May 3, 2011
(JARAS): Hassan Younesi, son of Khatami-era Intelligence Minister Ali Younesi, was sentenced to prison and denied basic social rights.
According to Rosa News, this reformist legal expert was arrested during the protests on February 20. Afterwards he was held in the security Section 209 and recently transferred to Section 350.
He has been tried and sentenced to one year in prison, bail, and banned from practicing law for five-years.
May 3, 2011
The home of Pedram Rafati, the student forbidden to attend Amir Kabir University, was raided by security agents yesterday and today.
According to Student News, plainclothes officers intended to arrest Pedram Rafati only to come out empty-handed as their target was not present at the time.
Pedram Rafati Oskoui has been charged with participating in the June 2009 protests and sentenced to two years in prison. He is in danger of being arrested by security agents and taken to prison.
This former Amir Kabir mechanical engineering student was arrested once in 2007 by the Ministry of Intelligence and arrested again by the IRGC after the June 15, 2009, protests.
At the 15th Circuit Revolutionary Court, presided by Judge Salavati, Rafati was sentenced to two years in prison. This verdict was approved for review at the 54th Circuit.
Having been summoned to prison by Evin Circle, agents carrying out the verdict illegally went to his home intending to arrest him. This act further increases the possibility of him being arrested again due to security charges and opening a new case against him, which would consequently bear a much heavier sentence.
Before, on February 11, 2010, plainclothes officers raided the home of Pedram’s father, intending to make an arrest, only to find the place empty.
05/03/2011
Reporters Without Borders is profoundly saddened by the death of journalist Siamak Pourzand, 80, a major cultural figure in Iran. Detained and under house arrest for ten years, banned from leaving the country and separated from his family, Pourzand committed suicide on 29 April in Tehran.
We hold the Iranian authorities responsible for this gesture of despair. Despite several appeals to the authorities by his family and various human rights organizations including Reporters Without Borders, not once did either President Mohammad Khatami or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the heads of judicial system, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi and Sadegh Larijani, intercede on his behalf.
Pouzand’s death is a reminder that the Iranian regime is one of the most violent in the world for journalists. We address our most sincere condolences to the Pourzand family, to his daughters and his wife, the lawyer Mehranghiz Kar, and to his colleagues.
Pourzand began his career in 1952 with the newspaper Bakhtar Emroz. Prior to the 1978 revolution, he had also worked for several film magazines, including Paik Cinema and Sepid va siah, Ferdossi.
After Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, he was fired from the newspaper Kyhan. Despite harassment, he continued to work with independent newspapers before taking over the management of Tehran’s artistic and cultural centre. He worked as a cultural commentator for several reformist newspapers after the reformist Mohammed Khatami became president in 1997.
Pourzand was abducted in the street by security forces on 29 November 2001 and was held incommunicado for the first four months of his detention. He was granted neither access to a lawyer nor medical care. Held for months in solitary confinement, he was tortured in an attempt to force him into a televised confession. Accepting all the charges against him, Pourzand said he had absolutely no need to defend himself.
He was sentenced on 3 May 2002 to 11 years in prison on charges of “spying and undermining state security” and “links with monarchists and counter-revolutionaries.” A Tehran court of appeal upheld the sentence on 7 July 2002.
In a letter published in 2003, his wife wrote: “He is in solitary confinement in the basement of Evin prison. According to a diagnosis made on 30 July 2003 by the Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran, he is suffering from arthritis in his neck and from worrying back problems requiring an operation.”
In recent years, Pourzand had spent his time under house arrest, with frequent hospital visits and constantly under threat from information ministry interrogators. He was an eye-witness to crimes committed by the authorities in Iranian prisons. This was the reason for their refusal to allow him to leave the country.
On 8 March 2003, he telephoned his daughter in the United States to confirm that he was being put on trial again. “From now on, you can count me among the dead,” he said.
Many journalists are currently in prison or have been granted a “conditional release” on payment of a large amount of bail. Those who are in poor health are denied the treatment they need. Reporters Without Borders calls for the Special Rapporteur on Iran to be sent to the country urgently, in accordance with the resolution voted by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 24 March.
05/03/2011
GVF — The Paris-based media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has included Iran in its annual list of countries it considers as “predators” of press freedom, including political leaders, criminal organisations and militias from across the world.
According to the group, as Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei “is responsible for the continuing crackdown on journalists and others” since the rigged presidential election of 2009 which won Ahmadinejad a second term in office. “His virulent and inflammatory criticism of media with international links has fuelled the rage of government bodies carrying out the repression. He explicitly agreed to the judicial system staging show trials of journalists in August 2009 and January 2010 and giving journalists and bloggers heavy prison terms and sometimes death sentences. The Revolutionary Guards, commanded by Khamenei, control Teheran’s Evin prison so he is directly responsible for the torture and other abuses of journalists and bloggers jailed there.”
The media watchdog “accuses Khamenei of crimes against humanity,” adding that Ahmadinejad is “directly responsible for this crackdown, which he organises with the ministries of intelligence, culture and Islamic guidance and the Revolutionary Guards.”
“He also closely supervises the list of journalists to be arbitrarily arrested. A score of media outlets have been shut down by the culture ministry’s censorship arm, the Press Authorisation and Surveillance Commission. The government hounds journalists and their families, makes summary arrests and uses secret imprisonment to silence its critics.”
The group also accuses Ahmadinejad and Khamenei of being “the architects of a relentless crackdown marked by Stalinist-style trials of opposition politicians, journalists and human rights activists.”
“More than 200 journalists and bloggers have been arrested since June 2009, 40 are still held and around 100 have had to flee the country. An estimated 3,000 journalists are currently out of work because their newspapers have been closed down or have been banned from rehiring them.”
Reporters Without Borders also called for “a special human rights rapporteur to be sent to Iran as a matter of urgency, in line with the resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 24 March.”
“Reporters Without Borders continues to closely monitor China and Iran, two countries that devour their journalists.”
05/03/2011
GVF — The son of former Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Younesi, has been sentenced to a year prison, according to reports.
On Tuesday, Iran’s opposition television channel Rasa reported that Hasan Younesi, son of former Intelligence Minister Ali Younesi, was sentenced to a year in prison, a fine, as well as a five-year ban from practicing law.
Younesi, a pro-reform lawyer, was arrested on 20 February, during opposition protests to demand the release of Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, who are still under house arrest.
According to Rasa TV, Younesi was recently removed from Evin prison’s ward 209 and taken to ward 350.
Younesi’s father Ali Younesi was Iran’s Intelligence Minister during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami.
May 3, 2011
LONDON, May 2 (UPI) — Iran followed British criticism of a public hanging by postponing the execution of a Kurdish political activist, his attorney claimed.
Tehran said it issued a temporary stay to Sherko Moarefi, a political activist who was to have been hanged last weekend. His lawyer, Khalil Bahramian, told The Guardian newspaper in London, however, that he “might be executed at any time.”
Moarefi was arrested in 2008 on suspicion of being a member of Komala, a Kurdish opposition political party that Iran considers a terrorist organization.
London last week expressed outrage over the April 20 public execution of four men convicted of rape and murder charges. The British government said two of the men were juveniles.
“The United Kingdom condemns the use of the death penalty in all circumstances,” Minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt said in a statement. “Death by strangulation and the execution of juvenile offenders are particularly abhorrent.”
London said Iran has executed nearly 200 people so far this year. That’s more than any other country except China executed in all of 2010.
May 2, 2011
Three political prisoners in Iran being held at Gohardasht Prison in Karaj have been banned from family visits, according to a student committee on Friday.
Shahram Pourmansouri, Farhang Pourmansouri and Mehdi Zavieh are being held at the special security ward and have not been allowed to have family visits since last week.
Reports indicate several other prisoners at the security ward are also facing similar restrictions. Currently, family visits and phone contacts are not allowed in the ward, according to the Student Committee in Defense of Political Prisoners.
Security and judiciary officials have ordered to ban all visits and phone contacts for political prisoners. In response, political prisoners at the prison have launched a hunger strike, according to the students committee.
May 2, 2011
The web site of human rights activists reported that Saturday April 30th, families of prisoners went for visiting their loved ones at section 1 of the Karaj city’s Gowhar-dasht prison. When they arrived at the visiting area, they noticed a wall of about 80 centimeters high, with the families positions 2 meters away from it on one side, and the prisoners, 2 meters away from it on the other side. In other words, the distance between the families and the prisoners was about 4 meters. Additionally, between each family and their loved one there stood a prison guard. Ali Mardani, the head of Karaj’s Gowhar-dasht prison has established these new barriers and yet calls these visits “personal.”
On Saturday, the families protested this situation and crossed the barrier walls and hugged their loved ones; they were faced with brutal attacks by the prison guards. After mistreatment of the families and insulting them, the guards cancelled all the visits. The clashes between the families and prison guards continued for some time.
Such suppressive steps have increased since Ali Mardani, the new head of Karaj’s Gowhar-dasht prison, has taken charge. Some of the suppressive actions by Mardani include: creation of inhumane restrictions for the defenseless prisoners who often cannot have a single visit by their family members for months, severe reduction in prisoners food ration, transferring prisoners to the torture chambers and torturing them, establishing medical treatment restrictions and many other similar actions.
05/02/2011
GVF — As the dictatorship in Syria steps up efforts to quell to the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s autocratic rule, a source inside Ahmadinejad’s administration told the Green Voice of Freedom that a security delegation has been offering expertise and assistance to the autocratic regime in Damascus.
Amidst the intensification of repressions against anti-government protesters in Syrian, an informed source inside the Iranian administration has told the Green Voice of Freedom that Deputy Chief of Iran’s National Police, Ahmad-Reza Radan was part of a security delegation that visited the Syrian capital two weeks ago.
“The meeting between Brigadier-General Ahmad Reza Radan Ahmad-Reza Radan, the Deputy Chief of Iran’s Police with Syrian security officials took place two weeks ago, when the crackdown on protesters opposing the rule of Bashar Assad was intensified,” the source told GVF on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
According to the source, this reenforces the belief that Iranian security officials, including Radan, have been providing active assistance to the Syrian regime in crushing dissent in the country.
Radan is among the high ranking Iranian officials whose name was implicated in the prisoners abuse scandals at Iran’s notorious Kahrizak detention centre. He was named by a number of abused victims as the police official directly in charge of the detention centre who personally took part in beatings and ill treatment of detainees. Reports of widespread abuse of the detainees at Kahrizak prompted Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to order the closure of the facility in summer 2009.
In recent days, army tanks recently have rolled into the city of Dera’a in southern Syria, shelling residential areas, cutting off electricity and water supplies to the inhabitants.
Amnesty International has called the human rights crisis in the country “a new low,” calling on the “UN Security Council to refer Syria to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to impose an arms embargo and to freeze the assets abroad of the Syrian President and his senior associates.”
More than 500 people have died across Syria since protestors calling for political reform took to the streets in mid-March. “Hundreds of people have been arbitrarily arrested and detained incommunicado, placing them at serious risk of torture and other ill-treatment. Torture of detainees has long been common and endemic in Syria,” said Amnesty.
Foreign media are banned from Syria, making it harder to report accounts of the atrocities occurring in the country, something reminiscent of the Iranian protests in June 2009 following massive vote rigging in Iran’s presidential election.
The European Union recently released the names of 32 Iranian officials, including Ahmad-Reza Radan, who were sanctioned for their role in human rights abuses in the country. The 27-nation bloc imposed visa bans and asset freezes on the individuals ranging from judiciary judges to military, intelligence and police officials.
According to the EU, “As Deputy Chief of National Police since 2008, Radan was responsible for beatings, murder, and arbitrary arrests and detentions against protestors that were committed by the police forces.”
In September 2010, the White House announced new sanctions that for the first time targeted Iranian officials on human rights grounds. Radan and seven other designated Iranian officials have been subject to financial sanctions and visa ineligibilities under US law, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement. He added that the “list of names is not exhaustive and will continue to grow based on events in Iran, and as additional information and evidence becomes available.”
05/02/2011
GVF — Reformist activist Asal Esmailzadeh has been arrested, according to reports.
According to the Committee of Human Rights Reporters, Asal Esmailzadeh was arrested on Sunday night while returning home.
After inspecting her residence and confiscating a number of her personal possessions, security forces took the activist to an unknown location. The forces said the reason for her arrest was her “taking part in illegal assemblies.”
During 2009 presidential race, Esmailzadeh was a campaigner for opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in Tehran’s northern Tajrish district.
