In response to the release of Canada’s Forensic Examination and Assessment report on the downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight, The Association of the Families of Flight PS752 Victims say the report illustrates the crimes, obfuscations, and lies of the Islamic Republic.
The report says the forensic team analyzed the information at its disposal but “only Iran has full access to the evidence, crash site, and witnesses. The onus is on Iran to provide definitive answers about all aspects of this tragedy.”
“That report exposes the Iranian regime’s disregard for human life, failure to disclose the truth and pursue justice, and oppression of victims’ families.” The association said in their statement.
The family of the deceased called the Canadian government’s commitment to pursuing the truth and the possibility of referring the case to the International Court of Justice encouraging.
The association has again called on the Canadian government to recognize the IRGC as a terrorist organization and impose targeted sanctions against perpetrators of crimes.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737-800 operating the route was shot down shortly after take-off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). All 176 passengers and crew were killed.
The Iranian government initially denied responsibility for the airplane’s destruction, but investigation by Western intelligence agencies and the general public revealed that the aircraft was shot down by two surface-to-air missiles. On 11 January, the Iranian government admitted that the military had indeed shot down the airliner, having mistaken it for a cruise missile. The revelation prompted protests calling for the removal of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in response to the shootdown and government denial.
According to the Justice Department’s statement, 30 of these websites were controlled by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union, which is under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful military force that exudes significant control over Iran’s foreign policy and economy. Others sites seized included Al-Masirah, the news service of the Iran-backed Houthi rebel movement; and Palestine Today, a pro-Hamas news outlet.
The U.S. also seized three websites linked to Kataib Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia group that has been blamed for attacking U.S. troops in Iraq.
The legal basis for the IRTVU seizures came from a 2018 Donald Trump executive order, which authorizes sanctions against foreign entities involved in interference in U.S. elections. The U.S. has seized Iranian sites accused of spreading disinformation before, but none as prominent as PressTV, the country’s flagship international broadcaster launched in 2007. Like its counterparts, Russia’s RT and China’s CGTN, PressTV bills itself as an alternative as an alternative to the Western-centric perspective of other global English-language news outlets. It’s also acquired a well-earned reputation for trafficking in outlandish conspiracy theories and antisemitism. PressTV has had access to its YouTube account taken away by Google several times, and its main Facebook page was temporarily deleted earlier this year.
However, while the Justice Department’s statement is a bit vague, it does not appear that this seizure was the result of any content on PressTV itself. The issue, rather, is its links to the IRTVU and the Revolutionary Guards, which were sanctioned by the Treasury Department shortly before the election last year “for attempting to influence elections in the United States.”
According to a recent National Intelligence Council report partially declassified in March, Iran “carried out an influence campaign during the 2020 US election season intended to undercut the reelection prospects of former President Trump and to further its longstanding objectives of exacerbating divisions in the US, creating confusion, and undermining the legitimacy of US elections and institutions.”
Indian police have arrested four suspects in a January bombing outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi, Israeli news site N12 reported Thursday.
The bomb, which was relatively small, caused minor damage and no injuries. Both Indian and Israeli authorities almost immediately concluded it was a terrorist attack.
The four suspects are students from the disputed region of Kashmir in northern India, a largely Muslim area that is claimed by both India and Pakistan.
They were arrested in the city of Kargil near the Pakistani border. New Delhi police have interrogated them and more arrests are expected.
The arrests come after Indian police last week released photographs and video taken by security cameras at the Israeli embassy.
The suspects were caught on camera approaching the scene of the bombing wearing masks and black coats. One was carrying a large bag.
Police also got a lead on the suspects after two of them were seen getting out of a taxi cab. Police found the driver, who led them to where the suspects disembarked.
Indian security forces were aided in the investigation by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
The cell was composed of local Shi’ite Muslims, and is believed to have been directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ (IRGC) Quds Force, which controls the Islamic theocracy’s terrorist operations abroad.
It is thought that the motive for the bombing was revenge for the execution of IRGC commander and arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq, as well as the killing of Iran’s top nuclear Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which was widely attributed to the Mossad.
It is thought that the motive for the bombing was revenge for the execution of IRGC commander and arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq, as well as the killing of Iran’s top nuclear Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which was widely attributed to the Mossad.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Wednesday, June 23, that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC), with the help of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces(PMF), have built workshops to locally produce missile launch platforms inside Syria.
The Syrian Observatory reported that Iran’s IRGC has turned the area west of the Euphrates into an “Iranian colony” on Syrian soil.
The Syrian organization stressed that Iran’s IRGC and Iraqi PMF forces have tested and fired several missiles using the launchers in the past 24 hours.
According to the same sources, the production of these locally made missile launch platforms began as early as June and late May under the supervision of Iranian experts.
On June 4th, the Syrian Observatory obtained information indicating that the IRGC and PMF were building missile launch platforms for Iranian-made missiles in the al-Mayadeen area.
Production operations are being carried out in the al-Rahba military zone located in al-Mazare’ district. Al-Rahba is the largest gathering location for Iranian IRGC militias on the outskirts of al-Mayadeen.
Given that Iran is currently not fighting ISIS, the Iranian presence and mass production of missiles and launch platforms in Syria has raised concerns among its people and neighboring countries.
In 2014, coinciding with the peace talks at Geneva II, Iran stepped up support for Syrian President Assad.[39] Estimates of financial assistance range from tens to hundreds of billions of dollars.
From January 2013 onward, the Iranian military, primarily the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has lost more than 2,300 soldiers in Syria. Many of the deaths have been officers, including several high-ranking officers, notably generals.
Thousands of Iranian-backed militiamen consisting of ethnic Afghan and Pakistani immigrants to Iran have also been killed, after joining IRGC-sponsored paramilitary organizations in exchange for salaries ($500 a month for new recruits) and residency papers, in an arrangement similar to a Foreign Legion.
The United States and Israel reportedly held talks earlier this month on cooperation against unmanned Iranian drones, with which the Islamic Republic is believed to be arming Shiite militias and terrorist organizations in the region.
Building on an April agreement by the two counties’ national security advisers, an interagency working group dealing with the threat to Israel and other US allies from Iranian drones and precision-guided missiles convened for the first time three weeks ago, the Walla news site reported.
Quoting both senior US and Israeli officials involved in the talks, the report said the American team was led by White House National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk and the Israeli team was headed by deputy national security adviser Reuven Ezer.
One idea reportedly raised in the meeting was establishing a “no-fly zone” in the Middle East for Iranian UAVs.
In May, Israel downed a drone it approached Israeli airspace near the northeastern city of Beit She’an, with then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu later saying it was made by Iran and launched by Iranian forces toward Israel from either Syria or Iraq. In a similar case in 2018, a drone was flown from Syria into northern Israel before it was shot down by an Israeli helicopter. In response, the IDF launched a wave of strikes on Iranian assets in Syria.
Israel has a waged a nearly decade-long bombing campaign in Syria aimed at thwarting Iran and allied militias, including Hezbollah, from setting up bases to attack the Jewish state, as well as the transfer of advanced arms from Iran to Hezbollah.
Sunday’s report comes days after the news site said that the US had increased military coordination with Israel and with a number of moderate Middle Eastern countries in an effort to counter the threat posed to the region by the Islamic Republic.
Three Christians are standing trial in Iran after a new amendment to the Iranian penal code was passed through the legislature, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).
The Christian defendants of the Church of Iran denomination of Christianity were put on trial in Karaj in northern Iran on Monday after converting to Christianity, being charged with “sectarian” activities.
The defendants, Amin Khaki, Milad Goudarzi and Alireza Nourmohammadi, originally stem from Muslim backgrounds.
The trial took place without the presence of lawyers as the presiding judge, Mehdi Zeilani, claimed the lawyers had not been registered to the defendants.
CSW confirmed that this was inaccurate and the lawyers had filled out the necessary requirements to defend the charged Iranians ten days before the trial commenced. On the day of the trial, the defendants were informed they would be representing themselves.
The defendants were accused of “engaging in propaganda against the Islamic regime,” and were released on bail, instructed to report to police weekly.
Additionally, they were advised to leave the country and not to pursue any mediation for the case. Seventeen other members of the church were also interrogated.
“The three men are reportedly being charged under a new amendment to the Iranian Penal Code known as Article 500-bis, which deals with ‘sectarian activities,'” CSW explained in a statement. “The amendment was passed by the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) and signed by outgoing president Hassan Rouhani in February 2021.”
“It states that ‘any deviant education or propaganda that contradicts or interferes with the sacred Islamic shari’a, will be severely punished,” it added.
Up until today, Christian converts living in Iran have traditionally been charged with “action against state security,” which stems from French law, and Iranian judges have used this in the past to crack down on people who convert to Christianity.
Two days after the announcement of the 2021 presidential elections in Iran, the French Foreign Ministry, without congratulating Raisi on winning the elections, issued a brief statement, stressing Paris’ “concerns” over the human rights situation in Iran.
The French foreign policy apparatus, in the statement released after Raisi’s first press briefing following his victory, reaffirmed France’s desire for a return to full implementation of the Vienna nuclear agreement.
“We recall the concerns we have regularly expressed regarding the human rights situation in Iran.” the French Foreign Ministry statement said, expressing concern over the human rights situation in Iran.
The statement also referred to a part of Raisi’s remarks on human rights. Ebrahim Raisi during his first press briefing said he has always defended human rights.
The statement referred to Ebrahim Raisi’s remarks about “defending human rights” and highlighted Iranian-French and dozens of other dual-national prisoners in Iranian detention centers.
Benjamin Berier and Fariba Adelkhah are two of the Iranian-French citizens imprisoned in Iran, mentioned in the statement by the French Foreign Ministry.
In another part of the statement, the French foreign policy apparatus cited Ebrahim Raisi’s long-standing presence in Iran’s judiciary system, highlighting statements by U.S. officials and international bodies accusing the Islamic Republic of human rights abuses and the implementation of death sentences.
“We recall the concerns we have regularly expressed regarding the human rights situation in Iran and our nationals imprisoned there, which we will continue to follow closely,” France said, adding: “We reaffirm our desire for a return to full implementation of the Vienna nuclear agreement, for which French diplomacy is fully mobilized. We will also continue our efforts for the security and stability of the Middle East.”
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Saturday said Raisi’s election as Iran’s new president was a blow for human rights and called for him to be investigated over his role in what Washington and rights groups have called the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
In a statement to the 47th session of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations on Tuesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said a report presented to the Secretary General found “a disturbing human rights landscape for Iranian women and men of every religious faith, ethnic origin, social class and other status.”
Pointing out that in 2020 Iran executed at least 267 people, Bachelet said the Secretary General was still deeply concerned by widespread use of the death penalty, and its imposition for a range of acts other than “most serious crimes” with death sentences frequently based on forced confessions.
“Protesters, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists and civil society actors continue to be subjected to intimidation, arbitrary detention and criminal prosecution, including the death penalty,” she said. According to Bachelet, the report also confirmed mistreatment of prisoners, including widespread and extended use of solitary confinement as punishment and to prevent information reaching the outside world.
“We regret that the framework for the right to political participation is not in line with international standards,” Bachelet said. Iran’s controversial presidential and local elections held June 18 have highlighted allegations of human rights violations by President-elect Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi).
Raisi, since 2019 Iran’s Chief Justice by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s appointment, participated in a 1988 commission that ordered the execution of thousands of prisoners who were members of the Mujahideen-e Khalq group (MEK) or leftists.
Guilty Themselves
In his first press conference as president-elect Monday, Raisi said that as a judge he had “always defended human rights.” Asked about his role in 1988, Raisi said those accusing him were “guilty themselves”(link is external) and that foreign powers were harboring “17,000 murderers” who had killed Iranian officials – a reference to the MEK, transferred to Albania in 2013 by the US from its base in Iraq, where it had been allied to Saddam Hussein, including in the 1980-88 war with Iran and in helping crush the Kurdish revolt of 1991. Some associates of former president Donald Trump, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former national security advisor John Bolton, have strong MEK links.
Notices appeared on Tuesday on a number of Iran-affiliated websites saying they had been seized by the United States government as part of law enforcement action.
Iranian news agencies said that the U.S. government had seized several Iranian media websites and sites belonging to groups affiliated with Iran such as Yemen’s Houthi movement.
Some sites later started to display as normal.
The website of the Arabic-language Masirah TV, which is run by the Houthis, read:
“The domain almasirah.net has been seized by the United States Government in accordance with a seizure warrant…as part of a law enforcement action by the Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement and Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
The site quickly opened up a new, working website at www.almasirah.com.
Iran’s Arabic language Alalam TV said on its Telegram channel: “U.S. authorities shut down Al-Alam TV’s website.”
A U.S. Justice Department spokesperson had no immediate comment. Two U.S. government sources indicated that the Justice Department was preparing an announcement on this issue.
The notices appeared days after a prominent hardliner and fierce critic of the West, Ebrahim Raisi, was elected as Iran’s new president and after envoys for Iran and six world powers including Washington adjourned talks on reviving their tattered 2015 nuclear accord and returned to capitals for consultations.
Notices also appeared on websites of Iran’s English-language Press TV and Lualua TV, an Arabic-language Bahraini independent channel which broadcasts from Britain.
“In what seems to be a coordinated action, a similar message appears on the websites of Iranian and regional television networks that claims the domains of the websites have been ‘seized by the United States Government’,” Press TV said on Twitter.
Last October, U.S. prosecutors seized a network of web domains which they said were used in a campaign by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to spread political disinformation around the world.
PDF Version Farsi Translation (ترجمه فارسی) By: Josef Namin Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC), fully in charge of the nation’s politics and economy and in complete control of its oil, gas, petroleum, imports, and exports and the foreign ministry for the past 4 decades, despite driving Iran a hundred years back in time, had been consistently trying to officially dominate the country’s government and ultimately the office of its supreme leader, to be able to designate Iran’s future supreme leader from among its ranks. The IRGC designated Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s newly elected president to realize its decade-old dreams. But what makes Raisi IRGC’s best choice to achieve all of its aspirations?
To answer this question, one needs to understand how dictatorships and mafia systems operate and survive. The continuation of power in such systems lies directly at the hands of obedient and merciless subordinates. The aforementioned subordinate, in order to prove himself as trustworthy, is usually assigned to a dangerous mission that involves committing a crime, such as murder or torture. Upon successful completion of such missions, they will be deemed trustworthy and selected for other important missions or promotions at organizational levels. In order to make sure the subordinate in question has no moral obligations and will not show hesitation or mercy when dealing with opponents or rivals, the selected targets or victims in these missions are more often than not innocent as well.
In 1981, Ebrahim Raisi was appointed the prosecutor of Karaj. Later on, he was also appointed as Prosecutor of Hamadan and served both positions simultaneously. He was appointed as Deputy prosecutor of Tehran in 1985 and moved to the capital. After three years and in early 1988, Raisi’s brutality was placed in the attention of Ruhollah Khomeini, which prompted the supreme leader to grant him special provisions (independent from judiciary) to address legal issues in provinces such as Lorestan, Semnan, and Kermanshah. Khomeini then handed over several important cases to him and Hossein Ali Nayeri, another judge, for judicial decisions. Raisi is also one of the four persons officially named for being involved in the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners. According to Amnesty International, “thousands of political dissidents were systematically subjected to enforced disappearance in Iranian detention facilities across the country and extrajudicially executed pursuant to an order issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran and implemented across prisons in the country. Many of those killed during this time were subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the process.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHAKmZEKErE
Ebrahim Raisi played a visible role in the crackdown on the unrest following the disputed June 2009 re-election of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announcing hangings of protesters. Indeed, Raisi was careful to follow Khamenei’s edicts as deputy chief justice, proclaiming that because the supreme leader had said that questioning the validity of the 2009 presidential election was a “great crime,” “those who have proposed the elections were fraudulent and created doubt in the public’s mind have undoubtedly committed a grave crime and naturally will have to answer for the crime they have committed.” He also dubbed the incident with inmates detained after the 2009 presidential election unrest getting raped or dying at Kahrizak Prison a “peripheral issue,” In 2011, he dismissed allegations of gang rapes, claiming that in Iran, “there is more safety for women than in Western society.”
All of Raisi’s orders regarding arrest, execution, murder and torture of innocent people have been made possible with the help of Iran’s IRGC mafia. In fact, the real criminal behind Raisi is the IRGC and the ministry of intelligence under its command. The IRGC has purposedly chosen a merciless criminal to guarantee all of their orders will be executed without question and Raisi knows very well too, that disobeying IRGC’s commands will result in his elimination since it was the IRGC that enabled him to climb the ranks to where he is today from the very beginning.
Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s future president enables the IRGC to further plunder Iran’s wealth in all fields and sectors with IRGC commanders present in his presidential cabinet, governorates, municipalities, and non-governmental organizations.
IRGC’s Khatam Al-Anbiya headquarters, its major engineering arm and Iran’s largest contractor in industrial and development projects will profit more than ever and IRGC Quds Force, its extraterritorial operations arm will have even an even bigger budget to export terrorism to every corner of middle-east, ultimately resulting in rise of tensions outside Iran and suffocation and poverty and unemployment inside Iran. The only way to prevent this misery and ensure the destruction of these cancerous glands is direct confrontation and all-out uprising of the people against the IRGC-mullah mafia because these entities do not understand any language other than the language of violence.
