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Tuesday, 26 July 2005 |
 Canadian Press: Critics are calling on Prime Minister Paul Martin's government to take a tougher stand with Iran in the case of a Canadian woman who was tortured and killed in an Iranian prison two years ago. |
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Monday, 25 July 2005 |
 Reuters: Lawyers representing the family of a Canadian photographer who died in custody in Iran said on Monday she was deliberately killed and demanded an impartial court retry the case.
Zahra Kazemi, a Montreal-based photojournalist, died in July 2003 after her skull was split after being arrested for taking photographs outside Tehran's Evin prison where many political dissidents are held. |
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Sunday, 24 July 2005 |
 AP: In an unprecedented report, Iran's hard-line judiciary acknowledged widespread human rights violations in
prisons, including the use of torture, state-run media reported Sunday.
The report said prison guards and officials in detention
centers have ignored a legal order banning torture |
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Sunday, 24 July 2005 |
 Iran Focus: London, Jul. 24 – Britain issued a damning report on the human rights situation in Iran, stating that there had been “no significant progress” over the year, while human rights had “deteriorated further in many areas”. |
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Sunday, 24 July 2005 |
 Reuters: Iran's 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi urged human rights groups on Sunday to pay attention to the "failing" health of the jailed hunger-striking journalist Akbar Ganji, she said in a statement. Ganji, 46, an outspoken critic of the Islamic state's clerical leadership, was rushed to a Tehran hospital last Sunday amid growing fears about his health following his a month-long hunger strike, Ganji's wife told Reuters. |
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Saturday, 23 July 2005 |
 AP: Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi on Saturday
condemned the hanging of two teenagers accused of raping younger boys in northeastern Iran, a punishment that also prompted protests by the international community and rights groups.
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Friday, 22 July 2005 |
 The Times: Iran has publicly hanged two male teenagers convicted of raping a 13-year-old boy at knifepoint. After the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of child rape, they were executed on Tuesday in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad. The British gay rights group Outrage! has accused Iran of torturing the two into confessing that they had homosexual sex. It believes that the assault charges were a smokescreen to justify killing homosexuals. |
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Friday, 22 July 2005 |
 Iran Focus: London, Jul. 22 – The human rights group Amnesty International today urged the Iranian government to put a halt to the execution of minors and individuals sentenced to death for crimes they committed as children. The international rights group pointed to the execution of three such youths in the Islamic Republic in the past week despite the country being a signatory to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which stipulate that individuals who committed offences while below the age of 18 should be spared from the death penalty.
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Thursday, 21 July 2005 |
Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 21 – A diplomat from the Dutch embassy in Tehran has revealed that political prisoners
locked up in one of Iran’s most notorious prisons were being systematically tortured and deliberately harassed for their opposition to Iran’s clerical leadership. |
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Tuesday, 19 July 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 19 - A young man and a minor were hanged in public on Tuesday in Iran’s second largest city, a government-funded news agency reported. The two, only identified by their initials M.A and A.M., were convicted of sexual assault on a 13-year-old boy by the Islamic Tribunal of Mashad, according to ISNA news agency.
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Wednesday, 13 July 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 14 – A young Iranian man was hanged in public in the town of Poldokhtar, in Lorestan province (western Iran), yesterday for killing a security officer in Iran’s State Security Forces, according to a state-run daily. The hard-line daily Kayhan wrote today that 20-year-old Ali Saffarpour Rajabi was publicly hanged in Bassij Square after a court found him guilty of murdering Hamid Enshadi in Poldokhtar.
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Tuesday, 12 July 2005 |
 WARNING: PAGE CONTAINS GRAPHIC MATERIAL
Iran Focus: London, Jul. 14 – Iran Focus has obtained several before-and-after photos of Shoan Qaderi, a young Iranian Kurd from the north-western town of Mahabad, who was gunned down by State Security Forces and then hung from the back of
a Toyota jeep which was driven in nearby streets on Sunday. |
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Friday, 08 July 2005 |
 Reporters Without Borders: "For two years now, Zahra Kazemi's family has been waiting for her body to be exhumed and repatriated to Canada, and press freedom activists throughout the world have waiting for justice to be done, but the Iranian authorities have decided otherwise," the organisation said. "The international community must support Canada's initiatives and force Iran to give a full account of the circumstances of Kazemi's death," Reporters Without Borders added. |
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Wednesday, 06 July 2005 |
Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 07 – A man was publicly hanged at dawn on Tuesday in the town of Salmas, northwest Iran, accused of rape, according to a state-run daily.
The daily Sharq identified the man by only his first name, Hajan, and said that he was from a village called Mafanjouq. He was hanged in public at Kargar Square in Salmas. |
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Tuesday, 05 July 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 06 – Three men accused of armed robbery were hanged in public this morning in the
north-eastern Iranian city of Mashad, the state-run news
agency reported.
The three, identified as Ali Adelzadeh, Arash Gholamian-Khorrasani, and Davoud Daliran, were accused of robbery.
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Tuesday, 05 July 2005 |
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Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 06 – Guards in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, where political prisoners are held, carried out a raid on cells in Ward 350 on Tuesday, injuring prisoners and confiscating personal belongings and written materials. The raid was carried out at 6 a.m., when prison guards led by an officer called Abbasi charged into the ward. |
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Tuesday, 05 July 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 05 – An Iranian couple accused
of murder were hanged today at dawn in the main prison in Isfahan (central Iran), according to a state-run daily.
The husband and wife had been found guilty of the murder of an engineer after a scuffle at his house in 1999, the Iran daily wrote. |
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Thursday, 30 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: London, Jul. 01 – Human rights in Iran will be a priority for the European Union under the Presidency of the United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to a report released by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The report, entitled “Prospects for the EU in 2005”, noted, “Human rights are also a priority for the UK and EU in relations with Iran, and, as Presidency, the UK will represent the EU in the EU/Iran Human Rights Dialogue”. |
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Thursday, 23 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jun. 23 – Iran’s State Security Forces raided the home of a student activist in Tehran and arrested him less than 24 hours before the start of the second round of the presidential elections.
SSF agents raided the home of Kianoush Sanjari and took him to an unknown location a few hours ago, according to the Student Committee for the Defence of Political Prisoners. |
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Wednesday, 22 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jun. 22 – A court in Iran’s holy city of Qom has sentenced a journalist to 91 days in prison for having insulted both the President and the head of the State Expediency Council, a state-run news agency reported. Farid Modarressi was found guilty of “writing insulting material” against incumbent President Mohammad Khatami and SEC chief Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. |
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Tuesday, 21 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 21 – Two relatives of political prisoners have been arrested for a second time after having once appeared in front of a judge for protesting outside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.
The pair, a woman by the name of Maryam Arayi and a man by the name of Mehdi Farhi-Shandiz, were originally arrested along with other relatives of political prisoners who held a vigil in front of Evin Prison on June 14 and June 15. |
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Tuesday, 14 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 14 – At least 10 people were arrested this afternoon by Iran’s paramilitary police for taking part in a sit-in outside Tehran’s Evin Prison. The protesters had gathered to declare their support for political prisoners presently on hunger strike inside Evin. Evin Prison was built by the Shah’s regime as a modern security prison to house ... |
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Sunday, 12 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 12 – State Security Forces have carried out a series of destructive raids on homes in northeast Iran as part of a new campaign to silence dissent, according to local residents. Residents in the No-Dareh region of the city of Mashad complained that government forces destroyed their livelihood, leaving nothing more than rubble on the sites where their homes used to be.
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Sunday, 12 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 12 – A man was publicly hanged in
the city of Zahedan this morning, southeast Iran, charged with murder, according to the state-run news agency. Yagoubali Mirshekar, who was originally accused of a string of road-trucker murders, was handed down nine death sentences. |
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Saturday, 11 June 2005 |
 U.S. Newswire: The human rights situation in Iran is deteriorating, and the United States and its European allies need to develop a joint strategy to pressure Tehran to improve its record. That was the key point made yesterday in what will be the first in a series of hearings held by the U.S. Helsinki Commission to examine rogue regimes and their impact on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) region. |
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Friday, 10 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 10 – Iran’s State Supreme Court has upheld a sentence for a young man’s eyes to be gouged out and sprayed with acid, for blinding another man at the age of
16 some 12 years ago. |
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Tuesday, 07 June 2005 |
 U.S. Newswire: On Thursday June 9, 2005, the Iranian-American Community of Northern California (IACNC) will hold a press conference at 10:30 a.m. (PST) in Hilton San Francisco. The briefing will feature the first Bay Area screening of a video showing footage of three young men hanged in public in western Iran. At least 109 persons have been either publicly hanged or sentenced to death in Iran since January 2005. |
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Tuesday, 07 June 2005 |
 Reporters Without Borders: Reporters Without Borders voiced deep concern today about the fate of 25-year-old blogger Mojtaba Saminejad, who has been sentenced to two years in prison by a Tehran revolutionary court for "insulting the Supreme Guide" and who is due to be tried soon on a separate charge of insulting the prophets, which carries a possible death penalty. |
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Monday, 06 June 2005 |
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AFP: An Iranian weblogger arrested in a crackdown against online dissent has been sentenced to two years behind bars for "insulting the supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his lawyer told AFP Monday. Mojtaba Saminejad "still faces charges of insulting the prophet and spreading curruption, which could cost him more jail terms," lawyer Mohammad Seifzadeh said. |
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Monday, 06 June 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 06 - A group of Iranians were handed down harsh sentences ranging from execution and amputation of limbs to lashes and prison time, accused of armed robbery, according to today’s edition of the state-run Kayhan daily. A court in the city of Ahwaz (southern Khuzestan province) announced that three individuals charged with “armed robbery” from the group of thirteen were sentenced to execution. |
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