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Ahmadinejad appears to have done a deal with the Guards

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Ahmadinejad appears to have done a deal with the Guards

 

Gulf News – Getting the military on his side allows him to prepare to challenge Khamenei’s nominees in the 2012 presidential elections

A major surprise in Iran this week was the appointment of General Rostam Ghasemi — who held a post with the Revolutionary Guards — as oil minister. A few months ago Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad failed to get approval to give this key job to his loyalist Mohammad Ali Abadi. The oil minister’s job has been at the heart of a bitter battle between Ahmadinejad and his conservative opponents headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is supported by the Guards.

It is not obvious why Ahmadinejad gave the oil ministry to a leading opponent. Some analysts see the appointment as Ahmadinejad surrendering to the authority of Parliament and the Supreme Leader, or to the growing power of the Guards.

But others see the appointment as a plan by the president to get the Guards on his side so as to allow Ahmadinejad to strengthen his position to get his supporters ready for a clear run at the next presidential election in 2012.

But what is clear is that Ahmadinejad came to an agreement this week with his rivals in parliament and with the leaders of the Guards to end their year-long dispute. They agreed on three other new Cabinet members, and cemented this with a parliamentary vote of 216 to 22.

As a leading officer in the Guards, Ghasemi is under UN sanctions for its role in Iran’s nuclear programme. The US Treasury has frozen his assets, and has prohibited any dealings with him. Ghasemi’s new role will encourage those in the US and Israel who want to show Iran as a military dictatorship run by extremists. But this aspect of the appointment is unlikely to trouble Ahmadinejad in the least, who relishes his international notoriety. He needs the deal with the Guards far more than he needs any good opinion of his actions in Washington or Tel Aviv.

This was made clear this week in a rambling interview that Ahmadinejad gave Euronews, in which he remained confident and defiant about Iran’s nuclear programme, even if he wrongly picked on Germany and Belgium as examples of European countries with nuclear weapons.

Both states have no nuclear weapons programme at all. But Ahmadinejad was determined to emphasise that Iran has the right to all forms of peaceful nuclear activity, and to make clear that he did not see the point of nuclear weapons.

“Yes, we enrich uranium to 20 per cent, but just for peaceful purposes,” said Ahmadinejad. “We have the capability to enrich to any percentage, but at the same time, we are among the limited number of countries whose activities are under the control of the IAEA cameras. When we say we do not have any intention to build a bomb, we are honest and sincere. We believe that if someone wants to build a bomb today he is crazy and insane.

Classic rhetoric

“This is for two reasons: First, those who have bombs are in graver danger then those who do not. The bombs that exist in Germany, Belgium and other European countries cause a great threat to all European countries. An atomic bomb is against all humans. Second, the nuclear bomb is useless and ineffective. The Zionist regime has nuclear bombs, but did it succeed in its war against the Gazans? Did the nuclear bomb give it victory in the 33-Day War against Lebanon? Did the nuclear bomb save the Soviet from collapse?” queried the Iranian president.

He also produced classic Ahmadinejad rhetoric, offering friendship to everyone and everything, while glorying in American failure to overcome Iranian hubris. “We believe that there should be friendly relations at the international level and that is the basic principle,” he said.

“But the Americans and their administration are confused. They do not know what to do. They do not follow clear policies. They stopped their relationship with us. The Americans thought that if they stopped their relationship with Iran we would be destroyed. Thirty-one years have passed since then and we are still sitting here. They should respect others and observe justice.”

But the reality is that this rhetoric does not deal with the economic difficulties that Ahmadinejad would face if the oil price fell. His regime continues to teeter on the edge of a major economic crisis, but has been saved by the high oil prices.

On August 2, his government distributed the promised sixth instalment of cash payments to 73 million Iranians to cover the price rises on electricity, fuel, natural gas, and essential foodstuffs.

But using oil money to pay for what Ahmadinejad’s government calls reform does not tackle the serious underlying issues. Eventually, the regime should use non-oil sources to raise the money to pay for these subsidies and also support the many businesses badly hit by the higher fuel and energy charges.

There is no money in the reserves, and if (when) the oil price falls, it will leave Ahmadinejad’s government dangerously exposed to popular fury at the lack of subsidies.

 

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Public Flogging of a Senior Teacher for Speaking out

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Public Flogging of a Senior Teacher for Speaking out

 

In another inhumane action, the clerical regime carried ruling of flogging on a senior teacher in Sari, Iran Khabar reported on August 5.

The report has it that Siavash Eslami, member of Board of Directors of Teachers Club in Sari, was convicted to one year prison term along with 37 slashes. He was accused of disturbing the security of the regime by participating in the popular uprising of Iranian people against the dictatorial regime of the clerics.

The ruthless and inhumane ruling was carried out while Mr. Eslami was fasting. He has 24 years of experience under his belt.

 

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Another Iranian political prisoner in critical condition

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Another Iranian political prisoner in critical condition

 

Iranian political prisoner Ghassem Sholeh Saadi is in critically poor health and is being denied medical care, opposition media report.

The Kaleme website reports that Evin Prison physicians have declared that Sholeh Saadi is not fit to serve out his sentence, but prison authorities refuse to attend to his case.

Kaleme adds: “This prisoner has not been allowed to be transferred to a hospital outside the prison and he has also been denied medical leave and he is often denied family visits.”

Sholeh Saadi,a professor at Tehran University and a former lawmaker, was arrested last April at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran while returning from Shiraz.

In 2002, he was arrested and held for 36 day for writing a critical open letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. In part, he wrote: “You [Ayatollah Khamenei] have upset the reform Parliament in the worst way possible. In addition to setting up obstacles to its legislative activities and denying its member immunity from arrests and persecution, you have threatened the president [Mohammad Khatami] that you would stand against him and all Members of Parliament. Aren’t the President and MPs directly elected by the votes of the majority of the people? Isn’t standing against them akin to standing against the great people of Iran? Will you stand against the great people of Iran? …..Is this the meaning of religious rule of the people? Is this the meaning of the slogan, independence, freedom, Islamic Republic?”

 

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Prison Visit With Sotoudeh Ends In Detention And Physical Abuse of Family

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Prison Visit With Sotoudeh Ends In Detention And Physical Abuse of Family

 

Reza Khandan, husband of imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, talked to International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran about his five-hour detention along with his two children and his sister-in-law, during a recent visit with Sotoudeh. Khandan told the Campaign about the disrespectful treatment of prison staff and the physical abuse of his sister-in-law by a prison employee. “During our visit, I was, as usual, making notes in my notebook about the things my wife was telling me to do, when a prison personnel tried to grab the notebook by rudely extending her hand in between me and my daughter. I resisted and did not give her the notebook, because it was my personal item and they were not allowed to inspect it. Inspecting people’s personal property requires a judicial order. If there is a limitation to what people can take to prison visits, the authorities should have made an announcement earlier. There were no prison staff at the entrance with whom we could leave our personal items. On principle, there is no limitation to the personal items of the visiting family members of prisoners, and everyone can go to the visitation room with their personal items. I have had this notebook with me during my previous weekly visits, too. Really, I never did find out why the prison staff wanted to take the notebook away. Then that prison official sent another staff member to me, and I didn’t give the notebook to that other person, either,” said Khandan.

“More than their wanting to take the notebook from me illegally, I was upset by the way they were trying to take it. He/she* wanted to take the notebook away from me by force in front of my children and with my wife on the other side of the glass, unable to do anything, and with families of other prisoners looking on in shock.  When the prison staff extended his/her hand between me and my daughter in that rude manner, for the first time in a year of prison visits, my daughter started crying. We all felt helpless.”

“The notebook is [an ordinary notebook] with blank pages in which I make notes of the things my wife tells me [to do] during our visits. I don’t know, for example, if she wants pots and pans…anything that is included in a normal life. All prisoner families do this. Also, my wife had many clients whose cases are now handled by her other colleagues. But her colleagues cannot come to visit my wife, so I ask Nasrin their questions and take notes. I always do this and I don’t know why this time the prison personnel became suspicious. I even tore out the sheet on which I was making my notes and handed it to the officer to solve the misunderstanding, but she wanted the whole notebook, and as her request was illegal, I didn’t give in. In fact, later, when the Judge saw the notebook, he said  that there was nothing special about it,” added Khandan.

Khandan told the Campaign about the escalating hostility toward his family during the visit. “In addition to demanding to have the notebook, they said that they must do a bodily search, which we resisted again. I told them that there must be a warrant from a judge for this. They then said let’s go to court, and we told them that we were not there to go to court, but for visitation. But several prison officials came and took us by force. First they wanted to put the women in one car and the men in another car, and we resisted again. Ultimately, they put all of us in the same car. We were there for five hours. I asked them several times to allow us to make a phone call to our family and explain the reason for our delay in returning home, but they wouldn’t let us. My sister-in-law was supposed to meet her husband on the street several hours earlier, so she tried to make the phone call on her cell phone. But, suddenly, an officer came and pulled the cell phone from her hand in a very rude and offensive way. She resisted and did not give her the cell phone, and the officer injured her on several spots on her face and hands. Her nails made marks [on her face and hands]. It was a horrible scene in front of the children. My sister-in-law is a university professor and this was not the way to treat a scholar. Regardless of positions and jobs, every individual is respectable and must be treated with respect,” said Nasrin Sotoudeh’s husband.

“Finally, the head of the court came with an official letter, stating that we had to go through a body search.  We were all searched and in the end they did not find anything on us,” Reza Khandan added.

“When this happened, Nasrin said that starting next week, she will not come to visitations any more, and if this disrespect continues, she will go on a hunger strike.  She didn’t want to come to the visit this week either, as she has observed that after the booth visits, they are not allowing her to visit her children in person even for a few minutes.  Before the visiting hour started, they signaled us from behind the glass, saying that Ms. Sotoudeh was not coming for the visitation, but it seems that when she heard that the whole family were waiting for her, she couldn’t stand it and came.  Now I don’t know what will happen next Sunday.  The prison phones are disconnected, so I will have to wait until next week,” said Khandan.

“They insist on saying that prison personnel are authorized to inspect and search, but we are not prisoners. They may be authorized to search the prisoners’ belongings, but we are the prisoners’ families. It is like stopping you and wanting to search your belongings as you are walking down the street. Even if I had an illegal notebook on me, that prison staff member was not authorized to come after me like that. He/she had to do things legally and to search my items with a warrant,”  continued Khandan.

Human rights lawyer and activist Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to eleven years in prison, and 20 years’ ban on legal profession and foreign travel. She has been in prison for the past 11 months, even though her lower court ruling has not yet been announced as final. Nasrin Sotoudeh has embarked upon hunger strikes several times in order to protest her illegal prison conditions and her case process. Her husband, Reza Khandan, remains under pressure for the interviews he has given to foreign media.

 

*Due to the fact that the Persian language is gender neutral, the interviewee did not specify the gender of prison personnel.

 

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Iran continues to target critical journalists

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Iran continues to target critical journalists

 

New York, August 10, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about a rise in the number of imprisoned journalists in Iran and the continuing deterioration of their health. In recent days, Iranian authorities increased a prominent journalist’s prison term by two years and arrested a critical journalist who had just finished serving a prison sentence. Other journalists have suffered from declining health as a result of substandard conditions, extended periods in solitary confinement, and intentional abuse, according to news reports.

“Iran continues to defy its own laws as well as international legal norms by engaging in systematic neglect and abuse against journalists and the arbitrary denial of their basic rights,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Authorities continue to routinely deploy punitive measures and physical violence against journalists who refuse to toe the government line.”

Judicial authorities informed imprisoned veteran journalist Issa Saharkhiz on Thursday that his prison term would be extended by two additional years for “prior journalistic activities,” the reformist news website Jonbesh-e-Rah-e-Sabz reported. In September 2010, the Revolutionary Court sentenced Saharkhiz, whose career in journalism spans more than two decades, to a three-year prison term, a five-year ban on political and journalistic activities, and a one-year ban on foreign travel. He was first arrested in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential elections. Since his detention in July 2009, Saharkhiz has been a regular target of government harassment, including being kept in a prison yard overnight in freezing temperatures without shoes or socks, CPJ research showed. In a recent interview, the journalist’s son, Mehdi Saharkhiz, said that at various times during his imprisonment, his father has suffered from high blood pressure, a torn eardrum, and back pain, and for a time had been confined to a wheelchair. He added that his father requires the attention of a specialist, but his medical requests have been denied.

Journalist Ahmad Zaid-Abadi, who had been imprisoned since June 2009, was granted a 48-hour furlough on Thursday after posting US$500,000 bail, according to the news website Rooz Online. Two days later, Zaid-Abadi turned himself in to authorities but was told that his furlough had been extended. One day later, on August 7, Rooz Online said, authorities summoned the journalist back to prison, where he remains. He was sentenced last year to six years in prison, five years’ exile to Gonabad, a city in Khorasan province, and a “lifetime deprivation of any political activity” including “interviews, speech[es], and analyses of events, whether in written or oral form.” Zaid-Abadi won the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2011 and the World Association of Newspapers’ Golden Pen of Freedom Award in 2010.

In early August, Kouhyar Goudarzi, who writes for the Committee of Human Rights Reporters (CHRR), and his mother, Parvin Mokhtare, were arrested by Iranian authorities for unknown reasons, according to CHRR. Mokhtare was arrested in Kerman (621 miles [1,000 kilometers] south of Tehran), where she is currently being detained, multiple news websites reported.Jonbesh-e-Rah-e-Sabz has emphasized that she is not involved in any political activities. A recent update from news website Kaleme reported that in a phone call from Kerman Prison, Mokhtare said she is being held with prisoners tried for murder and drug trafficking and described the prison’s poor hygienic conditions and lack of basic amenities. She said she had been informed of her charges, which included “insulting the Supreme Leader,” “propagating against the regime,” and “acting against national security” in the interviews she gave during her son’s prison term.

Goudarzi’s whereabouts are unknown. The journalist was initially arrested in December 2009 and served a one-year sentence for his journalistic activities at CHRR. He was charged with heresy, “propagating against the regime,” and “participating in illegal congregations,” CPJreported. Goudarzi is a recipient of the National Press Club’s John Aubuchon Freedom of the Press Award in 2010.

On July 27, Ali Kalaee, a former member of CHHR, was summoned to serve a seven-year sentence at Evin Prison, the organization reported. He had three days to turn himself in to Evin Prison and begin his sentence. Kalaee’s lawyer appealed the sentence, but it was upheld. According to CHHR, the journalist’s mother also received a notice from the “Implementation Unit” at Evin Prison Court stating she had 20 days to turn her son in or else her property, which she had put up as collateral for her son’s bail, would be confiscated by the court. Kalaee was first sentenced in December 2009 and received a one-year term for “propagating against the regime” and a five-year sentence for “assembly and collusion with the intent to commit a crime” because of his involvement with CHHR, and was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence last December for an earlier 2007 arrest.

Kayvan Samimi, the editor of the now-defunct monthly Nameh, who has been imprisoned since June 2009, is suffering from life-threatening liver complications, news outlets reported. The veteran journalist has been subjected to ill treatment numerous times during his time in custody, and in February 2010, local activists reported that he had been transferred to solitary confinement after he objected to substandard conditions. His family visits were also cancelled. In 2010, Samimi was sentenced to a six-year prison term and a lifetime ban on political activity on the charges of “propagating against the regime” and “assembly and collusion to disturb national security.” An appeals court reduced the lifetime ban to 15 years.

 

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Baha’is In Iran ‘Summoned’ To Intelligence Ministry

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Baha’is In Iran ‘Summoned’ To Intelligence Ministry

 

RFE/RL – Dozens of Baha’is in cities across Iran are reported to have been summoned to the Intelligence Ministry in recent weeks because of their activities in the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

Diane Ala’i, the community’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva, told Radio Farda that some of the Baha’is were interrogated and some detained for having helped Baha’i students who wanted to pursue their higher education.

Some 14 Baha’is who worked at the BIHE were taken into custody in Tehran, Karaj, Shiraz, and Esfahan in May. Ala’i said seven of them are still being held in Tehran’s Evin prison.

The BIHE was established unofficially in 1987 to provide higher education for young Baha’is barred from universities because of their religious beliefs.

Ala’i said initially the arrested Baha’is were charged with “acting against national security,” but more recently the charge brought against them is “being a member of an illegal institute.”

“The Baha’i International Community considers such measures suppression and pressure on the Iranian Baha’is,” Ala’i said.

She said the recent arrests show that even though the Iranian authorities claim that Baha’is are allowed to study at universities, they are denied admission to universities and not allowed to pursue their studies through distance learning.

 

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Ahmad Ronaghi:”My son is deprived of all his basic human rights”

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Ahmad Ronaghi:”My son is deprived of all his basic human rights”

 

Ahmad Ronaghi Maleki, father of this blogger spoke of his son’s latest condition to Human Rights House of Iran (RAHANA). “With Hossein in very poor health, he was transferred to Tehran’s Hasheminejad hospital for a night where some tests were conducted on him, then he was immediately transferred back to Evin prison.”

Ahmad Ronaghi objected to the judiciary and security agents who have blocked this blogger from medical leave. “Hossein should have been kept in the hospital. During the last meeting that I had with Hossein he had internal bleeding and was suffering from kidney failure and gallbladder disease. But despite knowing how imperative it is that he is under medical supervision, they transferred him back to prison.”

He continued by telling RAHANA about his efforts in securing medical leave for his son. “The judicial authorities will not give an answer. We have written a letter to everywhere imaginable requesting a medical leave from prison for Hossein. But so far, just as before, we have not received any response to our requests. This is a legal right and a human right for my son to receive prison furlough. But he has been deprived of all his legal and basic human rights and there is nobody to help us out.”

Human rights groups along with their families have objected to the lack of medical attention given to political prisoners. Last week Amnesty International published a statement requesting that the regime in Iran give medical attention to its political prisoners, naming Hossein Ronaghi Maleki in their report.

Hossein Ronaghi Maleki was arrested on December 13, 2009 in the city of Melkan, close to Tabriz and immediately transferred to Ward 2A of Evin prison. He spent 10 months in solitary confinement in Evin where he endured intense psychological and severe physical pressures in order to extract interviews and false confessions from him to show on TV. He was finally sentenced by Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court to 15 years behind bars.

The appeals court of Tehran upheld Hossein’s sentence. Despite his sickness and very poor health making immediate medical furlough necessary, this blogger is now still spending his time behind bars in Evin prison.

 

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Mehdi Khazali taken to Evin general ward

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Mehdi Khazali taken to Evin general ward

 

Jailed Iranian publisher Mehdi Khazali has been transferred to the general ward 350 of Evin Prison from the security section.

Khazali`s son, Saleh Khazali, told the Kaleme opposition website on August 9 that his father has been on a hunger strike for 22 days.

Mehdi Khazali, the director of Hayan Publishings, was arrested on July 18, prompting him to declare a hunger strike that he said would last until his death.

Mehdi Kahzali`s son reports that on the day of his arrest, his father was approached by three officials from the Ministry of Intelligence bearing an arrest warrant. He says his father insisted that he had already put up bail for the warrant and refused to accompany the officials. The officials then reportedly forced him into a car and took him away.

Mehdi Khazali’s father is Abollghassem Khazali, an ultraconservative cleric and member of the Assembly of Experts, who has disowned his son for his critical views of the government. Mehdi Khazali`s son reports that Abollghassem Khazali is in full agreement with Mehdi’s treatment by the authorities.

Mehdi Khazali was previously arrested last September and released about a month later. He was also arrested in June of 2010 and released after a month on bail of $20,000.

In the past two years, Khazali has published several critical notes on his weblog regarding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his administration.

 

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Increased jail term for journalist “mark of leader’s personal vendetta”

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Increased jail term for journalist “mark of leader’s personal vendetta”

 

The son of jailed journalist Issa Saharkhiz has spoken out publicly against his father’s treatment by the judiciary and aimed a warning directly at Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

Mehdi Saharkhiz’s statements to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran come three days after his father’s sentence was increased by two years.

“I want to personally tell Mr. Khamenei that he should learn from the fate of [ousted Egyptian president] Hosni Mubarak… Iranian statesmen will also reap what their actions have sown, like Saddam, Ghaddafi and Hosni Mubarak. I wish to tell them to beware their fates in this world and remember that they will not always be in power.”

Issa Saharkhiz, who was the head of domestic press in the Ministry of Culture and Guidance during the reformist administration of President Mohammad Khatami, was arrested after the controversial 2009 presidential elections

He was sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting the leader” and “propaganda activities against the regime.” He was also sentenced to a five-year ban from political and media activities and a one-year ban from travelling abroad. On August 5, after he’d served two years of his three-year sentence, another two years was added because of his previous media activities. He remains in Rejaishahr Prison in Karaj and has been given no furloughs since his arrest.

His son Mehdi Saharkhiz added: “In the early days of my father’s arrest, they gave him something similar to a letter of recantation to sign, but my father told them that he believed in every word he has said and he would not sign any recantation letters.” He described his father’s beefed-up jail term as a “mark of the leader’s personal vendetta.”

Recently, Issa Saharkhiz wrote a letter to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN Human Rights Investigator for Iran, describing the conditions in Iranian prisons as similar to the Russian Gulags of the Stalin era. He added that regular prisoners were no better off than political prisoners.

 

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Lawyers in Prison, Lawyers in Exile

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Lawyers in Prison, Lawyers in Exile

 

Foreign Enemy Watch. While Britain is the Number One target of Iranian officials and media today, another foreign foe gets some breathing space — Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi says “nothing points to Israel” in last month’s murder of postgraduate student Dariush Rezaeinejad, who was initally claimed to be associated with Iran’s defence establishment.

Press Watch. Iranian authorities have imposed a one-year banon the journal Rouyesh and put the publications Jam-e Jam and Donya-ye Javanan on one year’s probation.

Economy Watch. At least one Iranian politician is resisting the temptation to play the Britain Diversion Game today — Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf says instead that poverty, lies, discord, and economic problems are haunting Iranian society.

Meanwhile Reuters, consulting some economists, discovers that last month’s International Monetary Fund “report” on Iran’s economy is little more than a misleading press release for the regime (see EA on 14 June, 16 July, and 4 August for the same revelation).

Claim of Day. Surely the top billing on today’s play-acting over Britain has to go to the Supreme Leader — Fars proclaims that Ayatollah Khamenei predicted the unrest in England when he said this spring that the “Islamic Awakening” would soon spread to Europe.

Not-at-All-Hypocritical Watch. Back from a break to find Iranian officials and media handing out advice and criticism to their British counterparts amidst unrest in English cities….

President Ahmadinejad leads the way, declaiming on State radio, “The U.N. is silent. Human rights bodies are silent. If one percent of this happens in countries that oppose the West, they scream until they are hoarse. Why is the Security Council silent?”

State outlet Press TV backs up the President, with three of its top eight stories on “Iran” actually about “Britain”: in addition to Ahmadinejad’s speech, there are interventions by Zohreh Elahian, the head of Parliament’s Human Rights Committee, on Britain’s “racist” treatment of “protesters”, and by Mahmoud Ahmadi Bighash of the National Security Committee on the “intellectual awakening” of “UK unrest”.

Foreign Affairs (Syria Front). Another sign that some of the Iranian media are beginning to dare to mention the toll of the unrest in Syria — Ayande News criticises the silence of State broadcaster IRIB, as it damages Iran’s reputation in countries of the “Islamic uprising”.

Ayande also cites the figure of Syrian activists that more than 2000 people have been killed since the uprising began in mid-March.

Economy Watch. Khabar Online reports that economic stagnation has hit Iran’s import sector, with a 13% decrease in the Iranian year from March 2010 to March 2011. The site says Iran’s balance of trade deficit was $38 billion during the year.

We have opened the second part of our special rolling feature on the list of more than 100 journalists who have been detained since June 2009.

Cartoon of the Day. As the Iranian regime promotes the Islamic Awakening around the world and pays close attention to “protesters” in Britain, Maya Nayestani pointedly noted the overseas case that Tehran is not as keen to mention.

Nayestani’s old man tells Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, “Spit on your honour, Bashar! You choose the wrong one for a recipe, he [the Iranian leadership] couldn’t swallow the morsel himself.”

As we continue our running special on the more than 100 journalists in Iran who have been imprisoned since the June 2009 Presidential election, we note another initiative by Masih Alinejad and translator Azita Irani, who document the detention of 30 attorneys.

Some of the names are familiar to readers outside Iran, such as that of Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, but the punishment of others on the list has attracted less notice. Consider, for example, of Abdolfattah Soltani:

A well known Iranian lawyer and co-founder of the Center for Defenders of Human Rights, Abdolfattah Soltani was arrested in his office on 16 June 2009, days after the presidential elections.

Mr. Soltani’s stellar resume includes defense cases for political and human rights activists such as Akbar Ganji; Zahra Kazemi; Zahra Bani-Yaghoub; Haleh Esfandiari’ and many members of the National-Religious Party and the Bus-Drivers Union.  Although previously arrested and jailed for seven months on espionage charges, his arrest in the aftermath of presidential elections was for “tarnishing the elections”.  His family was kept in the dark about his whereabouts for the first month of his two-month incarceration. When his wife, Masoumeh Dehghani, kept notifying the media about her husband’s circumstances, she was arrested in July 2009.

In an interview with Radio Farda, his wife had said that, long before his arrest, Soltani had repeatedly filed complaints against the then Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, Judge Raasekh and Judge Haddad [over the abuse of prisoners]….Soltani and his wife have been accused of “supporting political prisoners’ families” by spending the monetary portion of their Nurembeg Award for Human Rights.

Like many other political and human rights activists, Soltani is banned from leaving the country.  He is temporarily free on $100,000 bail; his wife on $30,000.

 

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