On a blink
Violation of Human Rights in Iran during a Week
25 Feb. 2008
Stoning to death and Executions
Death sentence for a crime allegedly committed at 15
A minor offender sentenced to death and his sentence has been approved
February 16,2008: According to the official Iranian news agency ISCA, Mohammad Mostafaei the lawyer of several minors, has written a letter to the head of the judiciary and asked him to reconsider the verdict of Mohammad Haddadi a minor offender.
According to the lawyer, Mohammad Haddadi has not committed the murder, but he just has confessed due to poverty and low age.
Mohammad Haddadi is sentenced to death for a murder he allegedly committed in September 2003 when he was 15 years old. His sentence has been approved by the Supreme Court and about to be sent to the section for implementation of the verdicts according to the report. If the judiciary doesn’t accept to reconsider the verdict, Mohammad Haddadi could be executed in the near future.
The Iranian daily Etemaad e Melli has also written the story in detail.
Iran hangs child rapist and a murderer
TEHRAN, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) - A child rapist and a murderer were hanged in Iran's northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi after they were sentenced to death, the ISNA student news agency reported on Sunday…
The report did not provide more details.
The hangings bring to at least 36 the number of executions in the Islamic republic so far this year.
The number of executions soared last year to 298, many of them in public, according to an AFP count, amid a government campaign to boost "security in society."
Human rights groups have accused Iran of excessive resort to the death penalty.
One woman to be executed soon in Tehran
Iran Human rights, February 18, 2008- A 30 years old woman, identified as Zahra, convicted of murdering Hassan, her 70 years old husband, could be facing execution soon, according to the state run ISCA news agency. According to the report, she was arrested and sentenced to death in a court in Tehran, after she confessed murdering her husband in 2005. Her death sentence has been approved by the Supreme Court and has now been sent to the section for implementation of the verdict (Ejraye Ahkam). She could be executed soon.
Two men were hanged in Isfahan
Iran Human Rights, February 18, 2008: Two men were hanged in the Isfahan prison early morning February 18, reported the government daily newspaper Iran.
They were identified as Omid (30) and Iraj (age not mentioned) and were convicted of murder and armed robbery according to the report.
At leat two men are going to be executed in Tehran tomorrow morning
Iran Human Rights, February 19, 2008- Two men are scheduled to be executed tomorrow morning in Tehran according to the report from the government daily newspaper Iran. The men are identified as Peyman and Saber (Afghan citizen) and both are convicted for murder in two different cases.
Because of the disturbances created by the dogs
A 70 years old dog owner is sentenced to 4 months of prison and 30 lashes
Tuesday 19 February 2008
Iran Human Rights, February 18, 2008: A 70 years old man has been sentenced to 30 lashes and 4 months of imprisonment, reported the government daily newspaper Iran.
Iran: Four months in jail and 30 lashes for walking dog in streets
Tehran, 19 Feb. 2008(AKI) - A 70-year-old man has been sentenced by an Iranian judge to four months in jail and 30 lashes for going out on the street with his dog.
The incident took place in Shahr Rey, a suburb of Tehran when the owner of the dog was caught by a police who quickly handcuffed the man. He was later charged by an Islamic judge for "disturbing the public order".
The sentence, seems to want to panic the owners of dogs that despite repeated warnings by the police, continue to defy the authorities by taking their dogs outside their homes.
President Ahmadinejad recently provoked debate in Iran about dog ownership when he took possession of four guard dogs, bought in Germany at a cost of 110,000 euros each.
The dogs are at the centre of a theological controversy because Islam considers dogs to be impure.
For this reason, the government has banned owners of domestic animals from taking them on the streets of the city, and owners risk fines or the 'detention' of their animals in a pound.
"The purchase of these dogs was authorised by a fatwa issued by several ayatollahs that approved the use of these animals if the only goal was to guarantee personal security and not infringe on any religious rule," said Iran's semi-official news agency Fars.
Iran: Six new executions take place
Tehran, 20, 2008 Feb. (AKI) - Six people were hanged in the Iranian city of Zanjan, 200 kilometres west of Tehran on Wednesday.
The six were allegedly part of a criminal gang who robbed jewelry stores in the region.
With these new executions, the total number of people executed in Iran has risen to 43 since the beginning of 2008.
At least 298 people were executed in 2007, almost twice as many as in 2006.
Iran has one of the highest execution rates in the world. Methods of execution include hanging and stoning.
On Tuesday, a 70-year-old man was sentenced by an Iranian judge to four months in jail and 30 lashes for going out on the street with his dog.
Iran hangs 10 convicts in one day
TEHRAN (AFP), 20 Feb. 2008 - Iran hanged 10 convicts on Wednesday, the latest in a growing number of executions in the Islamic republic that officials say are aimed at improving public security, the Fars news agency reported.
Six men were executed in prison for armed robbery in the northern city of Zanjan while four convicted murderers were hanged in Tehran's Evin prison, the news agency said….
The hangings bring to at least 48 the number of executions in the Islamic republic so far this year. The number of executions soared last year to 298, according to an AFP count…
Human rights groups have accused Iran of excessive resort to the death penalty…
A man is sentenced to prison, 74 lashes and amputation of 4 fingers for rubery
Iran Human rights, February 22. 2008: A court in Tehran has sentenced a man to 3 years of prison, 74 lashes, 3 years of exile in the south of Iran and amputation of 4 fingers, reported the government newspaper Iran. He is identified as Mehdi, is 60 years old and convicted of several episodes of rubbery.
Torture and Amputations of Hand
Human-Rights Activists Concerned Over Prison Deaths, Torture
Radio Free Europe, Feb. 17, 2008 - Zahra Bani Yaghoub seemed to have everything going for her. A 27-year-old graduate of the Tehran Medical University, she was a young doctor with a bright future.
But last October, Bani Yaghoub was arrested while walking in a park in the western city of Hamadan with her male companion. The next day, she was dead.
Police say she committed suicide in prison overnight, but her family says that’s impossible -- that she was happy and upbeat about her future as a urologist. They accuse prison authorities of killing Beni Yaghoub, whose case is merely the latest in a series of suspicious deaths or tortures in prison to be highlighted by human-rights activists…
In its report last month, the independent Iranian group Human Rights Defenders severely criticized the harsh treatment of detainees and prisoners across the country. In particular, the report focuses on the Shapour Street bureau of Tehran’s Agahi criminal department detention center. According to the rights group, hundreds of detainees are routinely tortured there in order to extract "confessions."
The activists maintain that such abuses occur before suspects are officially charged or have had access to a lawyer.
Beatings
One young Iranian woman who spent some time in Agahi told Radio Farda that she experienced severe torture from the moment she was entered the facility: "On the first day, they told me: ‘We are going to make roasted chicken out of you.’ I thought perhaps they would beat me up so badly that I would turn red like a roasted chicken. But they brought some instruments. They tied my hands up and hanged me from the ceiling. They put a water pipe between my legs and hands and started to pull the pipe. Then they started to beat my feet with a belt."
The former prisoner said her interrogator told her that she was "either going to die or to confess." She said it is not surprising that many suspects "admit their guilt" under duress.
Some Iranian lawyers deny that torture is used in Iranian prisons, and insist interrogators use only "a few methods, including beating or sleep deprivation." They say such procedures are routine in police detention facilities around the world.
But Ali Rahimi, a human rights activist, told Radio Farda that Iranian authorities see torture as a deterrent to crime and that its use is widespread in Iranian prisons.
"Unfortunately, it is an established method for the Iranian police. According to this method, when a suspect enters a detention center, he has to be beaten up and insulted in order to intimidate and punish him, and supposedly, to prevent him from committing further crimes," Rahimi said.
"Sometimes, they even detain suspects’ relatives in order to put pressure on them. In some cases even family members become subject to torture in order to put the pressure on the detainee."
Naser Zarafshan, a Tehran-based defense lawyer who represents leftist students imprisoned in the capital’s notorious Evin prison after antigovernment protests last year, told RFE/RL that solitary confinement -- even without physical abuse -- is a severe form of psychological torture that is widespread in Iranian prisons.
"There are also interrogations methods. One of the simplest examples is sleep deprivation of suspects by interrogating them at nighttime. They also use intimidation methods such as claiming that they would arrest suspects’ family members," Zarafshan said.
"Sometimes they give false information to prisoners; for instance, they play the recorded voice of one of his family members to make the detainee believe that his relative has been arrested, too."
Four months in jail and 30 lashes for walking dog in streets
Tehran, 19 Feb. 2008(AKI) - A 70-year-old man has been sentenced by an Iranian judge to four months in jail and 30 lashes for going out on the street with his dog.
The incident took place in Shahr Rey, a suburb of Tehran when the owner of the dog was caught by a police who quickly handcuffed the man. He was later charged by an Islamic judge for "disturbing the public order".
The sentence, seems to want to panic the owners of dogs that despite repeated warnings by the police, continue to defy the authorities by taking their dogs outside their homes.
President Ahmadinejad recently provoked debate in Iran about dog ownership when he took possession of four guard dogs, bought in Germany at a cost of 110,000 euros each.
The dogs are at the centre of a theological controversy because Islam considers dogs to be impure.
For this reason, the government has banned owners of domestic animals from taking them on the streets of the city, and owners risk fines or the 'detention' of their animals in a pound.
"The purchase of these dogs was authorised by a fatwa issued by several ayatollahs that approved the use of these animals if the only goal was to guarantee personal security and not infringe on any religious rule," said Iran's semi-official news agency Fars.
A man is sentenced to prison, 74 lashes and amputation of 4 fingers for robbery
February 22. 2008: A court in Tehran has sentenced a man to 3 years of prison, 74 lashes, 3 years of exile in the south of Iran and amputation of 4 fingers, reported the government newspaper Iran. He is identified as Mehdi, is 60 years old and convicted of several episodes of robbery.
Freedom of Expression
Five websites closed down, two women’s rights journalists chargedReporters Without Borders, Feb. 15, 2008 -Reporters Without Borders condemns yesterday’s closure of five websites and the charges of “violating national security” brought yesterday against Jelveh Javaheri and Nahid Keshavarz, two journalists who write for the women rights’ websites WeChange and Zanestan.
“These charges are abusive,” the press freedom organisation said. “Javaheri and Keshavarz just do their job as journalists when they write about the condition of women in Iran. This is Javaheri’s second arrest in two months while Keshavarz is constantly being summoned before the Tehran revolutionary court. We call on the authorities to free them at once and to stop bringing prosecutions against them.”
Javaheri, 30, writes for WeChange. She was previously arrested on 1 December and charged with “disturbing public opinion,” “publishing false information” and “publicity against the Islamic Republic” for writing articles demanding respect for the rights that women are accorded under the Iranian constitution. She was released on bail a month later.
Keshavarz, who writes for both WeChange and Zanestan, has been summoned and questioned by the intelligence services several times in the past. In April 2007, she has been detained for more than ten days or having taken part to feminist’s meetings. She was freed on bail.
Tehran prosecutor-general Saeed Mortazavi yesterday decided to ban the conservative website Nosazi and four other sites for “poisoning the electoral domain.” Since 8 February, there has been a growing controversy about the 14 March parliamentary elections, with young mollah Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the late Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, condemning the Guardian Council’s decision to disqualify 70 per cent of the candidates. Nosazi had criticized his position.
“Tension is increasing as regards the Internet in the run up to the parliamentary elections,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Nonetheless, these five website criticized pro-reform views, not the ruling party. Iran is one of the countries that cracks down hardest on the Internet and the elections are just encouraging more violations of free expression.”
Iran Sentences Journalist to Death
The New York Times, Feb. 20, 2008 - Iran has sentenced a journalist to death, accusing him of being a member of a terrorist group in the country’s southeast, the judiciary said Tuesday.
A judiciary spokesman, Alireza Jamshidi, told reporters that the journalist, Yaghoob Mirnehad, had been sentenced to death on charges of “membership in the terrorist Jundallah group as well as crimes against national security,” according to The Associated Press. …
Mr. Mirnehad, who is an ethnic Baluchi, was a journalist in southeastern Iran for Mardomsalari, a newspaper based in Tehran. He was arrested with his brother and four others in May. .
The number of executions in Iran has risen steeply in the past year. Iranian news agencies reported this week that 12 people were hanged Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing the total number of executions to 48 in 2008.
Two of the twelve, men accused of murder, were hanged in the central province of Isfahan on Tuesday, several Iranian newspapers reported.
The other 10 people were executed Wednesday. Six of them were executed in Zanjan Province, west of Tehran,… the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported. …
Four other people, who were charged with murder, were executed at the Evin prison in Tehran.
News 24 South Africa
Iran sentences journo to death
19/02/2008
Tehran - Iran said on Tuesday that it had sentenced an education activist and journalist to death for his alleged involvement in terrorism.
Yaghoob Mirnehad, a journalist who also ran a charity apparently focused on improving childhood education in Iran, was sentenced to death "because of his membership in the terrorist Jundallah group as well as for crimes against national security," Ali Reza Jamshidi, spokesperson for Iran's judiciary, told reporters on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, local websites reported that Mirnehad had been sentenced to death, but Jamshidi's comments were the first official confirmation from the Iranian government.
He did not give details on Mirnehad's alleged terrorism activity, nor whether his charity was involved...
Jamshidi did not specify Mirnehad's alleged role in the group.
Violation of Women Rights
WITNESS: "Hijab problem" sparks police standoff in Tehran
Fredrik Dahl has been reporting for Reuters from Iran since March 2007. A native of Sweden, he has also worked in Helsinki, Brussels, Sarajevo, Belgrade and London during 20 years with Reuters. In the following story, he recounts how he watched Iranian police detain a woman deemed to be violating the Islamic dress code.
By Fredrik Dahl
TEHRAN, Feb. 23, 2008 (Reuters) - Wearing a brightly colored headscarf and high-heeled boots, the woman refused to be bundled into the police van without a fight.
Protesting loudly and even trying to escape, her standoff with Iranian police cracking down on women violating the Islamic dress code lasted several minutes.
But the outcome of the drama shortly after dusk on a cold winter's day on Tehran's most famous boulevard was never in doubt.
Two female police officers in head-to-toe black chadors pushed her into the white vehicle which then drove off into the bustle of tree-lined Vali-ye Asr Avenue.
"Hijab problem," one male onlooker said, referring to the clothes women must wear in Iran to cover their hair and disguise the shape of their bodies to conform with Iran's Islamic laws.
Based in Tehran for the past year, I have often written about police detaining women who challenge the dress codes that have been more strictly enforced under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But this was the first time I saw it happening.
To judge by the passers-by who stopped in the lamplight on the snowy pavement, or the people peeping out through the windows of the neighborhood grocery store where I was buying milk, my curiosity was shared.
The dark-haired woman, who appeared to be in her 30s, argued in a high-pitched voice with a burly, bearded male police officer towering over her in his green uniform.
When his female colleague put a hand on the woman's shoulder to lead her into the van, she angrily pushed it away and shouted. Then suddenly she turned and tried to run away.
She did not get far. The two female officers grabbed her and shoved her into the police vehicle. The door was slammed shut and the van disappeared into Tehran's evening rush hour.
TOO WESTERN
"Not good," a fellow shopper told me in halting English, shaking his head in disapproval at the police action.
Thousands of women have been hauled in or warned by police in the 10 months since the authorities launched one of the strictest campaigns in recent years.
In addition to the annual summer crackdown, when sweltering heat prompts some women to shed clothing, police in December announced a drive against winter fashions seen as immodest, such as tight trousers tucked into long boots.
Iran's clerical leaders say Islamic attire helps protect women against the sex symbol status they have in the West.
But young women in wealthier urban areas often defy the restrictions by wearing tight clothing and colorful headscarves that barely cover their hair. The codes are less commonly flouted in poor suburbs and rural regions.
Even men with spiked haircuts deemed too "Western" are being targeted by the authorities in the latest clampdown.
One Iranian woman in her early 40s told me later the campaign had persuaded her to dress more conservatively, but younger women "are not scared anymore."
Those found dressing inappropriately may be warned or, if they are repeat offenders, can spend the night in a police station and may also be fined.
The authorities say they are "fighting morally corrupt people." An opinion poll published by the semi-official Fars News Agency last year said most Iranians polled supported the way police were dealing with women wearing "bad hijab."
But there was little obvious sign of approval from the small audience who watched the incident in Elahiyeh, a relatively well-off suburb in north Tehran.
Then after a few sighs and a bit of muttered discussion, the customers shrugged off the commotion and returned to their shopping, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
I stepped out into streets blanketed in snow during Iran's coldest winter in decades, wondering about the woman.
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