Basij Commander, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, said that Iran manufactures UAVs with much more advanced technologies than the Hezbollah drone that was intercepted by Israel. He added that today, Iran possesses different types of UAVs, from the most basic types to “drones with bombing capabilities… The progress was made while we were under sanctions by the Western and Eastern powers… Today, we can even arrange a parade for our different UAVs.”
Source: Iran Daily Brief
The appellate court upheld the four-year prison sentence handed down to Mohammad Hassan Taheri, son of Ayatollah Taheri, the former Imam Jomeh of Isfahan and son-in-law of Ayatollah Khomeini. Taheri was accused of disturbing public order, insulting regime officials and harming national security. The appellate court cancelled the ten-year exile that had also been imposed.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Kurdish journalist and teacher, political activist and citizen, Shahu Hosseini, was fired from the Ministry of Education and Culture. Hosseini was arrested several months ago by the Intelligence Ministry in Mahabad and was released after 11 days in custody.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
The head of the UN atomic agency says possible clean-up efforts by Iran to dismantle a suspected nuclear site are continuing ahead of next month’s talks with representatives of world powers.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, speaking during a visit to neighboring Iraq on November 11, that activities to dismantle the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran are ongoing.
Western powers believe Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at developing atomic weapons, but Tehran insists it is for peaceful purposes.
The IAEA, which on November 9 is expected to release its latest report on Iran’s controversial nuclear activities, has announced it will hold talks with Iran in Tehran on December 13, after a four-month hiatus.
Source: rferl
Forty-one political prisoners held at Evin Prison’s Ward 350 have issued a joint statement testifying that dissident blogger Sattar Beheshti was tortured to death while in custody.
The 35 year-old was arrested by Iran’s cyber police on national security charges on 30 October. After raiding his home in the city of Robat Karim and violently arresting the young activist, the security forces confiscated his personal belongings, including his computer and handwritten notes.
A week later, his family was told to receive his body and to buy a grave.
Kaleme, an opposition website close to Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, has published a letter it said Beheshti had written to prison officials while being held in Evin. In his letter, the blogger complained about maltreatment and tortured during his interrogations.
Since Beheshti’s death, his family have been under the pressure and surveillance of Iran’s security apparatus. They’ve also been ordered not to speak to the media about the death of the family’s only breadwinner.
The prisoners of Ward 350 say that Beheshti was held there from 31 October – 1 November. During these two days, they add, they witnessed Sattar Beheshti’s “painful” physical and psychological condition.
“We consider it out national and religious duty to inform the honourable people of Iran about his condition.”
The 41 inmates add, “In the presence of inmates from Ward 350, he [Beheshti] stated that he had been beaten while being hung from the ceiling of the police station. The police then tied his arms and legs to a chair and beat him in that position.”
At times, the prisoners claim, Beheshti’s captors were beating him after handcuffing his hands from behind. “At times, they threw him onto the floor and delivered severe blows with their boots to his head and neck. During the tortures, the most profane language was used against to insult family and he repeatedly received death threats.”
The inmates say they witnessed various bruises, marks and wounds on the body of Beheshti, who appeared to be in agonising pain. They state that Beheshti’s wrists, in particular, bore the marks of extensive torture.
“Sattar, who could hardly write owing to [severe] pain in his arm, wrote a letter of complaint to the head of Ward 350 and in a few lines described his condition and maltreatment at the hands of police, and asked for an investigation.”
The detainees testify that Beheshti was then taken to the Evin Prison clinic where a doctor saw him. On 1 November, he was transferred from Ward 350 to [a facility presided over by] the security police. “As he was leaving, he was very worried and told inmates that ‘they [the police] want to kill me.’ Four days after his transfer, his family was informed of his death.”
According to the 41 prisoners, Beheshti’s torture in Ward 350 is by no means an isolated incident.
They held the leaders of the Islamic Republic responsible for all the blood that has been unjustly spilt as part of the regime’s heavy-handed suppression of dissent.
On Sunday, the Coordination Council of the Green Path of Hope, the Green Movement’s highest decision-making authority, expressed its “deep regret” over Beheshti’s “murder.” “Sattar Beheshti’s only crime was that he criticised the country’s despots and inadequate rulers,” the council said in a statement.
“His body was secretly laid to rest in the absence of his family, and with no regard for the rites of burial and funeral proceedings. Since then, not a single official from the police, the relevant judicial bodies or the security organisations of the Islamic Republic has been willing to provide any explanation for this tragedy. Cloaked in an eerie silence, state-run media have not been willing to cover the news of this murder either.”
Calls for probe
International rights groups have called on Iranian officials to launch an investigation into the circumstance of Beheshti’s death.
“Fears that Sattar Beheshti died as a result of torture in an Iranian detention facility, after apparently lodging a complaint about torture are very plausible, given Iran’s track record when it comes to deaths in custody,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa Programme Director.
“The Iranian authorities must immediately carry out an independent investigation into his death, including whether torture played a part in it. Anyone found responsible for abuses must be brought to justice in proceedings meeting international fair trial standards, without resort to the death penalty.”
On Sunday, the deputy speaker of the Iranian parliament announced that the Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy would be investigating Beheshti’s death.
The same day, Iran’s High Council of Human Rights promised to make public the results of its own findings on the case. “All aspects of the case have been accurately investigated following a special order by judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani,” the council said in a statement.
On Monday, the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Iran’s Judiciary Spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, as saying that an autopsy report revealed that Beheshti had indeed sustained bruises on five points on his body, including the legs, wrists, shoulder and one of his thighs.
According to Ejei, Beheshti was arrested on 30 October and died four days later on 3 November.
Just a few hours before Ejei’s announcement, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the Chairman of Iran’s Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, dismissed reports that Beheshti had been physically tortured while in custody.
“Based on initial information, there’s been no trace of beatings on the body of this individual,” he claimed.
Source: Iran Green Voice
Prison authorities prevented jailed lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh from visiting with her children today, even though the family was holding a permit from the prosecutor’s office.
Reza Khandan, the husband of the jailed human rights lawyer, reported on his Facebook page: “They contacted us from the prosecutor’s office to say that my children could pick up a permit to visit their mother in person. I had to make it to the prosecutor’s office within the hour.”
The report goes on to indicate that Khandan quickly collected his children and went to the jail, and after a three-hour wait, they realized that the authorities were not going to let the children visit their mother.
Sotoudeh has been denied visits with her children for over four months. She has been on a hunger strike since October 17 to protest against the visitation restrictions and she has been in solitary confinement for 10 days now. She is not allowed telephone calls to her family either.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights lawyer, was arrested in September of 2010 for her involvement with the NGO called the Centre for Defenders of Human Rights in Iran. She is serving a six-year jail term and is banned from practicing law and travelling abroad.
Source: Radiozamaneh
Tanin Turabi, a Baha’i student studying English was suspended from her studies at Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin due to her religion.
Kamran Kitzer and Efshasin Sid Ahmad, two members of the Baha’i minority from Karaj, were arrested by security forces. Their whereabouts are unknown.
Security forces repossessed the private home of Hossein Alhordizadeh, a member of the Baha’i minority in Mashhad.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of straying onto its territory near oil and gas fields in the Gulf and warned it was looking at how to respond, the Saudi ambassador to the United Nations said.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Saudi authorities said Iranian helicopters flew several times over a gas field at Hasba, Abdullah al-Mualimi was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper Okaz on Monday.
The letter also said two Iranian navy boats intercepted a vessel belonging to state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco.
“I have submitted to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a letter that details Iran’s breaches of the official conventions and treaties between it and Saudi Arabia,” Okaz quoted Mualimi as saying.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment, saying the issue was under the jurisdiction of the Defence Ministry. A Defence Ministry spokesman was not available to comment.
Mualimi was quoted as saying the Saudi government had not requested international intervention but was “studying the appropriate practical steps to deal with the issue”. He said the kingdom reserved the right to respond with appropriate action to protect its territory and oil.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry has sent a letter to the Iranian Foreign Ministry asking that such incidents are not repeated and stressing that the areas where the incidents occurred are Saudi-owned under agreements signed between the two countries in 1968, Mualimi said.
Separated by about 250 km (150 miles) of Gulf waters, Shi’ite Muslim power Iran and Sunni-led Saudi Arabia have often tense relations. Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of fomenting unrest among Shi’ites in its oil-rich Eastern Province, a charge Iran denies.
Source: Inside of Iran
A source close to the family of Sattar Behesthi, a blogger whose family was told on November 6 that he had died in a detention center, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iranthat the blogger’s family was threatened with arrest if they spoke with the media. The source told the Campaign that the blogger’s family is under a state of unofficial house arrest.
Beheshti, a 35 year old blogger, was arrested on October 30 at his home in Robat Karim near Tehran. On November 6 authorities contacted his family, informing them of his death in custody without further explanation. The source who requested anonymity told the Campaign that Sattar Behesthi’s immediate family told the source “not to let Sattar’s death be in vain.”
Asked whether those who took delivery of the body had observed signs of physical abuse on the body, he relayed what one of the people who saw the body told him. “He told me that there was a large dent on his head and that they had put plaster over his head. His face was swollen. As soon as they untied his shroud, blood splattered on the shroud from the side of his right knee. As soon as they untied his shroud it became completely bloody, and there were signs of an autopsy on his body, as well,” the source told the Campaign.
“Security forces took the entire family’s cell phones. Where they didn’t get the telephone sets, they noted the numbers for surveillance. Right now, nobody is at Sattar’s mother’s home and all family members are staying at his sister’s home, where there are four cars on their street, each with three or four forces in it, monitoring the comings and goings of individuals to the home. They also prevent the neighbors from entering and only a group of about 20 people who are close to the family and were also present at the burial can come and go to Sattar Beheshti’s sister’s home,” the source told the Campaign, adding that all individuals present at the burial of Sattar Beheshti were photographed and videotaped.
“On Wednesday, the day of the funeral, they had agreed to deliver the body. [But] when Sattar’s sister arrived at the Mohammad Taghi Shrine in Robat Karim, the forces came toward her and threatened her with detention because of the interviews she had conducted with the media; and [only] after the family members intervened did the forces allow her to attend the funeral. But they emphasized to her in her husband’s presence that ‘if you give interviews to foreign media, we will take him somewhere where you will never see him again.’ They also told her husband that ‘if you have no mercy on yourself, you must have mercy on your 20-month-old baby,’” the source added.
“They have completely cut off their access to the outside world, and even neighbors are not allowed to enter or leave. They have a ceremony scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on Friday at the Shrine of Mohammad Taghi in Robat Karim and they instructed that the family can only distribute food. They told them, ‘You cannot hold Third and Seventh Day ceremonies in the mosque.’ The family posted signs in the neighborhood announcing [details about] the memorial ceremony, and the forces would immediately remove the signs from walls,” the source close to Sattar Beheshti’s family told the Campaign about the family’s present conditions. The source said that during the time the forces were at Beheshti’s sister’s home, her phone rang and one of the forces picked up the phone to tell the caller who was from a media outlet in search of an interview with the family members, that Sattar Beheshti was in hospital due to his hunger strike and hung up.
“What most people didn’t know was that about 20 days or less before his last arrest, twice security forces went to their home for interrogations without a warrant. After he was released he told me that the first time they came to his home his laptop computer wasn’t at home. The forces took some of the newspaper clippings he kept at home in a notebook. After a few days they came back again and this time one of the neighbors informed him that forces were in front of the entrance door (Sattar explained all this to me himself). Sattar haned his laptop to his friend and when the forces came inside, they couldn’t find a computer,” the source told the Campaign about the conditions that led to Sattar Beheshti’s arrest on October 30.
“They summoned him on the phone a few days later, telling him to go to the Seyed-al-Shohada Base in Robat Karim. I can’t remember whether he turned himself in or they arrested him. He said, ‘they took me, but not to the address they had said,’” said the source.
The source, who spoke to Sattar Beheshti after his first arrest, told the Campaign about the conversation with Beheshti, “The interrogator at the location beat him and asked him to sign a piece of paper. He told him, ‘I won’t sign what I don’t know about.’ After a whole day, they lifted up his blindfolds and put two X’s at the beginning and end of an area and he signed it. After two days of interrogations, he was released from the unidentified security organization. He said, ‘As I was leaving, one of those individuals said that we will see you back again soon.’…In the last update he wrote on his Facebook page, he wrote that he had been threatened and that ‘they said we will take you and kill you and put your mother in mourning for you.’ He said that the individuals who threatened him said that ‘you are talking too much.’ In his post Sattar wrote, ‘Now I am telling you to stop talking too much. Do not oppress so I will stop writing.’”
“When I spoke with him after his release, he said, ‘I came out after I made a promise.’ But he was told that ‘We will arrest you soon.’ When I told him to stop, he told me, ‘I can’t. I will get sick. I will go crazy if I don’t write,” the source added.
“When I was talking to Sattar, I told him to close his Facebook account and his blogs. For a while Sattar was telling me that ‘I am being threatened a lot and I think it might be better for me to leave the country.’ I knew his financial situation fully well. I told him that the situation in Turkey is unsettled now and that it is hard to accept these hard conditions and you never know what could happen, you must work. What would you do with your mother? And a thousand and one other things,” the source added.
The source told the Campaign that Sattar Beheshti sent news about political prisoners or videos from protests to sites known as “Green websites” abroad. “He said ‘I have to do something. Things don’t get better with silence. The kids’ lives are lost in vain this way…Sattar was arrested previously in 2000 and spent some time in detention,” the source told the Campaign.
“This family is not political at all. They are an extremely simple and healthy family. I spoke with Sattar and his family many times, offering to pay for their internet costs, but he always said, ‘I must pay the cost of my freedom,’ he was so proud,” said the source close to Sattar Beheshti’s family.
Source: Iran Green Voice
Maryam Sharbatadar, wife of Faizollah Arab Sourkhi, a member of the Revolutionary Mujahidin, was summoned to the court as part of the campaign of pressure on political prisoners and their families. Arab Sourkhi’s daughter was arrested in the past and interrogated in an isolation cell of the Revolutionary Guards. She is now hospitalized in serious condition.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
