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Wednesday, 22 December 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Dec. 22 – Two antique smugglers had
their death sentences upheld yesterday by an Islamic revolutionary court in the southern town of Jiroft.
The religious judge, Dadkhoda Sallari, also ordered the confiscation and sale of their personal property to cover the cost of trial. |
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Tuesday, 21 December 2004 |
 RFE/RL: Along with China and the United States, Iran has one of the highest execution rates in the world. In the last two decades, thousands of political prisoners, drug traffickers, and drug addicts have been executed in the Islamic Republic. In 2003, more than 100 executions were recorded in Iran. Human rights groups, however, say the real number of people put to death is much higher. "Unfortunately, every year there are
some 300 to 400 executions in Iran ," said Abdolkarim Lahiji ... |
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Tuesday, 21 December 2004 |
 BBC: The UN General Assembly has censured Iran for human rights violations, in a relatively close vote. By 71 votes to 54, with 55 abstentions, the assembly on Monday said Tehran restricted free speech, used torture, and persecuted dissenters. The resolution is not legally binding but is an expression of world opinion. Meanwhile, Amnesty International says it fears an Iranian woman convicted of adultery may be buried up to her chest and stoned to death on Tuesday. |
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Tuesday, 21 December 2004 |
 The Norway Post: Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen has condemned the planned execution of the mentally retarded 19 year-old Leila M in Iran. Among other things, the girl has been accused of prostitution. Norway has sent a formal protest to Iran about the matter. A representative from the Iranian embassy in Oslo was on Monday summoned to the Foreign Office to receive the Norwegian protest. |
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Tuesday, 21 December 2004 |
 United Press International: The U.N. General Assembly Monday expressed concern at continuing human rights violations in Iran on the reported eve of an execution by stoning. Non-governmental organizations said it was the 52nd time a body of the world organization condemned Tehran's human rights record. |
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Tuesday, 21 December 2004 |
 Reuters: The U.N. General Assembly has criticised Iran for public executions, torture, arbitrary sentencing, flogging, stoning and systematic discrimination against women. Sponsored by Canada, the human rights resolution was adopted on Monday by a vote of 71 in favour, 54 against with
55 abstentions in the 191-member assembly. |
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Monday, 20 December 2004 |
 Human Rights Watch: The Iranian judiciary is using threats of lengthy prison sentences and coerced televised statements in an attempt to cover up its arbitrary detention and torture of internet journalists and civil society activists, Human Rights Watch said today. Since September, more than 20 internet journalists and civil society activists have been arrested and held in a secret detention center in Tehran. |
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Monday, 20 December 2004 |
 Aftenposten: Iran's ambassador to Norway refused to meet the local head of Amnesty International on Monday. Amnesty is among those taking up the case of a young, retarded Iranian who's been sentenced to death. The 19-year-old, known only as "Leyla M," was forced into prostitution by her own mother at the age of eight. |
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Sunday, 19 December 2004 |
 The Observer: Two women convicted of crimes against morality in Iran are facing imminent execution, one by being buried up to her chest and stoned, Amnesty International said last night. One of the women, a 19-year-old with a mental age of eight who was forced into prostitution by her mother, is to be flogged and executed. An official said yesterday he was waiting for orders on whether to stone or hang her. |
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Sunday, 19 December 2004 |
 Sunday Telegraph: As one young woman awaits sentence and another faces death this week, Alasdair Palmer reveals the Iranian legal system's shocking barbarity towards children. "My mother doesn't visit me in prison. If you see her, tell her she promised to bring me cheese curls and chocolate. And she shouldn't forget to bring my red dress." Those pathetic words may be among the last utterances of a 19-year-old girl, identified only as Leila M, who has been condemned to death in Iran for "acts incompatible with chastity".
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Tuesday, 14 December 2004 |
 Associated Press: Amnesty International said Tuesday that Iran planned to execute a mentally disabled 19-year-old woman for "acts contrary to chastity,'' referring to alleged crimes stemming from her having been forced into prostitution as a child. |
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Tuesday, 14 December 2004 |
 The Independent: A teenage girl with a mental age of eight is facing the death penalty for prostitution in Iran. The trial comes only four months after the hanging of another mentally ill girl for sex before marriage in a case that has prompted a human rights lawyer to prepare a charge of wrongful execution against the presiding judge. |
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Tuesday, 14 December 2004 |
 Daily Telegraph: A 19-year-old Iranian girl with a mental age of eight who was forced into prostitution by her mother has been sentenced to be flogged and executed for 'morality-related' offences, Amnesty International said yesterday. The human rights pressure group has asked Iran's supreme court to stay the execution. The girl, named only as Leyla M, had suffered a "litany of abuse", it said. |
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Monday, 13 December 2004 |
 Amnesty International: A 19-year old girl, “Leyla M”, who has a mental
age of eight, reportedly faces imminent execution for “morality-related” offences after being forced into prostitution by her mother as a child. According to a Tehran newspaper report of 28 November, she was sentenced to death by a court in the central Iranian city of Arak and the sentence has now been passed to the Supreme Court for confirmation. |
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Monday, 13 December 2004 |
AFP: Iran's reformist government admitted Monday that it was concerned over how the hardline judiciary managed to exact written apologies and confessions from several detained dissident journalists. "People making statements that go against their convictions cannot win the confidence of public opinion and raise questions," government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told journalists.
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Sunday, 12 December 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Paris, Dec. 11 – A three-day exhibition of a
quarter-century of human rights violations in Iran, sponsored
by over 30 European human rights organizations, began with
a conference in Paris on Friday and is drawing large crowds
of French and Iranian visitors. |
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Saturday, 11 December 2004 |
 AFP: An Iranian woman arrested in a judicial crackdown on reformist journalists was freed on bail but needed hospital treatment due to her detention, her husband told AFP on Saturday. According to Ahmad Beigloo, journalist Fereshteh Ghazi "was kept in solitary confinement for 38 days and had to be checked into hospital as she was not in a good physical or mental shape".
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Saturday, 11 December 2004 |
 The Independent: The treatment of Arash Nassouri was brutal. "They hung me upside down and handcuffed me with a bar under my knees," he says. "They started kicking and punching me ... beating me in every part of my back, my stomach, face, everywhere. My backbone was broken. But the pain was worst when they hit my face. My nose was already broken, ... |
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Friday, 10 December 2004 |
 Radio Free Europe: Baha'is are Iran's largest religious
minority, but their faith is not recognized in the country's constitution and they have long faced harassment and persecution. The European Union recently lodged a formal complaint with Iranian authorities over the arrest and harassment of journalists as well as members of religious minorities such as the Baha'is. |
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Tuesday, 07 December 2004 |
Reuters: Instead of celebrating his 18th birthday at home with friends and family this month, Ali Torabi will be wondering if it will be his last. Torabi is one of at least 12 juvenile offenders sentenced to death by Iran's hardline courts and held in detention centres until they are deemed old enough to be executed without attracting international criticism, human
rights activists say. |
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Tuesday, 07 December 2004 |
 AFP: Seven drug traffickers were hanged publicly on Tuesday
in a park in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan, the Kayhan evening newspaper reported. It said the men had
been found guilty of involvement in international narcotics trafficking and attacks on security forces. They were hanged in Zahedan's Laleh Park.
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Tuesday, 07 December 2004 |
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Human Rights Watch: Secret squads operating under the authority of the Iranian judiciary have used torture to force detained Internet journalists and civil society activists to write self-incriminatory “confession letters,” Human Rights Watch said today. |
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Tuesday, 07 December 2004 |
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AFP: Human Rights Watch said Monday that secret squads operating under the Iranian judiciary have used torture to force detained Internet journalists and activists to write self-incriminatory "confession letters." |
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Monday, 06 December 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Gothenburg, Dec. 6 - In a parliamentary conference in Stockholm last week, Swedish parliamentarians from different factions debated the growing trend of human rights violations in Iran. |
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Sunday, 05 December 2004 |
 AFP: Iran responded to fresh EU criticism of its human rights situation by saying it was concerned by what it alleged were violations in Europe and a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in the Netherlands. "We are seriously concerned about the human rights situation in Europe," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. |
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Saturday, 04 December 2004 |
 AFP: Three Iranian reformist journalists released in the past days have written letters of repentance, saying they were "brainwashed" by foreigners and "counter-revolutionaries", press reports said Saturday. Newspapers have carried the letters of repentance allegedly written by Omid Memarian, Shahram Rafizadeh and Roozbeh Mir-Ebrahimi to the head of Iran's hardline judiciary. |
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Wednesday, 01 December 2004 |
 Reporters Without Borders: Reporters Without Borders has strongly protested against the Iran's relentless efforts to stifle free expression online after the arrest of five webloggers in less than two months, the latest on 28 November 2004. |
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Tuesday, 30 November 2004 |
Iran Focus: Tehran, Nov. 30 - The Supreme Court of Iran has upheld a stoning sentence for a woman accused of adultery. Hajieh Esmailvand has been serving prison time in the town of Jolfa (Northwestern Iran) since Jan. 2000 for having an affair
with a 17-year-old boy. |
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Monday, 29 November 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Nov. 29 - A 19-year-old man was sentenced to death yesterday, after being convicted of murder. The young man whose identity has not been announced was found guilty of killing his father in the Iranian capital of Tehran. This latest sentence follows a string of public executions carried out by the Iranian regime in recent days. |
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Thursday, 25 November 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Nov. 25 - New information has come to light over the sudden death of a 14-year-old schoolboy in western Iran, who died after being flogged for “eating in public” during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan. Kaveh Habibi-Nejad died Nov. 12 and was buried in the cemetery of the Kurdish city of Sanadaj on Nov. 13, according to his death certificate. |
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