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Iran helps drive increase in Middle East executions

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Iran helps drive increase in Middle East executions

Amnesty International says the number of recorded executions rose steeply in the Middle East, driven by growing numbers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen. There were 149 more executions in the region compared to 2010, and Iran and Saudi Arabia alone can account for the increase.

Amnesty International reports that 18,750 people remained under death sentence at the close of 2011, and at least 676 people were executed that year. This figure, according to the rights group, does not include the thousands of executions which they believe were carried out in China without public acknowledgement, nor does it reflect the true extent of Iran’s use of the death penalty. Amnesty International believes that Iran is failing to report a substantial number of executions carried out in its prisons.

According to the report, the number of executions in the Middle East increased by 50 percent in 2011, with 68 people executed in Iraq, at least 360 in Iran, at least 82 in Saudi Arabia and at least 41 in Yemen.

Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco and Qatar still issued death sentences but continued to refrain from carrying them out.

Salil Shetty, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, reports that the vast majority of countries have stopped the use of the death penalty, and says: “Our message to the leaders of the isolated minority of countries that continue to execute is clear: you are out of step with the rest of the world on this issue and it is time you took steps to end this most cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.”

Amnesty International’s report also indicates that the United States remained the only country in the Americas and the only one in the G8 group of leading economies to carry out executions in 2011. Forty-three people were reportedly executed in the U.S. last year.

The report also indicates that in all of Europe and the former Soviet Union, there were only two executions in 2011, in Belarus.

The report indicates that the people who were sentenced to death or executed in 2011 did not in most cases receive a fair trial by international standards, adding that in many countries such as China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Saudi Arabia, the accused were forced to confess under torture.

The report notes, however, that some level of progress has been achieved, even in countries that continue to execute people. Amnesty International reports that the Chinese government eliminated the death penalty for “13 mainly ‘white collar’ crimes, and measures were also put forward to the National People’s Congress to reduce the number of cases of torture in detention, strengthen the role of defence lawyers and ensure suspects in capital cases are represented by a lawyer.”

The number of executions in the U.S. reportedly has fallen dramatically compared to a decade ago, and a moratorium has been announced in the state of Oregon. Many victims of violent crimes from across the U.S. have spoken out against the death penalty.

The Amnesty International Secretary General goes on to conclude: “Even among the small group of countries that executed in 2011, we can see gradual progress. These are small steps but such incremental measures have been shown ultimately to lead to the end of the death penalty. It is not going to happen overnight, but we are determined that we will see the day when the death penalty is consigned to history.”

Source: radiozamaneh

Auditor General links Iranian president to bank fraud

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Auditor General links Iranian president to bank fraud

Iran’s Auditor General said on Monday he has no doubt that the office of the president has given support to the Aria Financial Group, which has been accused of embezzling $3 billion by selling fraudulent letters of credit.

Mostafa PourMohammadi told the Khabar on Line website that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s office and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, have lent support to the suspects in the $3-billion fraud case and have made “every resistance” to stop public exposure of “the greatest financial fraud in the history of the country.”

The fraud is connected to the activities of the Ami Mansour Aria Group, which has been accused of using its influence and contacts in government and Parliament to get fraudulent letters of credit and receive large loans from several top Iranian banks.

MahAfarid Amir Khosravi, the top suspect in the case, has been charged with corruption on Earth, which he has denied in court.

Ahmadinejad and his administration have already been accused of perpetuating this great fraud through their lack of vigilance.

PourMohammadi told Khabar on line that the president’s office has justified its resistance to publicizing the details of the case by saying “it may destroy the economic integrity of the system and harm the banking and currency system.”

The Auditor General added: “There is no doubt that this group was supported by the administration, including the president, his chief of staff, ministers and banks.”

He maintained, however, that the Ahmadinejad administration was probably not in on the “very details” of the corruption and violations.

The administration has not yet reacted to these accusations, but Ahmadinejad has gone on the record denying any involvement in the case for himself and his administration.

PourMohammadi also indicated that Mahmoudreza Khavari, the head of Melli Bank who fled the country as soon as the news of the fraud hit the media, had a history of violations and financial abuse.

Source: radiozamaneh

U.S. Slaps Sanctions On Iran Firms, Quds Officials

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U.S. Slaps Sanctions On Iran Firms, Quds Officials

The U.S. Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on two Iranian companies, a Nigerian shipping agent, and three members of Iran’s hard-line Quds Force for their role in exporting arms to Syria and Africa.

The blacklist targets the firms Yas Air and Behineh Trading, and Quds officials Esmail Ghani, Sayyid Ali Akbar Tabatabaei, and Hosein Aghajani for weapons shipments the U.S. government says helped Iran “evade international sanctions and export violence.”

Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen said the action “again exposes Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond.”

He vowed Washington “will continue to expose the officials and companies involved and work to hold them accountable for the suffering they cause.”

The sanctions freeze all U.S.-based assets and ban business deals with U.S. citizens.

 

Source: rferl

Rights group accuses IRGC office

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Rights group accuses IRGC office

Justice for Iran says the IRGC’s Center to Investigate Organized Crime should be put on the international list of human rights violators.The human rights organization has published a new report entitled “Gerdab: A Dictated Scenario” that details the role of the IRGC’s Center to Investigate Organized Crime (Cyber Crime Office) in violating human rights in Iran.
The IRGC’s Center to Investigate Organized Crime was established in 2007 to work on its first project, dubbed “Gerdab” (Whirlpool). It resulted in the termination of 90 Persian pornographic websites and the arrest of 45 people accused of producing such sites.

Justice for Iran reports that in recorded confessions later aired on television, the detainees were seen admitting they intended to attack “the cultural basis of the Islamic Republic through corrupting and driving the youth from the right path as well as having political agendas against the government or Islam and receiving money from the American government to establish and produce pornographic content.”

A year and a half later, according to Justice for Iran, a number of these detainees or their families alleged that they had made these confessions under duress, the result of abuse and torture in prison.

Some of these detainees have filed official complaints against their investigators with the Iranian judiciary, but so far none has been processed.

The report goes on to indicate that seven people arrested in the Gerdab project have been sentenced to death, and three of them, Saeed Malekpour, Ahmadreza Hashempour and Mehdi Alizadeh, are in imminent danger of execution.

Justice for Iran adds that the IRGC’s Center to Investigate Organized Crime was instrumental in identifying, arresting and questioning election protesters from 2009.

The human rights groups also accuses the IRGC’s Center to Investigate Organized Crime of threatening journalists and bloggers such as Parastoo Dokouhaki, Marzieh Rasouli and Sahameddin Bourghani, accusing them of links to Persian BBC and coercing them into making false confessions.

These journalists were finally released, and their recorded confessions were aired on Iran’s national TV broadcaster and also on Press TV, the Islamic Republic’s English-language network.

Justice for Iran has already identified three of the people directly involved in carrying out the Gerdab project; they appear on the latest list of human-rights violators released by the European Union on March 24.

Justice for Iran says the international community must go further in its efforts to blacklist the center and all of the people involved in running it.

They also call for the blocking of the Gerdab website, which according to the rights group is used by the center “for repression and widespread violation of the rights of citizens and cyber activists.”

They also call for all sentences in the Gerbab case to be rescinded and for all the accused to be given fair trials.

Source: radiozamaneh

EU blacklists more Iranian officials

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EU blacklists more Iranian officials

The head of Iran’s Judiciary and the head of its state broadcasting network (IRIB) are on the latest EU blacklist for human rights violations.Ayatollah Amoli Lairijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, was added to the list for signing off on death sentences and sentences that involved stoning, flogging, amputations and pouring acid into the eyes of the convicted.
Ezzatollah Zarghami, the head of the state broadcasting network, is on the list for airing the “forced confessions and show trials” of dissidents.

Reza Taghipour, Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications, also made the list as “one of the top officials in charge of censorship and control of internet activities.”

The names of 17 Iranian officials were added to the EU blacklist this week after a meeting of EU foreign ministers. The EU also announced a ban on the export of technology that can be used for monitoring and intercepting telecommunications.

Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, said: “We deplore the continuing increase in executions and the widespread repression of Iranian citizens, including human rights defenders, journalists and members of the opposition.”

The latest list also includes two officials that fall directly under the command of Iran’s Supreme Leader. Ali Saeedi, who is Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, and Asghar MirHejazi, the deputy chief of the Iranian Supreme Leader’s office and also head of security, for their roles in the suppression of popular protests in 2009.

Solat Mortazavi, a political advisor to the Interior Minister, is also on the list, charged with having a role in restricting press freedom.

The EU blacklist now contains the names of 78 Iranian officials.

Source: radiozamaneh

China’s ZTE to ‘curtail’ business in Iran

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China’s ZTE to ‘curtail’ business in Iran

ZTE Corp, China’s second-largest telecommunications equipment maker, said it will “curtail” its business in Iran following a report that it had sold Iran’s largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring telephone and Internet communications.

Reuters reported Thursday that Shenzhen-based ZTE had signed a 98.6 million euro ($130.6 million) contract with the Telecommunication Co of Iran in December 2010 that included the surveillance system. ()

“We are going to curtail our business in Iran,” ZTE spokesman David Shu said in a telephone interview on Friday.

The article also reported that despite a longtime U.S. sales ban on tech products to Iran, ZTE’s “Packing List” for the contract, dated July 24, 2011, included numerous American hardware and software products.

The U.S makers of those products – which include Microsoft Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Oracle Corp, Cisco Systems Inc, Dell Inc, Juniper Networks Inc and Symantec Corp – all said they were not aware of the contract, and several said they were investigating the matter.

Shu said ZTE had decided “some time ago” to “shrink” its business in Iran, although he said the company had not yet decided on the details. “It’s still being discussed,” he said. He also said he did not know the reason for the decision. Until the Reuters article was published, ZTE spokesmen had declined to discuss the company’s business in Iran with the news organization.

“Right now we cannot release more information,” Shu said.

A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York could not immediately be reached for comment.

ZTE’s action would mark another blow to Iran, which is under global sanctions because of allegations it is trying to develop nuclear weapons – something the country denies. Current sanctions have not targeted Iran’s telecommunications sector. But several other major equipment makers previously have announced they were going to cut back their business there.

They include European firms Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens, as well as China-based Huawei Technologies. The actions have not meant an immediate end to all Iranian business, however, as some firms continue to honor existing contracts that can last for years.

But on Friday, European governments agreed to ban the sale to Iran by European companies of telecommunications equipment that could be used for repression, including to monitor or intercept internet and telephone communications. The ban takes effect Saturday.

Shu described ZTE’s business in Iran as much smaller than that of other equipment makers. Asked about the TCI contract, which included a large amount of networking gear along with the surveillance system, Shu said it was not yet completed. He said he did not know how it might be affected by ZTE’s decision to curtail its business in Iran.

TCI is owned by the Iranian government and a private consortium with reported ties to Iran’s elite special-forces unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The company has a near monopoly on Iran’s landline telephone services, and much of Iran’s internet traffic is required to flow through its network.

TCI officials in Tehran either didn’t respond to requests for comment or could not be reached.

ZTE is publicly traded, but its largest shareholder is a Chinese state-owned enterprise. It says it sells equipment in more than 140 countries and reported annual revenue of $10.6 billion in 2010.

Like most countries, including the United States, Iran requires telephone operators to provide law enforcement authorities with access to communications. Human rights groups say they have documented numerous cases in which the Iranian government tracked down and arrested critics by monitoring their telephone calls or internet activities.

Another ZTE spokesman said Thursday, “ZTE always complies strictly with all U.N. regulations, as well as local laws and regulations of the country we operate” in.

 

Source: insideofiran

Iran’s cyber police to keep checks on internet use

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Iran’s cyber police to keep checks on internet use

Iran hasn’t been shy about efforts to monitor, filter and block content on the internet. Now it has taken the next leap, turning online censorship into an institution.

This past week, the government said it has formed a high council dedicated to cleansing the country’s internet of sites that threaten morality and national security, launching what amounts to a centralised command structure for online censorship.

The Supreme Council of Cyberspace, created by decree last week by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, includes heads of intelligence, militia, security and the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as media chiefs. Charged with supervising all cyberactivity, it will have the power to enact laws, according to state media.

The body will have its own budget and offices, a member of the council said in an interview with state media on Wednesday.

Initiatives

In announcing the council, Iran unites internet-control initiatives that have previously been floated in state media. Along with other moves in the past week, it shows that the Islamic Republic, after long viewing the internet as a minor nuisance, has fully embraced the view that Iran’s vibrant online activity is a destabilising threat.

The Revolutionary Guards, or IRGC, said last week it has rolled out a secure internal network for high-level commanders, underscoring Tehran’s concerns about outside threats to its government’s online activities. Iran also announced in the past week that its “Cyber Army,” as it styles its legion of government hackers and bloggers, has reached 120,000, a number impossible to corroborate but well above previous tallies.

In an annual report released on Monday, the group Reporters Without Borders ranked Iran the number one enemy of the internet in 2012. It was ahead of 11 other countries — including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, China and Belarus — that the group says restrict internet access, filter content and imprison bloggers.

The Iranian council’s mandate became clearer on Wednesday when one of its members, conservative cleric Hamid Shahriari, said the council was the result of a year and a half of weekly meetings between security chiefs and Khamenei representatives. “We are worried about a portion of cyberspace that is used for exchanging information and conducting espionage,” he said in an interview with the semiofficial Mehr news agency.

“We have identified and confronted 650 websites that have been set up to battle our regime — 39 of them are by opposition groups and our enemies, and the rest promote Western culture and worshiping Satan, and stoke sectarian divides,” he said.

He didn’t name the sites or whether they had already been filtered. Shahriari said the council would also “focus and facilitate positive aspects of the internet, like business and trade.”

The IRGC’s new network — named Basir, or “Perceptive” — is a domestically built, secure telecommunication channel that will allow its highest-level officers to communicate and command brigades in the case of an attack, the guard’s newspaper, Sobhe Sadegh, reported last week.

‘Must prepare’

“We are not in an imaginary state of threats and sanctions,” Hussain Salami, the deputy commander in chief of the IRGC, said during the network’s inauguration ceremony last week, according to Iranian media reports. “We must prepare.”

Israel has in recent weeks drummed up support for a possible attack on what it alleges are sites linked to nuclear-weapon production, a pursuit Iran denies. Iran is also worried about cyberattacks on its nuclear facilities, such as the 2010 Stuxnet virus that appeared aimed at disabling Iranian centrifuge arrays.

The IRGC’s closed network appears to be separate from a national internet that Iran’s telecommunications company has said it expects to complete within a year, which leaders have billed as void of Western culture and un-Islamic content.

Source: GulfNews

Iranian weapons help Bashar Assad put down Syria protests, officials say

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Iranian weapons help Bashar Assad put down Syria protests, officials say
Iran is providing a broad array of assistance to Syrian President Bashar Assad to help him suppress anti-government protests, from high-tech surveillance technology to guns and ammunition, U.S. and European security officials say.

Tehran’s technical assistance to Assad’s security forces includes electronic surveillance systems, technology designed to disrupt efforts by protesters to communicate via social media, and Iranian-made drone aircraft for overhead surveillance, the officials said. They discussed intelligence matters on condition of anonymity.

“Over the past year, Iran has provided security assistance to Damascus to help shore up Assad. Tehran during the last couple of months has been aiding the Syrian regime with lethal assistance – including rifles, ammunition, and other military equipment — to help it put down the opposition,” a U.S. official said.

“Iran has provided Damascus (with) monitoring tools to help the regime suppress the opposition. It has also shared techniques on Internet surveillance and disruption,” the official continued.

Syrians brave gunfire in anti-Assad protests

He added that Iran had also provided Assad’s government with “unarmed drones that Damascus is using along with its own technology to monitor opposition forces.”

Iranian security officials have also traveled to Damascus to advise Assad’s entourage how to counter dissent, the official said. Some Iranian officials have stayed on in Syria to advise Assad’s forces, he added.

Iran’s multi-pronged security aid to Syria appears to have helped Assad’s government in its increasingly violent campaign to hold on to power in the face of a year-long protest movement. The United Nations estimates 8,000 civilians have died in the conflict.

However, the U.S. and European officials said the Syrian government’s survival is not totally dependent on continuing help from Tehran.

Assad’s wife banned from traveling, shopping in EU

U.S. and allied official broadly agree that Assad’s control remains solid. His opponents are hopelessly disorganized, the officials said, which may make it possible for the Syrian president and his entourage to hold onto power for years.

“At current levels Iranian aid is important but not really a game changer in the overall conflict,” a U.S. official noted.

Iran has for decades been a patron to Syria, which has helped funnel aid and weapons to the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

During the protests that followed Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election — the biggest mass protests since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979 — Iranian authorities disrupted social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as cell phone networks.

Iran’s internal crackdown reportedly has escalated since then.

Wounded Syrians recount horror of tank attacks

A European official said that the Iranians were providing Syrian security agencies with hardware and software that would help them disrupt efforts to organize protests inside Syria and efforts by anti-government elements to spread their message to supporters outside the country.

European suppliers
Officials said that Syria had also obtained some surveillance technology from European suppliers.

As protests against Assad’s rule grew last year, the United States first raised the possibility that Iranian authorities were helping their Syrian counterparts suppress dissent.

Finally, UN reaches agreement over ‘extremely dangerous crisis’ in Syria

Last June the U.S. Treasury Department announced economic sanctions against two of Iran’s most senior police officials for allegedly helping Assad’s government crush protests.

The Treasury imposed U.S. economic sanctions on Ismail Ahmadi Moghadam and Ahmad-Reza Radan, chief and deputy chief of Iran’s national police force, because their agency had “provided support to the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate and dispatched personnel to Damascus in April to assist the Syrian government in suppressing the Syrian people.”

The Treasury alleged that Radan had traveled to Damascus to meet with Syrian security agencies, to whom he allegedly provided “expertise to aid in the Syrian government crackdown on the Syrian people.”

Activist: Assad’s crackdown turning peaceful Syrians into terrorists

U.S. officials said Iranian efforts to bolster Syria’s surveillance capabilities have been supplemented by deliveries to Syria of Iranian-made unarmed surveillance drone aircraft.

Earlier this month a specialized website, The Aviationist, reported that a drone flying over the city of Homs, the site of recent violent clashes between government and opposition forces, had been identified as a “Pahpad” drone, which the website said meant “remotely piloted aircraft” in Farsi.

In February another specialized website, Open Source GEOINT, published freeze-frame images from what purported to be an amateur cameraman’s video of a suspected drone flying over a Damascus suburb.

Iran vows to retaliate ‘on the same level’ to US or Israel attack

The website noted that some news reports had suggested that the United States was flying intelligence drones over Syria but that the drone in the pictures did not appear to be a U.S. model.

The website cited speculation that the drone might be of Iranian origin. Ynet News, an Israeli website, reported this month that Syria’s defense industry produces drones that are technologically identical to Iranian-produced models and speculated that these domestically produced models were what Syrian security forces had deployed.

Report: ‘I am the real dictator,’ Bashar’s wife says

However, a U.S. official said that some of Syria’s drones had come directly from Iran.

Last weekend the Iranian news agency Fars announced that Iranian experts had produced what it called a “new type of drone” known as the Shaparak, or “Butterfly,” which it said was “capable of carrying out military and border patrol missions.”

Source: Reuters

Iranian regime only allows for internet users to use dial-up

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Iranian regime only allows for internet users to use dial-up

RadioZamaneh-The Iranian Statistics Centre says 84 percent of the country’s internet users still use the dial-up method to connect to the web.

Iran’s Media News reports that only about 13 percent of Iranian internet users have access to high-speed internet, and there is no information regarding the remaining three percent.

The report also indicates that from a population of 75 million, only 11 million Iranians use the Web. Tehran, Mazandaran and Esfahan have the highest number of internet users, and Sistan-Baluchistan in the south east has the least.

The report also indicates that 58.1 percent of the users are male and 41.9 percent are women.

In terms of internet speed, Iran ranks 164 out of 170 countries, and Media News says Iranians have the most expensive Internet service in the world when price is calculated relative to speed, quality and download capacities.

Iranian internet users consistently complain about their slow internet speed and service disruptions, but Iranian authorities have not acknowledged the problems.

Iranian authorities do, however, block hundreds of websites and have also announced plans to establish a “clean internet” which would not allow access to obscene and inappropriate websites.

Iran ‘carried out surveillance of New York City’

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Iran ‘carried out surveillance of New York City’

Suspects linked to Iran have been spotted allegedly posing as tourists in order to stakeout potential terror targets in New York City.

A senior New York police official disclosed that at least 13 suspects with ties to the Iranian government had been questioned by authorities in the last seven years after conducting surveillance of possible attack sites.
Suspects linked to Iran have been spotted allegedly posing as tourists in order to stakeout potential terror targets in New York City.

A senior New York police official disclosed that at least 13 suspects with ties to the Iranian government had been questioned by authorities in the last seven years after conducting surveillance of possible attack sites.

Mitchell Silber, the New York Police Department’s director of intelligence analysis, said the city’s large Jewish population and international significance as a terror target made it ripe for a strike by either Iran or Hizbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group it sometimes uses as a proxy.

Testifying before the House of Representative’s Homeland Security Committee, he said the suspects included six people on a sightseeing cruise who were taking photographs and film of well-known New York landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge in 2005.

And in September 2010, federal air marshals detained four people taking pictures and films at a heliport in the city.

During questioning, all 13 people admitted that they were associated with the Iranian government, but they were ultimately released without charge.

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