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Thursday, 03 February 2005 |
 AFP: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped up Washington's verbal assault on Iran on Thursday, saying the hardline Islamic regime's treatment of its people was "something to be loathed". "I don't think anybody thinks that the unelected mullahs who run that regime are a good thing for either the Iranian people or for the region," Rice told reporters accompanying her to Europe and the Middle East. |
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Tuesday, 01 February 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Feb. 01 – Iranian State Security Forces raided a home in Karaj (central Iran), host to a coed party, arresting nine young men and women yesterday.
Music tapes, two video-cameras and alcoholic beverages
were among the items confiscated during the raid. |
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Tuesday, 01 February 2005 |
 New York Sun: The new chairman of the Helsinki Commission says he plans to use the Cold War institution to highlight Iranian human rights issues with Europe.
The plan by Senator Brownback, a Republican from Kansas, is in keeping with the president's commitment to spread freedom throughout the world, a theme that is likely to be reiterated in his State of the Union speech tomorrow.
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Friday, 28 January 2005 |
 Reporters Without Borders: Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned the hounding by the authorities of Taghi Rahmani, who since 1981 has spent a total of 5,000 days in prison, sentenced each time in connection with his journalistic work. Rahmani has been in jail this time for 19 months without charge and the worldwide press freedom organisation called on the Iranian authorities for his immediate and unconditional release.
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Friday, 28 January 2005 |
 Reuters: A United Nations human rights body called on Iran on Friday to abolish the death penalty as well as amputation, flogging and stoning for people who committed crimes as minors. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child "deplored" the fact that during its three-week session an Iranian was executed for a killing carried out when he was ... |
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Wednesday, 26 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 26 – A seventeen-year-old boy was sentenced to execution by a Tehran court. The boy, only identified by his first name Sattar, was accused of murder. Sattar allegedly stabbed to death a man by the name of Mahmoud a few months ago after a scuffle at a phone booth
in Islamshahr (southern Tehran).
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Saturday, 22 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 22 – An Iranian medical student was sentenced to two years prison time and 74 lashes by Iran's Revolutionary Court on political charges, according to a state-run news agency. Reza Ashrafpour, a young man studying dentistry in Iran's University of Medical Sciences had been charged with "acting against national security", ... |
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Friday, 21 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 21 – The father of an Iranian political prisoner who has been held without charge in Tehran's notorious Evin prison said that his son was being kept in solitary confinement for the past three months despite government assurances that such practices were not being carried out. In an interview with the Prague-based Radio Farda the father of Saeid Massouri, a member of the main Iranian opposition group, the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran, said yesterday that his son was transferred to a solitary cell in Evin prison just over three months ago, without any explanation as to why he was forced there. |
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Friday, 21 January 2005 |
 Amnesty International - URGENT ACTION: Ali, a 16-year-old student, may be at risk of imminent execution for the murder of another student in his high school, which took place between mid-January and mid-February 2003. Amnesty International has recently learned that Ali was sentenced to death in June 2004, and his sentence has already been confirmed by the Supreme Court.
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Thursday, 20 January 2005 |
 AFP: An Iranian journalist has been arrested on charges of giving interviews to foreign radios, a newspaper reported Thursday. Arash Sigarchi, chief editor of Gilan-e-Emrooz (Today's Gilan) in the northern province of Gilan, gave interviews to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the US-funded Radio Farda, Shargh said. |
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Thursday, 20 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 20 - A young man who was accused of killing a member of Iran’s security forces when he was a minor was hanged in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.
Iman Farrokhi who was 17 at the time of the offence was on death row in the Tehran Centre for Reform and Education (Juvenile Prison). |
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Tuesday, 18 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Paris, Jan. 18 – Iranians are planning a massive rally in Paris on the twenty-sixth anniversary of the 1979 Iranian revolution to call for an end to theocratic rule in their country. Organisers are expecting a huge turnout in the event scheduled for February 10 at Place Trocadero in central Paris.
“We are going to call every man and woman of conscience in the world to join us on February 10,” said Elham Parsafar of the Paris-based Committee in Defense of Human Rights in Iran.
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Tuesday, 18 January 2005 |
 The Times: Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s Nobel peace prizewinner who has defied a summons to appear before the feared Revolutionary Court, yesterday called on her country’s authorities to ban the use of solitary confinement. The practice amounted to torture and was a tool of unpopular governments, she told a rare conference where several former prisoners gave accounts of their experiences in solitary confinement. |
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Friday, 14 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Paris, Jan. 14 - In its annual report on human rights practices around the globe Human Rights Watch said that "basic human rights in Iran, especially freedom of expression and opinion, deteriorated in 2004". "Torture and ill-treatment in detention, including indefinite solitary confinement, are used routinely to punish dissidents… Abuses are carried out by what Iranians call 'parallel institutions': ... |
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Thursday, 13 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Strasbourg, Jan. 13 - The European Parliament adopted a resolution by majority vote today condemning human rights violations in Iran in the second such move over the past six months. The toughly-worded resolution denounced practices such as execution of juveniles and stoning carried
out by the Iranian regime. |
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Thursday, 13 January 2005 |
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Iran Focus: Paris, Jan. 13 - Nobel Peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said today she had been summoned by Iran's hardline judiciary, risking arrest if she did not attend. "I have received a summons to a revolutionary court," she told the French news agency, AFP. The summons says Ebadi must present herself to courts within the next three days to explain herself, otherwise she would be arrested. |
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Wednesday, 12 January 2005 |
 Associated Press: Iran's hard-line judiciary on Tuesday denounced journalists who claimed they were tortured into making confessions, saying the newsmen were inciting
people against the government. |
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Tuesday, 11 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 11 - Two foreigners were deported from Iran for practicing the Baha’i faith according to an Iranian official. “These individuals, one a European and the other a Latin American, travelled to and from Iran over the past five years posing as traders and tourists, secretly attracting youths to their sect through economic activities”, the official said. |
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Monday, 10 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 10 - An Iranian man is to be hanged in Tehran on January 19, charged with murder.
The man only identified by his first name Ali-Reza was originally sentenced to be publicly hanged by Judge Javad Esmaeili for the murder of five members of a family some two years ago. |
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Saturday, 08 January 2005 |
 AFP: Iran's hardline judiciary has threatened legal action against those who alleged that detained journalists and Internet writers were abused to extract confessions and apologies, official media reported Saturday. "We will legally deal with those who have published unrealistic material that corresponds with that of the enemy media and that tries to tarnish the work of the police," said a statement from Tehran's prosecutor.
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Saturday, 08 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 08 – An Iranian man who took part in human rights protests in front of the United Nations office in Iran in October has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison and 60 lashes. Bina Darabvand took part in protests organised by family members of political prisoners outside the UN building in Tehran calling on the world body to condemn “torture being carried out” on their relatives. |
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Friday, 07 January 2005 |
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Human Rights Watch: After testifying to a presidential commission about their torture during detention, a group of Iranian journalists have received death threats from judicial officials under Tehran chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch is extremely concerned about the safety of the journalists, whose testimony to a presidential commission, tasked with investigating mistreatment of detainees, provided detailed ... |
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Thursday, 06 January 2005 |
 Reporters Without Border: Reporters Without Borders has condemned the mistreatment in prison of cyberdissidents and webloggers after an Iranian committee report concluded that public confessions of two of them, (photo left), were obtained under duress. "We fear that the authorities are succeeding in purging the web of all critical content through brutality, intimidation and censorship," the worldwide press freedom organisation said.
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Thursday, 06 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 06 - A 32-year-old man was hanged
in public in the town of Noshahr (northern Iran) yesterday,
after serving five years in prison for murder.
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Thursday, 06 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Paris, Jan. 06 – An Iranian human rights exhibition was opened for the second time in Paris yesterday depicting human rights violations in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
The event was sponsored by some 34 European human rights organisations and will be open to the general public until next week. |
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Wednesday, 29 December 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Berlin, Dec. 29 - Three members of the European Parliament took part in a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in Berlin in protest to the Iranian regime’s practice of stoning people to death. A large number of Iranian exiles yesterday afternoon joined the three The MEPs, Alexander Alvaro, Holger Krahmer, and Alexander Lambsdorff, from the German Free Democratic Party. |
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Tuesday, 28 December 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Dec. 28 - A young man who was accused of killing a member of Iran’s security forces when he was a minor is
to be executed within “the next few days”, according to a Tehran judge who sentenced him.
Iman Farrokhi who was 17 at the time of the offence is currently
on death row in the Tehran Centre for Reform and Education (Juvenile Prison).
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Tuesday, 28 December 2004 |
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Iran Focus: Tehran, Dec. 28 - Two young men were hanged in public in the Iranian city of Mashad (northeastern province of Khorrasan) yesterday and on Sunday after authorities accused them of rape. One of the young men identified only by his first name, Mohammad-Reza, was publicly hanged in Hedayat blvd. in the city-center. |
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Tuesday, 28 December 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Dec. 28 – A teenager who is currently in one of Iran’s Centers for Reform and Education (Juvenile Prison) is to be hanged to death within three weeks for a crime allegedly committed when he was fourteen. The boy only identified as Mohammad T. was accused of fatally stabbing another boy who was involved in a scuffle with his brother. Mohammad M. died from his wounds in hospital on October 17, 2000. |
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Friday, 24 December 2004 |
Amnesty International: The case of Leyla Mafi, who faces execution on account of charges including sexual intercourse with blood relatives, giving birth to an illegitimate child and acts contrary to chastity, flies in
the face of justice and human dignity. It also breaches Iran's own obligationsunder international law, Amnesty International said. |
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