January 2012
14 posts
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Iran reissues death sentence for Canada resident:... →
MONTREAL — Iran’s Supreme Court has reinstated a death sentence against an Iranian resident of Canada who had been accused of running a pornographic website, a lawyer working on the case said Thursday.
The death sentence meted out to Saeed Malekpour was reinstated by the court, after it had reportedly been annulled in June, said Shadi Sadr, a lawyer with the advocacy group Justice for...
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EU's foreign policy chief demands Iran halt... →
The Europe Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton demanded Friday that Iran halt the pending executions of a woman sentenced to die by stoning and a Christian pastor convicted of apostasy.
Ashton also called on Iran to impose an immediate moratorium on the death penalty, saying the country leads the world in the number of executions per inhabitant.
“Thousands of individuals remain...
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TAKE ACTION: Demand Iran Reject Anti-Human Rights... →
Send an e-letter through United4Iran.
Your Excellency:
I write to express concern about a new bill before the Iranian Parliament that contravenes Iran’s international human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I am especially concerned about provisions within the new penal code that violate the rights of Iranian citizens through:
• Continued harsh...
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“Amir Mirza Hekmati was sentenced to death … for cooperating with the hostile...”
– Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency [the voice of the Revolutionary Guards], as quoted by Reuters, regarding the sentencing by Iran’s Revolutionary Court of an American man for spying. (via breakingnews)
Current and former U.S. government officials told Reuters in November that Iran had succeeded...
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Iranians have lost the right to surf the Web... →
The Iranian Cyber Police published new rules on Wednesday designed to allow officials to know exactly who is visiting what Web sites. Before they can log on, Iranians are required to provide their name, father’s name, address, telephone number and national ID, according to an Iranian media report cited by Radio Free Europe. Cafe owners will be required to install security cameras and to...
What's happening in the Persian Gulf explained. →
motherjones:
Iran is talking tough, America is scrambling the aircraft carriers, and the world economy’s bobbing like a drunken sailor. Here’s everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask - from what it means to you, to how it relates to some mysterious explosions in Iran.
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Daughter of former Iranian leader gets prison time →
Tehran, Iran (CNN) — Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former Iranian president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was sentenced to six months in prison for making anti-government statements, semi-official Mehr News Agency reported Tuesday.
Hashemi was arrested last year for taking part in anti-government protests, and the announcement of her sentence comes as parliamentary elections near.
Her...
Nuclear Threat Initiative: Iran Country Profile →
December 2011
2 posts
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November 2011
14 posts
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Iranian soccer players could face lashing after...
Two Iranian soccer players who engaged in “inappropriate” celebratory behavior during a game broadcast on national television might face public lashings on the pitch, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported Tuesday.
Members of parliament, sports officials and judges have called for the “swift punishment” of Mohammad Nosrati and Sheys Rezaei, two soccer stars who play for one of Iran’s most...
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“The interim report notes “certain practices that amount to torture, cruel, or...”
– UN Report Documents Iran’s Human Rights Crisis
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WATCH: Letters from Iran →
While winds of change have been blowing through the Arab world this year, Iranians have been forced to wait for political reform.
In 2009, in the aftermath of an election that saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad controversially returned to power as president of the Islamic Republic, millions took to the streets of Tehran to protest against the result. But the demonstrations were brutally repressed and the...
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“Tehran is one the higher capitals on the earth’s surface, and not only in...”
– Chasing the Dragon in Tehran
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“You’re both creating change in the legal system and you’re trying to create...”
– Fighting for Women’s Rights in Iran
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'Iran opposition will unite with government should... →
mohandasgandhi:
“If there should one day be any military interference in Iran, then all factions, regardless of reformists or non-reformists, would get united and confront the attack,” said the cleric, who is a harsh critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Khatami was referring to threats by Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear sites after an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report...
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“Washington will only neutralize Iran by exploiting the regime’s main...”
– Why Obama Should Highlight Iran’s Human Rights Abuses (via mohandasgandhi)
UN to broker deal between Iraq, Iranian exiles... →
akio:
At issue is a group of about 3,300 exiles at the remote Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province who seek the overthrow of Tehran’s clerical rulers. Members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, they won refuge at Ashraf decades ago during the regime of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who saw them as a convenient ally against Tehran’s theocracy.
Since Saddam’s fall in 2003, the...
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Iran's Basij Launches Website To Cover Occupy Wall... →
akio:
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has claimed that the [OWS] movement will ultimately bring down capitalism in the United States.
“One problem is that the corruption of capitalism has become clear to the people. Of course this movement might be suppressed, but they cannot destroy the roots of the movement,” Khamenei said in an October 12 speech.
October 2011
9 posts
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seaofgreen:
Number of juveniles on death row: 100
Number of executions so far in 2011: 200
Increase in Iran’s execution rate under Ahmadinejad: 300%
UN Special Report, 2011
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Officials say FBI foiled Iranian-backed bombing...
shortformblog:
Iranian bombing plot stymied by FBI: American officials reported today that the FBI infiltrated and derailed a terrorist plot backed by Iran. The plan involved paid collusion from an elite Iranian security force to the Zeta drug cartel of Mexico (unbeknownst to the Iranians, the contact they believed to be with the Zetas was cooperating with the FBI). The intended outcome was a...
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September 2011
8 posts
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Released Hikers Slam Iranian Government, Call for... →
Excerpts:
“Many times, too many times, we heard the screaming of other prisoners being beaten and there was nothing we could do.”
“Sarah, Josh, and I have experienced a taste of Iranian regime’s brutality…It is the Iranian people who bear the brunt of this government’s cruelty and disregard for human rights. There are people in Iran who are imprisoned for years simply for attending a protest, for...
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Iran frees hikers, many journalists remain... →
New York, September 21, 2011—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the news that U.S. journalist Shane Bauer and his friend Josh Fattal were released today on US$1 million bail by the Iranian government after two years in Tehran’s Evin Prison, according to news reports.
“We welcome the news that Bauer and Fattal have finally been released after two years of unjust...
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Iran: Jailed American hikers hit another snag in...
shortformblog:
what Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, the American hikers stuck in Iran, won’t get out on a combined $1 million in bail until Tuesday … due to the process getting held up.
why One of the Iranian judges that needs to sign off on the hikers’ bail just so happens to be on vacation. Wait … they couldn’t find someone else to sign? source
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Iranian human rights lawyer arrested ahead of... →
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Iran’s president offers to pardon Americans →
TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that he intends to release two Americans who have been jailed on charges of espionage for two years and grant them a “unilateral pardon.”
“I am helping to arrange for their release in a couple of days so they will be able to return home,” Ahmadinejad told The Washington Post in an hour-long interview at his office here.
The Americans,...
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“Regional nations can assist the Syrian people and government in the...”
– In Shift, Iran’s President Calls for End to Syrian Crackdown
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Catching the Internet's spies in Iran and... →
…What does this mean? It means that somebody in Iran had gone to great lengths to intercept supposedly secure Internet traffic, including Gmail messages.
This was not a trivial undertaking. The Iranian users’ reports reveal what must have happened. The snoopers’ associates had either broken into or defrauded the Dutch Internet security firm DigiNotar, and obtained from them a...
August 2011
4 posts
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More arbitrary arrests, concealment of political... →
Reporters Without Borders condemns the increase in repression in recent weeks in Iran. One of the latest victims is the blogger Kouhyar Goudarzi, who has been detained since 1 August, the day that Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, arrived in Tehran to begin a fact-finding visit. Goudarzi’s mother was arrested the next day in the southestern city of...
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Hikers face hard time in Iran's tough Evin prison →
(CNN) — The grim stories of two women who endured long-stretches of solitary confinement in Iran’s most notorious prison are chilling omens for the two jailed U.S. hikers who each reportedly received an eight-year prison sentence on Saturday.
Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer have been abused and assaulted in Evin Prison, their friend Sarah Shourd said in a BBC interview in June. Evin is...
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Ron Paul to Rick Santorum:
kateoplis:
seaofgreen:
“The senator is wrong on his history. We’ve been at war in Iran for a lot longer than ‘79. We started it in 1953 when we sent in the coup to install the Shah and the reaction, the blow back, came in ‘79 and it’s been going on and on because we just plain don’t mind our own business.”
What’d you know? Someone actually stated a fact.