March 26, 2011
The Iranian regime’s suppressive forces have shot three people in western Iran, killing one and severely injuring two of them, according to Hrana news agency on Thursday.
The regime’s State Security Forces (SSF) shot the three individuals on Tuesday in Nosoud city near the border with Iraq.
Following the shootings, people in the city staged protests against the SSF, leading to clashes. Further details about the protest are not available at this time.
March 26, 2011
At a press briefing on Tuesday in the White House, US Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said the Iranian regime is fearful of its people who are a force for change.
Deputy Secretary Rhodes also said, “We have seen attempts by Iran to essentially wrap its arms around the unrest in the region and in some instances claim credit for it.”
“The Supreme Leader made statements, for instance, after the Egyptian protests, essentially asserting that they were in line with the Islamic Revolution of Iran … We don’t believe that’s true. We believe, for instance, in Egypt these were very indigenous forces that — Egyptian people who were demanding change.”
He said, “It exposes an extraordinary level of hypocrisy because ultimately Iran is refusing its own people the right to peacefully assemble and the right to free speech and has engaged in brutal crackdowns of its own. So Iran itself seems to fear its own people as a force for change within their borders.”
Mr. Rhodes added, “Iran has a long history, again, of attempting to meddle in the affairs of other countries, a long history of regional ambition. So we always monitor very closely anything Iran might try to do, whether it’s in Bahrain or Yemen or any other country, to try to co-opt forces to its own interests.”
March 25, 2011
The Iranian regime has begun a new wave of arrests as the Iranian people marked a new calendar year.
According to Iran Khabar and Hrana on Tuesday, several workers’ union activists were arrested in the city of Sanandaj by the regime’s intelligence agents.
In Kermanshah, three employees at a bookstore were detained and in Kerman two children’s rights activists were arrested.
March 24, 2011
LAGOS (AFP) — Nigerian prosecutors on Monday amended the charges against an alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard member on trial over a shipment of rockets, explosives and grenades seized in the West African nation.
The court was supposed to hold a bail hearing for Azim Aghajani and Nigerian suspect Ali Abbas Jega on Monday, but prosecutors instead replaced the three existing charges against them with four new ones.
The new charges read out in court are similar to the old accusations, but provide more specifics on the types of weapons involved in the October seizure, naming bombs, grenades and rockets.
They accuse the two suspects of illegally importing them and say the weapons were under their control. They are also accused of having falsely declared the 13 containers seized at a Lagos port as building materials.
Both men pleaded not guilty to the new charges and federal high court judge Okechukwu Okeke adjourned the case to Tuesday.
The case has drawn international attention because it may constitute a violation of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.
Iran has said the weapons were intended for Gambia and were part of an agreement between that country and Tehran. Gambia has denied it was the intended recipient.
Both Gambia and Senegal have cut ties with Iran over the shipment, with Dakar raising concerns that the weapons could end up in the hands of rebels in the country’s south.
Prosecutors did not provide reasons on Monday for why the charges were amended, but Aghajani’s lawyer accused them of seeking to delay the suspects’ bail hearing.
“They are just ambushing us to make sure that the bail application does not proceed,” Chris Uche said in court.
The trial of the two men had begun on February 16, but was adjourned two days later when the defence asked for a bail hearing.
While the bail hearing was not conducted on Monday, the judge ruled that the accused be transferred from the custody of the secret police to normal prison, with the defence arguing lawyers have not had proper access to their clients.
Nigeria has reported the seizure to the UN Security Council, which has approved four sets of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. The sanctions include a ban on arms sales.
A UN panel of experts on sanctions on Iran was in Nigeria earlier this year to investigate the weapons shipment.
March 24, 2011
According a report posted on Computerworld Iran has been implicated in an attack that resulted in hackers acquiring bogus digital certificates for some of the Web’s biggest sites, including Google and Gmail, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo.
“One of the origins of the attack that we experienced is from Iran,” Abdulhayoglu said in an online statement. “What is being obtained would enable the perpetrator to intercept Web-based email/communication and the only way this could be done is if the perpetrator had access to the country’s DNS infrastructure (and we believe it might be the case here).”
Comodo’s security blog offered more details of the Iranian connection and claimed that at least two Iranian IP addresses and one ISP were involved.
“The IP address of the initial attack … has been determined to be assigned to an ISP in Iran,” said Comodo. “A Web survey revealed one of the certificates [was] deployed on another IP address assigned to an Iranian ISP.”
Comodo echoed Storms’ take on the attack’s implication but speculated that it was a government-backed effort.
“It does not escape [our] notice that the domains targeted would be of greatest use to a government attempting surveillance of Internet use by dissident groups,” Comodo said. “The attack comes at a time when many countries in North Africa and the [Persian] Gulf region are facing popular protests.”
The attack and acquisition of the certificates has prompted Google, Microsoft and Mozilla to issue updates so users of their browsers will be warned if they try to reach a site that’s serving up one of the phony certificates.
The Iranian revolutionary guard has openly recruited hackers to do their bidding, and in recent months they have targeted a number of opposition sites. Iran has also instituted wide spread censorship and monitoring of digital communications.
March 23, 2011
The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama offered his strongest support to date for Iran’s political opposition and youth, a sign of how the U.S. is seeking to use the democratic surge sweeping the Middle East to intensify pressure on Tehran’s leadership.
Mr. Obama has addressed the Iranian people annually on the Persian New Year, known as Nowruz. His 2009 address was notable in that he called for political dialogue between the U.S. and Iran’s clerical rulers, and referred to their country as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the first time an American president has used this moniker.
Mr. Obama’s Nowruz speech this year, however, didn’t renew his call for engagement with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government and, instead, sharply criticized Tehran’s human-rights abuses. Mr. Obama also for the first time personally mentioned the names of dissidents detained in Iranian prisons—seen as increasing the pressure on Tehran not to harm them.
“So far, the Iranian government has responded by demonstrating that it cares more about preserving its own power than respecting the rights of the Iranian people,” Mr. Obama said in a video message that was beamed into Iran and translated into Farsi. “These choices do not demonstrate strength, they show fear.”
Mr. Obama threw his support behind Iran’s protestors and youth population, noting that they will control the future of their country.
The U.S. president was widely criticized in 2009 for not backing more directly the Iranian opposition movement that emerged after disputed presidential elections, drawing hundreds of thousands Iranian protesters onto the streets. Critics said the Obama administration was more focused on securing a diplomatic track to end Iran’s nuclear program than to promote democratic change inside Iran.
This year, Mr. Obama offered much stronger rhetorical support, especially for the 60% of Iran’s population that was born after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. “Your talent, your hopes and your choices will shape the future of Iran, and help light the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And though times may seem dark, I want you to know that I am with you,” he added.
“I think the White House appears no longer interested in sending conciliatory overtures to a regime that is unwilling or incapable of reciprocating them,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.
U.S. officials believe the spread of political unrest in the Mideast that has led to the overthrow of the governments in Tunisia and Egypt in recent months provides both opportunities and risks for the West in its conflict with Iran.
The administration has supported the democratic uprisings, up to a point. After the abrupt toppling of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, it has sought to push for change incrementally and from within existing regimes. With violence flaring in Yemen and Bahrain, the limits of that approach are becoming starker.
Iran’s leadership has sought to define the protest movements as targeting pro-American governments and as a sign of Washington’s waning influence in the region. Tehran has particularly provided moral support for opposition parties in Bahrain—largely Shiite organizations that are challenging the country’s Sunni monarch, a close ally of Washington. And the U.S. has worried that Iran could take advantage of political instability as a means to spread its influence, as well the agendas of its chief allies: Syria and the Islamist militias and political parties, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
Still, Iranian protesters have responded to the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and taken to the streets in recent weeks to renew their campaign against Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government. In recent days, significant protests have emerged against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, the first significant unrest in that country in decades.
U.S. officials have sought to highlight Iran’s human-rights record as political unrest continues to grip the Middle East.
The U.S. Treasury Department for the first time last month imposed sanctions on Iranian officials solely for their alleged role in human-rights abuses and for playing a role in the crackdown on political dissidents. The Obama administration also is pushing to gain backing from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council in Geneva to censure Iran for its political crackdown and establish the first U.N. human-rights investigator for the Islamic Republic in a decade.
March 23, 2011
The body of a young protestor murdered by the Iranian regime’s suppressive forces has been buried in Qaemshahr in northern Iran after a funeral ceremony attended by many of the local residents, according to reports.
Behnoud Ramezani was killed last Tuesday during anti-regime protests by the paramilitary Bassij forces and plainclothes agents after receiving multiple critical blows to his head and body.
His funeral ceremony took place in Qarakheil village in Qaemshahr. A huge picture of him was carried during the procession, and a large poster was also seen at his grave, reading “For what crime?” referring to his brutal killing by the regime’s agents.
A large number of people attended the procession in an expression of solidarity with Mr. Ramezani’s family. According to reports, Mr. Ramezani’s body bore signs of severe beatings, including bruises. He suffered from severely broken ribs, skull injuries and a badly broken leg, according to reports.
The young protestor’s burial certificate had acknowledged that he died after receiving repeated blows to the head using heavy objects.
March 23, 2011
Dayeh Saltaneh, Farzad Kamangar’s Mother, delivered her New Year message, which was translated by HARNA News Agency, from Kurdish to Persian, and it is as follows:
The very last Norooz that I went to visit my son in Evin prison, in hope of his release, he told me in optimism “Mother, Norooz will be the day of freedom and for sure we will celebrate our freedom.” What a misfortune that they took away my son. They took away the teacher from his students, and from a nation, humanity. But, what did they gain taking Farzad away? Didn’t they see the Kurdish Nation’s demonstration of support for Farzad and his friends by their strike in Kurdistan? I look forward to celebrating the freedom of all of our imprisoned children on such day. The day my Farzad anticipated, the day of freedom, is not far away. I am alive to see that day, and see my son’s request which was freedom and justice for all. It is necessary to send my salute and regards to all of the martyrs of freedom, and all the political prisoners, and send Farzad’s message to them “The horizon is clear.” Happy New Year to you all. Dayeh Soltan, Farzad Kamangir’s Mother.
March 23, 2011
The Iranian regime has set up an area of solitary confinement in a hospital for a political prisoner diagnosed with cancer. The agents are preventing family members from visiting the political prisoner.
According to reports, after the condition of Mohsen Dokmechi, who is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, deteriorated and doctors lost hope of recovery, he was hospitalized.
Four agents of the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) are keeping a watch on him on a 24 hour basis and prevent family visits.
According to reports, on Wednesday, Mr. Dokmechi’s wife and child were allowed to meet with him for only 10 minutes but their meeting was cut short by the regime’s agents.
Ebrahim Mehtari, a young political activist who was arrested and physically abused in prison during the post-election events of 2009, sustained several knife wounds last night in Paris when he was attacked by two men, one of whom was Iranian. An hour ago, Mehtari told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that his assailants put a rope around his neck and used a knife to attack him. He could have faced a much more serious fate had the sound of a police car siren not suddenly scared them away.
Last year, Ebrahim Mehtari told the bitter tale of his detention and torture along with other detainees and the clear violations of human rights inside Iranian prisons at the Human Rights Council. Exactly a year later and as the UN Human Rights Council is in progress in Geneva, he was attacked in Paris. Yesterday, 49 UN member states supported a resolution, objecting to the deteriorating situation of human rights in Iran. The resolution will be put to vote next week. As it did last year, this year’s presence of several victims of violence and violations of human rights in Iran at the Geneva meeting thwarted the Iranian delegation’s efforts to cover up grave violations of human rights in Iran. A few months after the 2009 elections, Ebrahim Mehtari left Iran due to psychological pressure and the feeling that his life was in danger; he is currently a resident of Paris.
“I left my home in Paris last night. Three to four hundred meters away from my home, I was attacked by two men. They stabbed me with a knife in my left leg, in my right calf, on my chest, and in my arm, and then put a rope around my neck to strangle me, when suddenly I heard a siren from afar (the source of which I’m not sure about), and they ran away. When they ran away, I started to leave the location in my [injured] condition. I dragged myself into a hotel and entered. The people at the reception called the police immediately and the police transferred me to a hospital,” Mehtari told the Campaign.
Last month, during the side meetings of the Human Rights Council, along with several other victims of human rights violations, Ebrahim Mehtari participated in a panel organized by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The panel was one of the best received sessions about the situation of human rights in Iran and many diplomats were in attendance. At the meeting, Mehtari provided the audience with a detailed account about the abuse and severe physical torture and sexual abuse he had suffered during his detention. Some of the diplomats present at the session are those who will be casting their votes about the Iran resolution next week.
“First one of them asked me whether I am Iranian. Before I turned, they started attacking me with a knife and beating on me. The whole thing was a surprise, so I don’t remember what the individuals looked like. The whole thing didn’t last more then three to four minutes. I think the way they started attacking me was very serious, and it didn’t seem at all that they were only trying to intimidate me,” Ebrahim Mehtari told the Campaign, describing that one of his assailants was Iranian.
Attacks and physical abuse on Iranian political activists outside Iran, most unfortunately, is not unprecedented. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is seriously concerned that this incident may be related to Ebrahim Mehtari’s honest and illuminating efforts to expose instances of human rights violations in Iran, and that an attack on him may be with the aim of preventing further testimony by others, so that violence and torture may continue unabated in Iran.
