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Mansoureh Behkish Arrested

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Mansoureh Behkish Arrested
16 , June , 2011

The Intelligence Ministry agents have identified her in the streets of Tehran and have transferred her to Evin Prison as a “special case”. There have been no reports as to her condition.

Mansoureh Behkish has held a memorial for the victims of the 1988 mass executions who were buried in Khavaran Cemetry along with families of political prisoners in the past several years.

She had been arrested twice recently for participating in the meetings of the Mourning Mothers. She had also been banned from leaving the country.

She had lost five of her relatives in prison and in the street confrontations by IRI agents during the 80s. Her brother in law Siamak Asadian, her sister Zahra and her brothers Mohsen, Mahmoud and Ali are among the victims.

She has the responsibility of taking care of her elderly mother.

 

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In Iran, journalists remain in government’s crosshairs

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In Iran, journalists remain in government’s crosshairs

June 16, 2011

New York, June 15, 2011–Iran’s ongoing assault against independent and opposition media has recently gained momentum, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. In recent weeks, a journalist died in custody for what his family said was a lack of adequate medical care, the government sentenced another journalist to 20 years in prison, arrested one more, and confirmed a 19 and a half year prison term for a blogger known as the “Blogfather.”

 

Hoda Saber, editor of the long-defunct magazine Iran-e Farda, died in Evin Prison after suffering a heart attack on Friday, news and human rights reports said. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported that Saber’s wife, Fariden Jamshidi, said that hospital personnel told her that her husband’s life “could have been saved had prison officials brought him earlier.” Saber had the attack around 4 a.m., but was not moved to a hospital until after 10 a.m., according to news reports.

Saber had begun a hunger strike on June 2 to protest the killing of another journalist and activist, Haleh Sahabi, who died from a violent punch by security personnel at her father’s funeral the previous day. Saber had been imprisoned in Evin since July in relation to his political activism, CPJ research shows.

According to one account, 64 prisoners in Evin’s Ward 350, reserved for political prisoners, issued a statement saying that Saber was severely beaten at the prison infirmary where he was initially taken in the early morning on Friday, the reformist news website Kaleme reported. Saber “was returned to ward 350 in severe pain…his screams woke up all his cellmates,” the prisoners wrote.

In a related matter, Kavyan Mehregan, a journalist who writes for reformist publications including the dailySharq, was arrested at Saber’s funeral, which took place on Tuesday, local news websites reported.

“Iranian authorities show a pervasive disregard for the physical integrity and wellbeing of imprisoned journalists,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem. “Hoda Saber never should have died, and the Iranian authorities must ensure that imprisoned journalists have access to adequate medical treatment and humane conditions.”

Sakhi Rigi, a blogger, political activist, and formerly a member of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s campaign staff, was sentenced to a 20-year prison term by a Revolutionary Court in Zahedan in Baluchistan province, according to local news reports. CPJ could not determine when the Revolutionary Court ruled on Rigi’s case.

Rigi, from the repressed Baluch ethnic minority, regularly wrote on his blog about politics and Iran’s treatment of the Baluch. He was convicted on charges of “acting against national security” and “propagating against the regime,” according to local news websites. Rigi’s online writings were used as evidence against him in the trial, local blogs reported.

The blogger was first arrested by plainclothes security forces on June 18, 2009, according to blogs that cover Baluchi minority rights. He is currently being held at Karun Prison in Ahvaz, hundreds of miles away from his family.

A Tehran appeals court confirmed blogger Hossein Derakhshan’s 19 and a half year prison sentence, his family said on Thursday. The appeals court upheld his conviction on charges of “working with hostile governments, propaganda against the state, and insulting religious sanctities,” according to local and international news reports. Derakhshan’s sentence was announced in September, along with a five-year ban on “membership in political parties and activities in the media,” CPJ research shows. He is known as the “Blogfather” for being one of the first bloggers active in Iran.

 

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After Writing Letter Detailing Torture and Abuse, Abdollah Momeni Denied Basic Prisoner Rights

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After Writing Letter Detailing Torture and Abuse, Abdollah Momeni Denied Basic Prisoner Rights

16th June 2011

In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, activist Abdollah Momeni’s wife, Fatemeh Adinehvand, expressed concern about Momeni’s physical condition. “Mr. Momeni suffers from backache and has a heart condition. Since last week, he has been transferred to the prison infirmary twice. He received painkiller injections twice in order to relieve his back pain. He needs treatment outside the prison, but prison officials do not pay any attention to our requests for granting him furlough,” Adinehvand said.

Abdollah Momeni, a former spokesperson for Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat (Office to Foster Unity) student organization, was arrested following the 2009 presidential election. He is currently serving his prison sentence of four years and 11 months inside Ward 350 of Evin Prison in Tehran.

“Unfortunately after he wrote a letter about being tortured during his interrogations, he has even been deprived from in-person visits with his children and has not been granted furlough to seek treatment for his illnesses. The physician at Evin Prison said several times that Momeni needs treatment outside the prison for his illnesses, especially for his heart condition, but they have not granted it so far. I have, therefore, abandoned submitting requests for leave. Mr. Momeni is following up this [request] inside prison. The authorities know his situation better than anybody else,” Adinehvand told the Campaign.

“He says everything is repetitive and upsetting in prison. We take him books to engage him in prison, but they won’t deliver the books to him, and they won’t return them to us. Mr. Momeni studied social sciences. Most of the books I have taken him are in this field. I mean I didn’t take him books that might generate sensitivity. They routinely [take the books and] deliver them to him once, and the next time they are neither delivered to him, nor returned to us,” said Adinehvand about other constraints placed on Momeni.

“During the past year, the kids were allowed to have in-person visits with their father only twice. The second time was in March when the children and their father were able to see each other in person after ten months. Since then, no matter how hard I tried, I was unable to get another in-person visit,” she continued.

“I am sad to be away from him, to not have him next to me and my children. He is somewhere where I can only see him through glass. When the kids see him like this, they get so upset. They feel that their innocent father is on the other side of the glass. The children want to kiss their father, so does he. They have only been able to see each other in-person twice for about 20 minutes in one whole year,” Adinehvand concluded.

 

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Student activist Ashkan Zahabian remains in solitary confinement

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Student activist Ashkan Zahabian remains in solitary confinement

06/16/2011

A source close to the case of student activist Ashkan Zahabian told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that the prisoner of conscience recently met with his parents while under security supervision. Due to the presence of security forces, Zahabian did not discuss his charges with his parents. Zahabian’s parents surmised from his statements, however, that his interrogations are complete.

‘”Though his interrogations are complete, Ashkan remains in a solitary cell and we don’t know why he is kept under such circumstances. Authorities from the Prosecutor’s Office and the Intelligence Ministry continually keep silent on when his detention may end or about the legal process of his case,” the source told the Campaign. According to the source, Zahabian was in good spirits during the visit and did not complain about his conditions in prison conditions. He told his family not to worry.

“The fact that he has remained in continuous solitary confinement in the past 37 days and the state of limbo regarding his charges and his case are both worrisome and damaging to his family, as they can’t see any legal reasons for continuing this situation,” a source close to the family of Zahabian told the  Campaign.

Ashkan Zahabian turned himself in to judicial authorities on 1 May, expecting to be transferred to Babol Prison to start serving his six-month prison term. As in other cases, security authorities asked his family not to speak to the media and to refrain from providing information about their son’s case.

News Background:

Ashkan Zahabian was arrested on 16 June 2009 and sentenced to six months on prison on charges of “disrupting order,” “inciting people to demonstrate,” and “organizing Mazandaran University protests.” He was arrested for the second time on 5 November 2009 on charges of “acting against national security through forming the Islamic Associations organization in Northern Iran.” According to a source, if Zahabian was summoned to commence his prison term, he shouldn’t have been transferred to the Intelligence Office, but rather should have been taken to prison. Zahabian was a student campaigner at the campaign headquarters of Mehdi Karroubi in the city of Babol. During post-election arrests, he was severely beaten by security forces and in one instance was unconscious for three days. He was imprisoned for a total of 8 weeks.

In 2008, Zahabian was suspended for one academic term because of his student activism. Only four days after the disputed election of 2009, he was arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence. Plainclothes forces known as Ansar-e Hezbollah severely beat him during his arrest. During Student’s Day protests on 4 November 2009, he was arrested for the second time. A Revolutionary Court in Babol sentenced him to six months in prison in his absence. In February 2009, while still suspended, he was banned from continuing his education based on an Intelligence Ministry decision, and was expelled from university just one term shy of graduating.

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

 

A Message from Farzad Kamangar’s Mother for Global Day to Support Political Prisoners

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A Message from Farzad Kamangar’s Mother for Global Day to Support Political Prisoners

THURSDAY, 16 JUNE 2011

To break this lock, solidarity is essential!

I have said it numerous times in my messages and will say it again that we must think of our beloved prisoners and don’t allow them to be kept in prison, tortured and killed. No prisoner will be set free without our efforts because the cruelest and the most apathetic individuals are tasked to decide the prisoners’ fate. To break this lock, solidarity is essential.

There must be solidarity between families, and people must help them. Certainly, this assistance does exist. We must ask why our loved ones are imprisoned when they are innocent; we must ask what gives the authorities the right to kill our children. Although many years have passed, a large number of families still don’t know in which prison their children are locked up or even whether they are still alive or already slaughtered. Those families whose children are slain don’t know where they are buried.

Thousands of families similar to me are wandering from town to town. What law, which God and which human can accept this? What was my Farzad’s crime? He only said that a human being must live like one. The authorities imprisoned my son for this reason and executed him.

For sure, there are other young individuals who wish to live like a human and state the same desire similar to my son. Why should they be imprisoned? How long must these mothers suffer, weep and wear black for mourning? I am a mother who has suffered immensely both when my Farzad was in prison and now that the authorities have taken him from me. I understand what other mothers go through for their loved ones day and night. I neither wish grief nor pain even for my enemies’ mothers because I am a mother myself. I want no mother wail for her child.

I say this to all the families of political prisoners and to all human beings. The only solution out of the current situation is solidarity. We must become united as one in both inside the country and abroad. From all the defenders of human rights organizations, I request not to forget this country’s youth and not to permit the authorities to imprison our young and murder them. It is enough.

I kiss your all.

 

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Iranian Student Group Demands Punishment For Dorm Raid

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Iranian Student Group Demands Punishment For Dorm Raid

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Tehran University’s Islamic Association has published an open letter to the head of the country’s judiciary demanding punishment for those involved in a violent raid on university dormitories two years ago, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

The letter, published on June 15 to mark the second anniversary of the attack, states that students who were detained in the raid are serving prison sentences from a trial overseen by the Judicial Organization of the Armed Forces.

But the letter, addressed to judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, says those who “ordered and carried out the attack” have not been brought to justice.

On June 15, 2009, plainclothes agents, riot police, and special units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps raided Tehran University’s dormitories.

The Office to Foster Unity, the country’s largest reformist student group, said that five students were killed during the attack, but Iranian officials only said that “100 to 120 students were injured.”

The exact number of students arrested and the number of casualties was never officially released.

Mohammad Sadeghi, a member of the central council of the Office to Foster Unity, told Radio Farda on June 15 that in the Tehran University case “the plaintiff has been placed in the defendant’s seat.”

Sadeghi said the fact-finding committees set up on the order of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to investigate the case were only for show.

He added that Office to Foster Unity spokesman Abdollah Momeni, who was arrested during the unrest that followed the disputed June 2009 Iranian presidential election, was recently denied permission to leave prison for treatment of heart problems and a skin ailment.

Momeni is currently serving a 4 year and 11 month sentence in the notorious Evin prison outside of Tehran.

 

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Summoning of Tehran University Student Activist, Mahdi Tajik

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Summoning of Tehran University Student Activist, Mahdi Tajik

WEDNESDAY, 15 JUNE 2011

HRANA News Agency – Mahdi Tajik, a graduate student at University of Tehran, was summoned by Evin Court Enforcement Office in order to start his two-year prison term.

According to a report by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), this journalist and student activist was arrested in his home following the mass protests on Ashura in 2009.Mahdi Tajik was convicted and sentenced by the lower court in 2010 to 27 months in prison and banned from political activity and journalism for 30 years. Last year, this ruling was changed and reduced by the Appeals Court to 24 months in prison and a 15 year ban from political activity and journalism.

As a result of the ruling by the Appeals Court, Mehdi Tajik will be denied work as a professional journalist and will not be able to conduct any speeches or interviews, write articles or become a member of any political groups and parties for a period of 15 years.

Mahdi Tajik is an expert nuclear physicist and a graduate student at Tehran University Law School. In 2006, he was also arrested and charged by the security forces for founding a student activist organization.Subsequently, Majdi Tajik was locked up for several months in the Revolutionary Guard Detention Center, Number 59. In the same year, the Revolutionary Court sentenced him to two and a half years in prison.

 

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Lashing Sentence Carried Out on Azeri Environmental Activists

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Lashing Sentence Carried Out on Azeri Environmental Activists
15 , June , 2011

Environmental activists Habib Pourvali, Hojjat Mokhtarzadeh, Jalil Alamdar Milani, Ali Soleimani and Saeid Siami were sentenced to a $300 fine and 20 lashes.

According to the Human Rights House of Iran, Jalil Alamdar Milani, Ali Soleimani and Saeid  Siami were lashed on June 13th and later released. Two other activists are still in jail.  They had previously been charged with acting against national security by participating in illegal gatherings. The appeals court upheld the sentence for Habib Pourvali, Hojjat Mokhtarzadeh and acquitted the other activists.

 

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Mostafa Akhavan Sentenced to One Year in Prison for Facebook Membership

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Mostafa Akhavan Sentenced to One Year in Prison for Facebook Membership

WEDNESDAY, 15 JUNE 2011

HRANA News Agency – Mostafa Akhavan, a student pilot at Tehran Aviation University and a member of the National Trust Party, was sentenced to a year in prison by the Revolutionary Court, Branch 15.

According to a report by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Judge Abolqasem Salvati presiding over the Revolutionary Court, Branch 15, has sentenced Mostafa Akhavan to one year in prison on charges of acting against national security, propaganda against the regime through activities in Facebook, publication of news related to the Green Movement, membership in Facebook, issuing calls for illegal gatherings, conducting interviews with overseas media and sending email messages and articles to websites and networks opposing the regime.

Mostafa Akhavan’s sentence issued on June 15, 2011 has been suspended for a period of five years since he has no prior convictions.

 

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Baha’i Citizen, Riyaz Sobhani, Arrested

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Baha’i Citizen, Riyaz Sobhani, Arrested

WEDNESDAY, 15 JUNE 2011

HRANA News Agency – Riyaz Sobhani, a Baha’i citizen residing in Tehran, was arrested this morning in his house.

According to a report by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), security forces entered Riyaz Sobhani’s house on June 15, 2011 at 6:30am without a warrant and arrested him without showing cause.

Riyaz Sobhani is the father of Jinoos Sobhani who was the former secretary at the Defenders of Human Rights Center. She was arrested once in 2008 and then again in 2009.

Artin Ghazanfari is Jinoos Sobhani’s husband who is currently locked up in Evin Prison, serving his one year sentence. After the events following Ashura protests which occurred on December 27, 2009, Artin Ghazanfari together with his wife and other Baha’i citizens were arrested in the same month.

 

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