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Women’s Rights Activist in Prison Without Family Contact

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Women’s Rights Activist in Prison Without Family Contact

 

An informed source close to 38-year-old women’s rights activist Fereshteh Shirazi told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that since her arrest on 3 September 2011 in the city of Amol, she has had very little contact with her family.

The source told the Campaign that Shirazi’s trial was held on 28 September, and despite promises made to her that she could see her son on 25 September, she was not allowed to do so and her visit was postponed.

Last week, security officials searached Shirazi’s home and seized some of her personal belongings. Since her arrest she has only been able to see her brother once and only for a very short period of time. She is prohibited from seeing other members of her family, including her son.

Shirazi is a management student and women’s rights activist who has been active in the Campaign for Change for Equality since March 2009. She was interrogated several times in the past year because of her civil society activities and what she has written in her blogs. Her arrest was probably connected to these activities. According to the source, since her arrest she has been forbidden from seeing or calling her family members.

In her blogs, Shirazi had written several personal notes about one of her brothers who was executed in 1983. According to the source, Shirazi’s family is worried about her detention in Amol Prison because she has very little contact with others outside of the prison and she is being held with other dangerous criminals. The conditions at Amol Prison are very poor due to the fact that it was originally a residential home, confiscated by the government, and is located in the middle of the city in a residential area. Prisoners in Amol Prison, unlike in Evin, are not allowed to cook food and they can only eat prison food that is of very low quality. Unlike Evin and Rajaee Shahr prisons, there is no exercise equipment or educational classes and there are no rehabilitation programs.

Amol Prison is estimated to be able to hold 250 prisoners, but currently houses over 700. According to the source, the prison holds about 60 female inmates, and the rest are men. According to former prisoners from Amol, due to the overcrowding of the facility prisoners frequently engage in infighting. The majority of those held in this prison are charged with drug-related crimes, and include both native and non-native prisoners.

 

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More arrests, threats and sentences for Iran’s journalists

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More arrests, threats and sentences for Iran’s journalists

 

Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns a new wave of arrests of Iranian journalists in recent weeks. The following journalists were arrested between 1 August and 27 September without any official reason being given.

Hamid Moazeni, a blogger and journalist who works for several local newspapers in the south-coast city of Bushehr.

Ali Dini Torkamani, a writer and economist who contributes to the online magazine Alborznet.

Hadi Ahmadi, a journalist who works for the news agency ISNA in Karaj, a city 20 km northwest of Tehran.

Mehrdad Sarjoui, a Tehran-based journalist who writes for several English-language newspapers.

Amir Mehdi Alamehzadeh, a journalist who works for the news agency ILNA in Tehran.

Ebrahim Rashidi, a journalist with the weekly Bayram in the northwestern city of Ardabil;

Faranak Farid, a writer and translator who contributes to the Feminist School website. She was arrested on 3 September in the northwestern city of Tabriz.

As already reported, members of the staff of Majzooban Nor, a website that supports Iran’s Sufis, were arrested during raids by intelligence ministry officials on 7 and 8 September, again without any official reason being given.

The following are still held: Alireza Roshan, a book reviewer for the newspaper Shargh, Ali Akrami, editor of the Sheydagooyi blog (http://sheydagooyi.blogfa.com/), Ali Straki, Mehdi Hossini, Mehdi Osanlo, Hamid Moradi, Mehran Rahbari, Mostafa Abdi, Nosrat Tabassi, Ali Moazemi and Reza Entesari.

These detained journalists are being denied their rights. They do not have access to their own lawyer. Some of them, such as Mehrdad Sarjoui, have been in solitary confinement for weeks. Others, such as Faranak Farid, have been mistreated. Their families are threatened with reprisals if they talk to the media.

Reporters Without Borders is also outraged by the way the various intelligence services are harassing journalists and intellectuals in an attempt to force them to collaborate with the regime and betray colleagues. Several detained journalists are suffering from depression after being pressured in this way. Others who are not in prison have fled the country to escape this form of harassment.

The journalist Narges Mohammadi has meanwhile just been sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges of collaborating with the Human Rights Defenders Centre, “meeting and conspiring against the Islamic Republic” and anti-government propaganda. Until her arrest, she was the centre’s a spokesperson and a close colleague of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Ahmad Reza Ahmadpour, a theologian and editor of the “Silent Echo” website (http://www.pejvak-kh.com) who has been held since 18 July, was sentenced on 26 September to three years in prison and 10 years of internal exile on a charge of disseminating false information attacking the government.

A cleric and blogger based in the religious city of Qom, Ahmadpour was previously arrested in December 2009 and was given a one-year sentence on a similar charge. While held, he sent an open letter to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to draw attention to his arrest.

According to the pro-reformist website Kalameh, Chari Mohammad Moradof, a citizen of Turkmenistan held for the past 26 months in Tehran’s Evin prison, has been sentenced to 21 years in prison on charges of spying and anti-government propaganda. A student and translator, he was arrested while filming a street protest shortly after President Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad’s disputed reelection in June 2009.

 

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Iran ‘harassing’ relatives of journalists working for BBC Persian Television

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Iran ‘harassing’ relatives of journalists working for BBC Persian Television

 

Iran has arrested, questioned and intimidated relatives of journalists working for the London-based BBC Persian Television in its latest crackdown on press freedom.

It comes just two weeks after the arrests in Tehran of documentary film-makers accused of secretly working inside the country for the Farsi-language service.

Peter Horrocks, the head of global news at the BBC, said on Wednesday that relatives and friends of around 10 of the channel’s Iranian staff who work in the UK have been approached by the authorities. He called on the Iranian government to “repudiate the actions of its officials” and urged the British government to “deter the Iranian government” from attempts to undermine free media.

“Passports have been confiscated, homes searched and threats made. The relatives have been told to tell the BBC staff to stop appearing on air, to return to Iran, or to secretly provide information on the BBC to the Iranian authorities,” he wrote on the BBC blog The Editors.

“Many of our Iranian employees who live in London are fearful to return to their country because of the regime’s attacks on the BBC. But although those journalists are beyond the direct reach of their government they are now subject to a new underhand tactic,” he added.

Horrocks also highlighted the plight of the imprisoned film-makers who Iran said have “painted a black picture of Iran and Iranians” by supplying the BBC with reports misrepresenting the country. They have been identified as four documentary film-makers – Hadi Afarideh, Naser Saffarian, Mohsen Shahrnazdar and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb – and a producer and distributor, Katayoun Shahabi.

The BBC says they are independent and have no links with the television channel. It has previously shown films belonging to some of them after buying rights but it insists they have never been commissioned by the channel.

Since the arrests, several Iranian officials have stepped forward to condemn the film-makers as “a group of terrorists, Baha’is, communists” and, in the words of Iran’s minister of intelligence, Heydar Moslehi, “devil-worshippers”.

BBC Persian, which has also been accused by the Iranian regime of collecting information on behalf of MI6, is blocked in the country but millions of Iranians watch satellite channels illegally.

Observers have seen the recent developments as Iran’s response to the broadcast of a documentary made by BBC Persian on the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called The Ways of the Ayatollah. The programme – produced by Iranian journalist Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and shown in mid-September – was the first of its kind to touch the taboo issue of Khamenei’s leadership.

Iranian documentary film-maker Maziar Bahari, who was arrested in June 2009 and kept in jail for 118 days, said dozens of other people in Iran have also been summoned to Iran’s security departments in recent weeks after the broadcast of the documentary.

“They basically want to cut any contact of the Iranians with the outside world,” he said. “They are afraid of the BBC in particular because its journalists worked in Iran until recently and have a better understanding of the Iranian society.”

Bahari, who has written a book about his experience in jail named Then They Came For Me, said: “I know the imprisoned film-makers and I believe Iran has absolutely no evidence against them but is now resorting to fabricating charges in order to implicate them or make them to confess.”

Bahari – whose forced confession was broadcast by Iran’s state-run Press TV while in jail – said the broadcast of the Khamenei documentary by the BBC triggered the arrests.

Kamnoosh Shahabi, the sister of the imprisoned distributor, said Katayoun Shahabi had been denied access to her lawyer since her arrest: “The authorities asked us not to speak to media but we are extremely worried and we have no other choice.”

She said the irony is that her sister has been praised by the Islamic republic in the past for her contribution to Iran’s film industry.

Iran’s embassy in London could not be reached for comment.

 

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After Deadly Attacks in Iraq, Iran Lays Low While U.S. Plans Withdrawal

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After Deadly Attacks in Iraq, Iran Lays Low While U.S. Plans Withdrawal

 

Foxnews – U.S. intelligence officials suspect that Iran, after deadly attacks by proxy militia in Iraq, is laying low until U.S. troops leave Iraq at the end of the year.

 

An Iranian militia on July 12 attempted to fire 41 Iranian-made rockets at a U.S. military post in eastern Iraq near the border with Iran. Seventeen of the 107 mm rockets were confiscated by U.S. and Iraqi forces before they could be launched, but the rest missed the U.S. base known as COS Garry Owen in Maysan province just north of Basra and instead hit the base for the Iraqi 10th Army division, killing several Iraqi women and children.

 

U.S. defense officials familiar with the incident tell Fox News that in response an angry Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki issued a communiqué warning his Iranian counterparts that should such destabilizing operations continue he would be forced to ask U.S. forces to remain in Iraq past December 31, the current deadline for all U.S. forces to leave.

 

Since then, the number of Iranian proxy attacks by Asaib ahl al-Haq (AAH), or the League of the Righteous, against U.S. forces has dropped significantly. The reduced attacks led U.S. intelligence officials to conclude that Iran’s short term strategy may now be to wait for U.S. troops to leave at the end of the year before trying to reassert itself through the militias which have been trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps – Quds Force.

 

Until the misfire in July the Iranian strategy, according to U.S. military commanders, was to step up the number of attacks on U.S. forces in order to make it look as though U.S. troops were being forced to leave the region. The July incident appears to mark a shift in strategy, according to one senior defense official. The Revolutionary Guard asked the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia to stand down while Maliki completes a difficult round of negotiations with the U.S. ambassador and State Department, determining how many, if any, U.S. troops will stay past December.

 

The 107 mm rockets fired at the U.S. base had writing on them that linked them to Iran and color bands on the munitions that also link them to Iraq’s next door neighbor, according to classified weapons manuals shared by Iraqi and U.S. forces.

 

AAH, the group that fired the rockets, is led by the notorious. Shiite cleric Qais Khazali who founded the group in 2006 after splitting from Muqtada al Sadr at the height of the Iraq civil war, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Khazali led a daring raid on U.S. forces in January 2007 in Karbala using American vehicles, uniforms and identification cards that left 5 U.S. soldiers dead. He and his brother and a Lebanese Hezbollah operative were captured by U.S. troops two months later.

 

AAH then carried out a coordinated attack on Iraq’s Finance ministry, kidnapping a British consultant. Khazali was released by U.S. forces in 2009 as part of a prisoner swap and attempt by the Maliki government to bring the Shiite militia into the political process.

 

Recently Khazali was photographed at a conference sponsored by the Iranian government in Iran celebrating the “Islamic Awakening,” Iran’s answer to the Arab Spring. He sat 4 rows behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, raising eyebrows among U.S. military officials who have faced dozens of attacks by his Shiite Iraqi militia since his release in 2009.

 

In June of this year, 9 U.S. soldiers were killed as a result of Iranian rockets. U.S. troops were attacked 6 times this year by militias firing Iranian rockets, twice as many times as the year before. Admiral Mike Mullen before retiring as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs last week warned, “If they [Iran] keep killing our troops that will not be something that we will sit idly by and watch.” Now it seems that Iran’s leadership has made a new calculation that it may be more beneficial to slow the attacks until the government of Iraq finalizes its request for how many U.S. troops it will ask to remain.

 

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Internet access in Iran limited further

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Internet access in Iran limited further

 

Iran has widely blocked the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to keep Iranian web users from circumventing the government’s filters.

VPNs allow surfers in Iran to sign on to a server in another country and pretend that’s where they are actually located. In this way, they bypass the Islamic Republic’s filters and avoid Iranian government efforts to track the surfer’s visit.

Reza Taghipour, Iran’s Minister of Communication and Technology, said: “Blocking VPNs has nothing to do with the launch of a national network, and basically the use of VPNs is illegal.”

The Islamic Republic has announced plans for a closed, national internet, which it refers to as a “clean internet.” Once the strictly controlled network is running in Iran, officials say they hope to provide it for all the people on Earth.

Following the 2009 election, allegations that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gained his victory through vote fraud triggered widespread protests, and the internet and social networking sites were widely used to rally protesters.

The government crushed the protests through widespread arrests and, since then, has been making every effort to filter out popular websites, especially Persian-language websites abroad.

The move to set up a national internet appears to be the ultimate plan to cut off the Iranian people’s access to the world wide web.

 

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Tehran tries Iranian who studies in Texas

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Tehran tries Iranian who studies in Texas

 

TEHRAN, Iran—An Iranian graduate student studying at the University of Texas went on trial Tuesday in Tehran on charges of “relations with a hostile country,” his lawyer said.

Saeed Khalili said his client, Omid Kokabee, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him at the opening session of his trial. He is also charged with receiving “illegitimate funds.”

“He denied all charges,” said the lawyer Khalili, adding the entire session was devoted to procedural matters. He said the court is to hold another session, though no date has been set.

Based on the charges, the court can sentence Kokabee to up to 10 years in jail.

Iranian authorities arrested the 29-year-old Kokabee in February at Tehran’s international airport as he was returning to the U.S. after a short break in Iran.

He was studying optics in the physics department of the University of Texas.

Khalili told The Associated Press that he was not able to speak with Kokabee at the trial session.

Though Iran and the United States do not have diplomatic relations, many Iranian students apply to study in the U.S. every year.

 

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Workers on Strike at Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex – Day 7

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Workers on Strike at Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex – Day 7

 

HRANA News Agency – Seven days have passed since 1500 workers of Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex in Khuzestan Province began their strike. Free Trade Union of Iranian Workers has reported that security agents have arrested 3 workers and taken them to the Intelligence Agency located at the port city of Bandar Imam Khomeini.

According to reports issued by various labor organizations, three workers, Mansour Abbasi, Mohammad Bagher Bagheri and Jasem Bedrani were summoned by agents and then arrested.Two of the detainees are labor activists and representatives of the striking workers.

In March 2011, the workers of Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex were also on strike which ended after an agreement was reached between the workers, the management of this company and government officials. According to the signed agreement, Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex was given 3 months to dissolve contracting firms in order to offer a uniform corporate employment contract to all of its workers. Unofficial resources have reported that the terms of this agreement has not yet been fulfilled.

It has been reported that the Chief Operating Director of Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex has threatened 1500 striking workers during a speech in front of the managers of contracting firms. Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex is a government-owned corporation in Khuzestan Province.

 

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Iraqis displaced from Iran shelling face disease, lack of food

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Iraqis displaced from Iran shelling face disease, lack of food

 

Iran’s shelling of Kurdish separatist rebel bases in north Iraq has displaced hundreds of families, a migration group said Monday, voicing fears disease may spread in the camps where they are living.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it was aware of 884 families that had been displaced along the Iraq-Iran border in Iraq’s northern Kurdish province of Arbil, and said the families were being put up in temporary camps.

“The families are living without electricity in the camps and are suffering from a lack of food,” it said in a statement. “There is also a fear that disease will spread due to families using nearby streams, which are highly polluted, as their source of water.”

“There have been numerous reports that children within the camps are suffering from acute diarrhea as a result. Thus, the most pressing need for these families is health checks, medicine and water purification kits.”

The IOM noted that many of the families displaced had relied on farming to survive, and “were particularly affected by the destruction of their land and livestock by the shelling.”

Iran began shelling districts along its border with Iraq in July in a campaign against the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). Tehran accuses authorities in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region of providing the PJAK with a vast safe haven.

The PJAK, labeled as terrorists by Tehran, has often clashed with Iranian forces, sparking retaliatory bombing of their rear bases in the mountainous border districts of Iraqi Kurdistan.

 

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US hikers’ lawyer prevented from leaving Iran

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US hikers’ lawyer prevented from leaving Iran

 

AFP – Lawyer Masoud Shafii who represented the now free US hikers held for two years in Iran on espionage and illegal entry charges was barred from leaving the country on Sunday, a source close to the case told AFP.

“This morning at around six o’clock (0230 GMT), after getting his passport stamped and as he was boarding the plane, his passport was confiscated by order of the judiciary,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

The source added that Shafii “could not proceed to his final destination which was the United States,” without elaborating on why his passport had been seized.

On Tuesday Shafii was arrested at his home and questioned for several hours by judiciary officials before being released, the source said, adding that agents confiscated documents, his computer and his passport, but returned them later.

Shafii represented Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd in a case which lasted for more than two years. He always maintained that his clients were innocent, and was criticised by conservative hardliners in the Islamic republic.

Shafii also criticised the judiciary for not allowing him proper access to the three, as required by the law.

He met them briefly only three times in two years, once before the start of their trial, and once before each of two hearings in February and August.

Bauer, Fattal and Shourd were charged with illegal entry and spying on Iran after they were arrested in July 2009 along the unmarked Iran-Iraq border.

Shourd was released on bail in September 2010 on health grounds, and her two companions were freed on bail on September 21 after being sentenced in August to eight years in prison each by a Tehran revolutionary court.

Four days later Fattal and Bauer accused Iran at a New York news conference of using them as hostages in its power struggle with the West, and described hearing the anguished cries of fellow inmates being beaten in Tehran’s Evin prison.

Iran’s judiciary promptly denied their charges.

The hikers case angered Washington, already mired in deep differences with Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme, its refusal to recognise Israel and its support for militant groups in the Middle East.

 

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Journalist Hamid Moazeni from city of Bushehr held incommunicado

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Journalist Hamid Moazeni from city of Bushehr held incommunicado

 

In continuation of the new wave of security pressures on journalists and political activists, on Tuesday morning of last week, Intelligence agents arrested journalist Hamid Moazeni in the southern city of Bushehr.

According to Human Rights House of Iran, despite efforts by various parties to obtain information, Hamid Moazeni’s whereabouts and condition remain unknown, and no reason has been given for his arrest. After he was detained the journalist was only able to speak to his mother for a few brief moments.

After his brief conversation with his mother, Hamid Moazeni’s friends and relatives expressed great concern for his welfare.

Hamid Moazeni worked for Mehdi Karoubi’s election campaign during the 2009 presidential elections. He was involved with many publications in Bushehr province. He edited weekly southern publications including “Birami”, “Avab Baharestan”, “Daryay-e Jonoub”, and “Salam Jonoub”.

 

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