist,
Mehdi Khodayee, Azad University student activist
Reza Arab, Mehdi Qodsi, Amir Sarabi, Majid Asadi, Mojtaba Emadpour, Bayat, Towhid Dowlatshenas, Mohammad Zera'ati, Farzad Hassanzadeh, Sajjad Rajabi, Mohammad Mizban, Ashkan Arshian, student activists
Mohammad Ehsani, both Sistan va Balouchestan University student activist and former secretary of the Islamic Student Association.
According to Advarnews(fa) the arrested students are transferred to ward 209, Evinprison.


The head of Iran's Tobacco Company has denied that the country directly imports cigarettes from the United States.
He said that Iran imports cigarettes through multinational firms and not directly from the US.
He said this in response to a report which said that the US has exported $158 million worth of cigarettes to Iran during George W. Bush's term as president.
The american presidential candidate McCain recently joked in response to the report that the US could kill Iranians by sending them cigarettes.



President Ahmadinejad replaced the Minister for Transportation.
As caretaker he apponted Hamid Behbahani.
He told journalists that it is not unusual to make changes in a country of 70 million, provided these changes do not negatively affect the country's affairs.
The Supreme Leader Ayatolla Khamenei appointed new commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
Brigadier-General Mohammad Jafar Assadi was appointed commander of IRGC's ground force, and Hojjatoleslam Hossein Taeb was named the new commander of IRGC's Basij force.
Brigadier-general Mohammad Hejazi, retaining his post as acting IRGC commander, was appointed commander of the Sarallah Military Base.


Iran released 22 Indian nationals.
They were aboard 5 Saudi fishing boats that were seized last week while fishing in Iranian territorial waters near Bushehr.
According to the head of Saudi borderpolice all vessels returned “safely” to Darin, on the Saudi east coast.



The Iranian police discovered 1500 kg drugs and arms in Iranshahr, Sistan-e-Baluchestan province.
This happened after chasing and stopping two suspect vehicles. Three people were arrested.
Also a large amount of weapons such as RPGs, automatic weapons and Kalashnikovs and a large amount of munitions were seized from the smugglers.


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: rightly/wrongly

The deathsentences of Farzad Kamangar, Ali Heydarian and Farhad Vakili are approved by the Iranian Supreme Court.
Farzad Kamangar, a Kurdish teacher, was sentenecd to death Februar 25 by branch 30.
He was charged for being member of the Kurdish organization PKK.
Ali Heydarian and Farhad Vakili were sentenced by the same court to 10 years of prison and execution.



The public hanging of Ahmad (32),who was scheduled to take place on Thursday July 10. in a village outside Varamin, is postponed for a month.
The decision of postponing the execution was made by the family of the victim, while the noose was already around Ahmad’s neck.



Mahboubeh Karami and nine women who were illegal arrested, three weeks ago, while being passengers in a bus passing by a protestdemonstration at Mellat Park, Tehran, have all decided to go on hunger strike.
Karami's lawyer said that he has not succeeded to visit her and that he is not aware of the charges against her.
The mother of Karami told that her daughter has said in a telephone conversation that she is beaten and with 9 other women, varying in age from 17 to 70, is detained in a small cell on ward 209, Evinprison, Tehran.
Mahboubeh Karami is a member of the One Million Signature Campaign


The newspaper Jam-e Jam reported that Iranian police has arrested a serial killer.
The man, Babak, is suspected of murdering eight women.
The police recovered the bodies of six women wrapped in bedsheets from the streets of Karaj in the past six months.
All women were strangled to death by their scarves.
The man confessed and said to the police that he hated women because two of his relationships had failed.


Iran has voluntarily reduced its caviar export quota from the Caspian Sea by one ton this year.
The director of Iran's Sturgeon Research Institute said that Iran will export 42 tons in 2008, instead of the allowed 43 tons.
Iranian scientists estimate that sturgeon could be extinct within 14 years if poaching is not controlled.
The quata is set each year by the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species for the five Caspian Sea countries.
These countries are Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Russia.


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: decrease

In the city of Borazjan, Bushehr province, are July 10, four men hanged in public.
Their initials are H. N. A - P. M - h. G (fa).
They all were convicted for murder. One of them was an Afghan national, the other three men were from Bushehr province.
The public hangings were a warning to "ashrar", a term used for those who disrupt public order and who fight with the authorities.


The unemployment rate in Iran has fallen below the 10 percent mark for the first time in recent years.
According to the latest data by the Iran Statistics Center,unemployment stood at 9.6 percent during the past season.
Compared to spring 2007 this is a 1.1 percent fall, and compared to spring 2006, this is a fall from 1.4 percent.
Reducing unemployment rate below 10% has always been a challenge to Iran.
Every year 750,000 people enter the labor market.


The Dutch newspaper NRC reports(du) July 9, that a group of Iranian-Dutch students has protested against the decision of Dutch Foreign Minister Verhagen to exclude Iranian students from specified studies.
This decision comes after a change in the law dealing with the sanctions because of UN-resolution 1737 concerning Iran.
Through these extended sanctions (du) Iranians, also those with a Dutch passport are excluded from 9 studies at Dutch universities and work at specified companies.




The weblog Critical Distance shows a video about the entertaining Tehran traffic.

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