Samine Ahsani, a child rights activist and a member of the Baha’i minority was sentenced to five years in prison by the appellate court. Samine was charged with anti-regime propaganda, harming national security, membership in the Baha’i cult and membership in an illegal human rights organization.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Appellate court confirms three year imprisonment in exile handed down to Mariam Allengi, wife of political prisoner Mohsen Digmrechi who died of illness.
Mariam was sentenced to three years in prison by the Revolutionary Court headed by Judge Salavati and now confirmed by the appellate court headed by Judge Zargar, who ratified the sentence. Allengi must serve her sentence in exile at Rajai Shahr Prison. Allengi’s husband, Mohsen, was one of the most prominent figures in the Tehran bazaar who was arrested during the post-election events after helping families of political prisoners. Mohsen was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but became ill with cancer and died last year. Mariam herself was arrested one month after her husband and held for over 70 days in solitary confinement while being subjected to emotionally and physically harsh interrogations.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Two Iranian journalists, Shiva Nazar Ahari and Jila Bani Yaghoob, have been arrested in order to serve previously imposed jail sentences. Their detention brings to five the number of women journalists in jail in Iran.
Ahari, 27, a human rights activist and editor of the Azad Zan (Freed Women) website, is serving a four-year sentence for plotting against national security and transmitting anti-government propaganda. She was also sentenced to 74 lashes.
Yaghoob, who has been a journalist since 1994, wrote for many reformist newspapers (now closed) about Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq. Her “We are journalists” blog was awarded a press freedom prize in the 2010, and the year before she won the International Women’s Media Foundation’s courage-in-journalism award.
She was arrested in June 2009 along with her husband, fellow journalist Bahaman Ahamadi Amoee. Yaghoob was released on bail two months later, but her husband was given a five-year jail sentence for articles critical of the Ahmadinejad administration.
In October 2010, she received a one-year jail sentence and was banned from working as a journalist for 30 years.
Yaghoob and Amoee are not the only journalist couple to be in an Iranian prison at the same time. Mahssa Amrabadi has been serving a two-year jail sentence since May while her husband Masoud Bastani, who worked for the daily Farhikhteghan, is serving a six-year sentence.
Bastani was given temporary permission to leave prison yesterday to receive medical treatment. He has requested permission to visit his wife in her prison.
Yaghoob and Amrabadi, are being held in Evin prison while their husbands are serving their sentences in Rajaishahr prison, regarded as one of Iran’s harshest jails because of its many reported cases of torture, rape and murder.
Source: Guardian
Diplomats say the U.N. atomic agency has new intelligence that Iran has advanced its work on calculating the destructive power of a nuclear warhead, a step toward building such a weapon.
The diplomats say the information — from the U.S., Israel and at least one other country — alleges the research was done within the past three years.
Iran denies that it has worked on nuclear arms and says allegations to the contrary are based on fabricated intelligence.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency gives credence to the suspicions and says it cannot disprove them unless Iran starts cooperating with its probe of the allegations.
The information comes from six diplomats who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss intelligence.
Source: AP
Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, who is also a former IRGC Commander, said that “Defending the Palestinian nation is in line with our strategic defense interests, and Lebanon and Syria are our strategic depth… If the Zionist regime (Israel) does anything against us, resistance groups, especially the Lebanese Hezbollah, as our strategic defensive depth, will give a response to this regime more easily.”
Source: Iran Daily Brief
Iranian student activist Rashid Esmaili has been arrested by security forces in Esfahan.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reports that Esmaili, an executive member of the student group Tahkim-e Vahdat, was arrested on Saturday September 8 without an arrest warrant.
According to the HRANA report, Esmaili was first arrested in December of 2009 while he was undergoing cancer treatment. He was banned from graduate studies in human rights at Allameh University and in recent months was involved in journalistic activities with various websites.
Advar News reports that Esmaili will be held by the Revolutionary Guards Security branch until his interrogation is complete.
Last June 17, international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, issued a joint statement expressing grave concern about the conditions for students at Iranian universities and the escalation of “arbitrary” arrests, as well as the expulsion of students and professors on the basis of their beliefs and political views.
According to the statement, since 2009 more than 600 students have been arrested and many are serving heavy prison terms. In addition, hundreds more have been banned from continuing their education on the basis of their political views and activities.
Source: Radiozamaneh
Issa Saharkhiz, an Iranian journalist who was returned to jail part way through his medical treatment in hospital, is refusing food and medication until the authorities heed his demands.
The Kaleme website reported on Monday, September 10, that the medical team at Rejai Shahr Prison, where Shahrkhiz was serving his sentence, announced that it was not able to provide for his medical needs and will not be responsible for him.
Issa Saharkhiz, according to the report, had been in hospital for the past six months to undergo treatment but, on August 28th, he was transferred to Evin Prison, at which time he began his food and medication strike.
Saharkhiz was arrested in July of 2009 in the widespread crackdown on protesters who claimed the presidential election had been rigged in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Saharkhiz was charged with “insulting the leader and propaganda against the regime” and given a three-year sentence. However, last June, after he had served his time, the authorities refused to release him, and he remains in custody.
According to his son, the judiciary opened an old case against him and handed him another prison term of 18 months.
In June Shaharkhiz wrote a letter to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN’s Special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, describing the dismal condition in Iranian prisons.
Source: Radiozamaneh
Two months after political prisoner, Arjang Davoudi, was transferred to solitary confinement in Wing 209 of Evin Prison, there is still no news on his fate or condition. Ministry of Intelligence agents are preventing his family from meeting with him and are also not allowing them to speak with him on the phone.
Source: Iran Daily Brief
By:Amir Farshad Ebrahimi
1. A series of terrorist attacks and attempted terrorist attacks in various countries around the world in recent years have again shown that Israel is being subjected to a global Iranian terrorist campaign. The attacks, which take a variety of forms, are organized and orchestrated by the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Hezbollah serves as the Quds Force’s main proxy abroad for its terrorist missions. In our assessment, the terrorist attack targeting the bus of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria was carried out by Hezbollah as part of the Iranian campaign and from their point of view was the most successful to date (five Israelis, the Bulgarian bus driver and the terrorist were killed and 36 Israeli tourists were wounded.)
2. The objective of Iran’s terrorist campaign, which accelerated during the past year, has several objectives. One is to counteract what Iran feels is a covert campaign being conducted against it. In concrete terms, its goal is to exact revenge for the deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists and senior Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, which Iran and Hezbollah attribute to Israel. Thus Iran seeks to deter Israel from taking other action against it and to strengthen its position in the campaign against the United States and Israel. It also seeks to signal that it has the operational capabilities to respond strongly should it be attacked.
3. During the past years Iran and Hezbollah have targeted Israeli diplomats posted to various countries, Israeli tourists and in at least one instance Jewish public figures (in Azerbaijan). In addition, the Quds Force has also tried to carry out terrorist attacks against Saudi Arabian and Bahraini targets, the most conspicuous of which was the attempted assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States on American soil.
4. To date, attacks in the Iranian terrorist campaign against Israel (accelerating since May 2011) have been carried out in several countries, among them Bulgaria, Cyprus, Kenya, Azerbaijan, Indian, Georgia, Thailand and Turkey (See the Appendix for details). In most instances the attacks failed or were prevented, either at the planning and intelligence-collecting stages or during implementation. In some instances local security services found Iranian and Hezbollah footprints, which could have caused diplomatic incidents and complicated Iran’s relations with the various countries. In India in February 2012, terrorist operatives affixed a magnetic explosive device to the car of the representative of the Israeli ministry of defense, and his wife, who was driving the car, was wounded in the ensuing explosion.
5. In retrospect, Iran has shown both daring and the determination to continue its efforts to attack Israeli targets despite a series of failures. The successful Hezbollah attack in Bulgaria, which ended the series of operational failures, is liable, in our assessment, to encourage Iran to continue and even intensify its terrorist campaign. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Iran has developed plans to disrupt international oil trade, including though attacks on oil platforms and tankers,” both inside and outside the Straits of Hormuz, in retaliation for international sanctions and other pressure exerted on it.[1]
The Structure of the Paper
6. This study is the first part of a comprehensive paper on Iran’s terrorist and subversive activities around the globe and of its export of the Islamic Revolution, with emphasis on the Quds Force in carrying out operations around the world during the last decade. Two additional studies will be issued dealing with the main arenas of Iranian terrorist activity (by national and continental distribution) and an analysis of the particular methods employed by Iranian terrorism. Another study will deal with the terrorist activity of Lebanese Hezbollah, which serves the main proxy for both the Quds Force and the Iranian regime.
7. This study is composed of two parts:
Part One: Introduction – Iranian terrorism and its objectives
1. Iran as a global exporter of terrorism
2. The ideological dimension: the concept of exporting the Iranian Islamic Revolution
3. The role of the Shi’ite communities in the Iranian campaign of terrorism and subversion
4. The regional dimension: exporting the revolution in view of the upheaval in the Arab world
Part Two: The Quds Force
1. Overview
2. Objectives and activity
3. The founding of the Quds Force
4. Structure and organization
5. Unit 400
6. Profile of Ghasem Soleimani, Quds Force commander
7. Profile of Ismail Qa’ani, Quds Force deputy commander
8. Interim balance sheet of Quds Force activity
Part Three: Appendix: Terrorist attacks carried out by the Quds Force and Hezbollah against Israeli and Jewish targets around the globe since May 2011.
Source: iReport
Iranian political prisoner Gholamreza Khosravi Savadjani, currently held at Evin Prison in Tehran, is to be executed on Monday September 10, his family has been informed by the judiciary.
The Melli Mazhabi website was informed about the imminent execution by a member of the political prisoner’s family, while the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has also been informed by a rights activist in Iran that Khosravi’s death sentence is to be executed in the coming days.
The unidentified human rights activist has told the Campaign that there are two specific legal violations in the processing of the case.
He stresses that legal provisions prohibit the transfer of the case from Rafsanjan to Tehran after sentencing. Furthermore, he reports that the two defence attorneys in the case have been arrested, the charges against Gholamreza Khosravi have been changed to “moharabeh” (enmity against God), and his six-year sentence for “spying” has been changed to the death sentence.
Human rights sources report that Gholamreza Khosravi Savadjani was arrested in Rafsanjan on spying charges in 2007 and a year later he was sentenced to six years in jail for “funding assistance to a television network run by the People’s Mojahedin Organization.”
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran is an exiled dissident group that the Islamic Republic considers as one of its archenemies.
Khosravi’s case was reviewed in Tehran after the 2009 crackdown on election protesters in Iran, and he was sentenced to death. Some reports indicate that his record of a five-year prison term in the 1980s for political activities was used against him in the issuance of the death sentence.
Source: Radiozamaneh
