Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been on a hunger strike for the past two weeks, has been denied visitation rights for three weeks. The prison’s disciplinary council told Sotoudeh and her family that no visits allowed in the next three weeks, and provided no reason for their decision. Sotoudeh is serving a six-year jail term for her connection with the Defenders of Human Rights Center and is barred from practicing law for ten years.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Sayeed Zinali’s mother said that 14 years ago, her son was arrested at university several days after the student riots (July 1999), and there has been no trace of him ever since. Authorities told the family that he had been released from prison, but has disappeared. His family has been unable to obtain any information about the fate of their son.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Vahid Asghari, a jailed Iranian accused of “launching pornographic and anti-Islam websites”, has written two letters to the Iranian judiciary to file a complaint against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, accusing his jailers of subjecting him to physical and mental torture.
HRANA, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, published the two letters today. Asghari writes that he has sustained “extreme spiritual, mental, familial, physical and bodily harm” from the “tortures” he was subjected to while in custody.
Asghari was arrested in 2008 by the Ministry of Intelligence, along with Saeed Malekpour and Hassan Sisakhi, for their online activities.
Asghari and Malekpour have been sentenced to death and Sisakhi is sentenced to life in prison. All three are currently being held in Evin Prison.
Asghari writes in his letter that a simple exam by the coroner and a perusal of the Evin Prison medical examination will demonstrate beyond a doubt that he has been subjected to torture. He also indicates he has witnesses who would attest to the fact that he was tortured.
He writes that he has detailed his ordeal in a 200-page book called “The Description of Tortures.”
Asghari was arrested in May of 2008 at the Tehran airport as he was about to return to India to finish his studies. He was later shown on state television confessing to the charges laid against him.
Asghari was sentenced to death in December of 2011.
Source: Radiozamaneh
Nasrallah Sayef, head of the Popular Resistance Wing of the Basij militia, referred to the “Bayt el-Almakdes” maneuvers by the Basij rapid-response battalions as being held in different cities. He declared that following the current series of maneuvers, similar maneuvers would be held in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province on Thursday and Friday, November 1-2. These maneuvers will continue to be held in additional provinces over the coming months.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Iran Daily Brief: Satar Beheshti is a well-known activist on the social networks and also manages a personal blog. His whereabouts are unknown.
At least nine Iranian women political prisoners have gone on a hunger strike to protest snap body searches and abuse by prison guards at the main prison in Tehran, according to an Iranian opposition website.
The kaleme.org reported late Wednesday that the women started the strike after female guards at Evin prison in northern Tehran carried out unannounced inspections that included body searches, beating and verbal insults of the prisoners.
The report said the prisoners were mainly political activists and journalists convicted in the wake of mass street protests that followed the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The website says the strikers have demanded an apology and guarantees that the guards would not undertake similar actions in the future.
Their strike coincides with that of internationally renowned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been refusing food in the same prison since last week to protest mistreatment by authorities.
Prison authorities have banned Sotoudeh, 46, from having family visits by her husband and children.
A lawyer who represented imprisoned Iranian opposition activists, Sotoudeh was as detained in 2010 and a court sentenced her to six years in prison on security charges.
Britain’s Middle East minister Alistair Burt expressed concern Wednesday over the health of Sotoudeh and urged Iran to review her case.
A delegation from the European Union last week cancelled a visit to Tehran after Iranian authorities rejected its request to meet Sotoudeh and dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
The European Parliament awarded the 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to both in October.
Panahi’s films are known for their humanist perspective on life in Iran, often focusing on the hardships of children, the poor and women. He won the Camera d’Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
Panahi was also sentenced to a six-year prison term in Tehran.
Source: Alarabiya
Israel and Iran are trading words and insinuations over whether the Iranian stealth drone which Hizballah launched over Israel on Oct, 6 did or did not obtain images of sensitive Israeli sites.
Wednesday, Oct. 31, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) spokesman contradicted comments made two days earlier by IDF Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, who said the unmanned aircraft had not been able to take photos as Iran claimed, because “I don’t think there was a camera there.”
IRGC spokesman Brig. Gen. Ramezan Sharif retorted: “The fact that we have obtained the images of many areas that are important for us is the proof that we have conducted a successful mission,” he said.
DEBKAfile’s military sources: This was the first public admission by an Iranian official that the IRGC was indeed behind the drone’s launching from Lebanon into Israel’s air space from the Mediterranean Sea. It was shot down over the Negev desert after several hours.
After the intrusion, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his movement had sent the drone and that the aircraft was “Iranian-built and assembled in Lebanon.”
On Sept. 16, the IRGC chief Gen. Ali Jaafari announced that units of Al Qods Brigade, the corps’ intelligence and terror arm, had taken up position Lebanon.
Lebanese President Gen. Michel Sleiman’s angry request for clarifications from Tehran has never been answered. Neither US nor Israel reacted to this infringement of Lebanese sovereignty, or to the placement of Iranian soldiers in areas bordering Israel.
The IRGC official’s statement Wednesday actually confirmed the charge that Iran was using Lebanese territory for operations against Israel and that the stealth unmanned aircraft was the precursor of direct military operations. In his words, “They (Israelis) must know that we possess the information we need on necessary areas in case a particular situation arises” – indicating those areas would be targeted for Iranian retaliation in the event of an Israeli attack on Tehran’s nuclear sites.
His comments were released just hours after French President Francois Hollande received Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the Elysée in Paris. The issue of a nuclear Iran topped their agenda.
Ahead of their meeting, Netanyahu told French reporters: “Five minutes after an attack on the Iranian nuclear program, a sense of relief would spread across the Middle East.”
DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources say that by the verbal duel, Jerusalem and Tehran are trying to find out how much the other has discovered in the wake of the drone’s expedition into Israeli airspace: Iran wants to know what Israeli cyber warfare and air force experts have learned from the downed intruder, while Israel is trying to figure out what intelligence, if any, it transmitted to the Iranian cyber warfare experts and IRGC controlling the drone operation from Hizballah security headquarters in southern Beirut.
Maj. Gen. Golan threw out a hint, when he said the Iranian aerial vehicle “could fly over Israel for a long time, which could develop into filming abilities.” In other words, the Iranians may have assembled images with the help of simulation equipment other than cameras.
The Revolutionary Guard spokesman’s comment that “we possess the information we need” fits in with the Israeli general’s remark.
Also suggested by the Iranian general’s comments, say DEBKAfile’s Western intelligence sources, is the suspicion in Tehran that their drone was not shot down by Israeli missiles, as officially reported, but downed intact with very minor damage by a joint operation of the Israel Air Force and cyber warfare experts. Now, Tehran is trying to reconstruct how much the Israelis learned from the equipment it carried.
Source: Debka
Authorities at Rajaï Shahr Prison are refusing to hospitalize Fuad Khanjani despite the fact that the necessary approvals have been issued by legal authorities. Fuad, a Baha’i student suspended from his studies and imprisoned for his religious beliefs, suffers from a severe medical condition and intense pain, but authorities at the prison continue to prevent him being transferred to hospital on false allegations. He was sentenced to four years in prison, and his grandfather, Jamalaladin Khanjani – considered one of the leaders of the Iranian Baha’i community – is also serving a 20-year prison sentence in Rajaï Shahr Prison.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Iran’s Judiciary denied President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a visit to the country’s notorious Evin prison last month. His press advisor, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, is currently serving a six months sentence in that prison for publishing an article offensive to the public decency.
Following publication of the news about the unsuccessful ‘presidential’ attempt to pay a visit to Evin, Iranian jailed political prisoner and Cleric, Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi reacted to the incident. A translation of his open letter to Iran’s Human Rights Activists follows.
Iranian state-run media that enjoy no freedom and independence, have been talking about the Evin prison lately and a visit attempted by the head of this fascist regime to a prison which symbolizes all of the crimes the regime has committed under the name of Islam.
But what really is the quarrel about? Doesn’t the second man in power in the Islamic Republic (Ahmadinejad) really know what is going on inside the walls here?
Last year when his deputy had to spend some time in our ward, he saw all that I have experienced for the past seven years. All I that have seen, heard or have been informed about by the prisoners or acquired them from older prison guards; he heard them all.
I told him to tell his boss that in ward 209 of Evin, vicious torture of inmate takes place. My family, friends and I experienced horrifying instruments used on us to inflict pain early on when I was brought this prison. I remember, my six-months-old grandchild screaming and Mohseni Eje’i demanding that I confess to have worked for the west and foreigners.
Top judge of such regime should obviously prevent any inspections (of his prisons). He knows well what he has done. Here (Evin) is a complete portrait of 33 years of (mullahs’) rule and a lie dubbed falsely as revolution. This so-called God-sent leader manifests brutality of the Iranian rulers. Your prisoner is human but your treatment of us (prisoners) resembles that of zoo keepers.
If the cries of son of profit are a lie, why not allow lawyers, being Iranian or from foreign countries to visit? Why not allow others see and hear what transpires in your courts?
You labeled me a Mohareb and condemnd me to execution in your courts from behind closed doors. If it wasn’t for the help of God, there would have been nothing left of this political dissident by now.
You consider advocates of justice, peace and freedom, to be those who are interfering with your national issues. You label the United Nations resolution as being political and reject Dr. Ahmad Shaheed’s report (UN Human Rights Rapporteur for Iran) as provocations by opponents.
The world should know that Evin is a dungeon and torture chamber run by the ruling dictatorship (in Iran). Velayat-e Faghih (Ali Khamenei) has blood on his hands. Independent and fair historians will never stand aside and watch all these miseries quitely. Our cries will bring down tyranny.
Sid Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi
October 2012
Evin Prison
Teheran, Iran
Source: Inside of Iran
According to the reports received by the “Human Rights and Democracy Advocates in Iran”, the judiciary of Vali Faghih, Mullah Ali Khamenei has commenced planning for mass execution of the prisoners in Gohardasht prison during the last few weeks.
A board appointed by Ali Khamenei’s judiciary has been established in Karaj Gohardasht prison within the last few weeks, headed by a person called “Najafabadi”, one of the deputies to Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the Tehran Attorney General. This person gives some forms to the prisoners that have been convicted to death sentence and urges them to fill in the forms.
These forms, in addition to the personal specifications, confront the convicted prisoner with the major highlighted question that “Why your death sentence has not been executed yet?”
Initially most of the sentenced to death prisoners refused filling out these forms; but in the subsequent stage, those aborting prisoners were called individually by Najafabadi and were obliged to filing the relevant form and the same question asking “Why your death sentence has not been executed yet?” was asked emphatically.
Such forms have been distributed among all the sentenced to death prisoners in different wards of the Gohardasht prison and they are required to fill them out.
In this phase, the plaintiffs of the convicted to death prisoners are called on and are put under pressure to ask for execution punishment of the prisoner or pay the required costs for keeping them in prison to the State Prisons and Security Corrective Measures Organization. The requested amounts are high and practically the plaintiffs are unable to pay them off; so they are persuaded this way to request for executing the prisoner’s death punishment decree.
Vali Faghih, Mullah Ali Khamenei seeks legitimating of his deeds through adopting this method from the one hand, and intensifying the fear climate in the society by mass execution of his violence victims.
It is reported that more than 1,000 inmates await execution in the Gohardasht prison of Karaj.
Human Rights and Democracy Advocates in Iran warns about the against humanity plan of Vali Faghih, Mullah Ali Khamenei’s judiciary for mass executions in prisons. We urge the UN Secretary General, High Commissioner for Human Rights, and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to refer Ali Khamenei’s case to the international courts for trial to end the against humanity deeds of Iranian regime.
Source: Inside of Iran
