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Monday, 20 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Sep. 20 – A series of government-released statistics and interviews with a number of Iranian officials indicate that despair and frustration are on the rise within
Iran’s huge under-30 population.
The head of the government-run National Youth Organization told local journalists last week that “according to our studies, forty percent of young people across the country suffer from depression.” |
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Saturday, 18 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: The Iranian regime hanged a young man in the
city of Dezful (southwest Iran) yesterday. At the same time, two other prisoners were sentenced to death.
The regime has stepped up executions in recent days as schools and universities commenced. On Sep. 8, seven prisoners were hanged in Tehran and Karaj. |
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Friday, 17 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: The head of the public relations office of prisons in Hamedan province (western Iran) announced today that the local Department of Justice had amputed the fingers of a burglar.
The man had alledgedly stolen from 15 different stores. |
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Friday, 17 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: The lawyer representing the relatives of Atefeh Rajabi, the 16-year-old girl who was hanged last month (Aug. 15th) in the town of Neka, northern Iran, has filed a lawsuit on their behalf. Mr. Shadi Sadr, who was retained to help prove Atefeh’s innocence, stated that after examining Atefeh’s documentation he was convinced that she was in fact 16 years old at the time her execution and not 22 as Iranian Judiciary spokespersons had claimed. Judiciary officials have admitted that Atefeh was executed but said she was 22 to justify her hanging. |
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Thursday, 16 September 2004 |
 In Iran, religious minorities, including Sunni Muslims, Baha'is, Mendelians, Jews and Christians face imprisonment, harassment, intimidation and discrimination based on their religious beliefs. |
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Saturday, 11 September 2004 |
 BosNewsLife News Center: Iranian police invaded the annual conference of Iran’s Assemblies of God and arrested at least 80 church leaders at the church’s denominational center near Tehran as part of the worst crack down on evangelical believers in a decade, a Christian news agency reported Friday, September 10.
Compass news agency said security forces raided the meeting "without warning" in Karaj, 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of the capital, after they surrounded the church’s garden property Thursday, September 9. |
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Friday, 10 September 2004 |
 Voice of America: Human rights activist, Shirin Ebadi, says Iran has signed international treaties protecting young people from execution, but constantly ignores the agreements. Ms. Ebadi spke at a news conference in Vienna.
Ms. Ebadi told reporters that Iran is violating international obligations on human rights especially those concerning women and children.
She said Iran's legal system is not in tune with the country's international obligations. |
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Friday, 10 September 2004 |
 Reporters Without Borders: Reporters Without Borders said it was outraged at the latest escalation in a crackdown against news on the Internet as three journalists contributing or having contributed to a reformist site were arrested on 7-8 August.
They were Babak Ghafori Azar, Shahram Rafihzadeh and Hanif Mazroi - the latest victims of a wave of arrests and closures launched by Iranian judicial authorities against news sites with reformist leanings. |
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Wednesday, 08 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Death sentences have been issued for three boys by the names of Ali M., Morteza F. and Milad B. who are presently in the Center for Reform and Education (Juvenile Prison). While all three of them were under 18 when they allegedly committed their crimes, their death sentences are going to be carried out soon as they turn 18. |
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Tuesday, 07 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: A religious court in Tehran sentenced two men to execution, bringing to more than 110 the number of people hanged since January 2004. Thet two were identified only by their first names as Mohammad and Fereidoon.
Dozens have been hanged in recent days in Iran, as the country goes through another spate of politically-motivated executions. |
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Tuesday, 07 September 2004 |
 AFP: Iran's dominant conservatives have been rolling back the tentative liberalisation of reformist President Mohammad Khatami since winning control of parliament in disputed polls earlier this year, but it remains unclear how far to the right they will take the Islamic republic. |
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Monday, 06 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: News of the execution of a sixteen-year-old girl in northern Iran, first broken by Iran Focus, has been met with shock and outrage around the world. In a press statement on Monday, Amnesty International expressed ‘outrage” at the execution of Ateqeh Sahaleh on Sunday, August 15, in the town of Neka in Mazandaran Province. |
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Monday, 06 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: An Iranian man was hanged today near the Iranian capital, Tehran, the fifth person to be executed in public in as many days. An Iranian judiciary official announced that two more individuals would be hanged "imminently".
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Monday, 06 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Aug 25 - After initially denying that a 16-year-old girl had been hanged in public in the northern town of Neka on Monday, August 16, the Iranian government has admitted for the first time that the hanging took place. |
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Monday, 06 September 2004 |
 AFP: Iran again hit out at Canada for complaining about the murder in custody here of Canadian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi, saying Ottawa was only crying "crocodile tears".
"We are confounded by him and his statements," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said of Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew.
In recent weeks Pettigrew has upped his tone against Iran. |
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Sunday, 05 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Karaj, Aug 31 – A court here has sentenced a 16-year-old boy to death on charges of drug trafficking.
Feiz Mohammad, who is from neighboring Afghanistan, was tried and sentenced to death by a judge in Branch 122 of the Special Juvenile Court of Karaj, 40 kilometers west of the capital, Tehran.
Mohammad was accused of stealing seven kilograms of pure morphine from his employer, a ranch owner, and giving it to a group of Afghan immigrants distributing drugs. He faced no other charges. |
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Sunday, 05 September 2004 |
Iran Focus: Neka (northern Iran), Aug 31 – The orphaned 16-year-old girl hanged in front of residents in this town close to the Caspian Sea on August 15 suffered years of brutal violence, exploitation and torture in the hands of relatives, local officials and plain strangers, and in a country where girls are the most vulnerable members of society, she had no one to go to for help.
The tragic picture emerges from dozens of interviews conducted by an Iran Focus correspondent with Atefeh Rajabi’s classmates, friends, relatives and neighbors in this humid, overcrowded industrial town that sits on a busy highway linking Tehran with the north of the country. |
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Sunday, 05 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran - A man was hanged in public in the city of Arak, (central Iran) on Sunday, August 29.
As the unnamed man was being taken to the gallows, the crowd on the scene called for his life to be spared. Officials, however, went ahead with the hanging. |
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Sunday, 05 September 2004 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Sep. 3 - A man by the name of Mohammad N. was hanged in public in the city of Arak, (central Iran) on Sunday, August 29.
Mohammad’s four young children were brought to the scene to watch the execution of their father. |
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Sunday, 05 September 2004 |
 TORONTO STAR: Payam lives alone and never talks about the past. The 46-year-old Iranian with gentle brown eyes and a quiet smile is haunted by the smell of fear and death. Now working as an engineer in England, he walks with special soles in his shoes because his feet have been damaged by torture. |
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Friday, 03 September 2004 |
 RFE/RL: The EU's outgoing external relations commissioner, Chris Patten, has said Iran's "backward movement" on human rights and unwillingness to fully meet UN nuclear demands constitute one of the biggest regrets of his career. Patten, who will step down at the end of October, made the remarks in a farewell talk to members of the European Parliament's foreign relations committee in Brussels yesterday. |
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Tuesday, 31 August 2004 |
 Associated Press: Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew said Tuesday that Canada has not ruled out sanctions against Iran to protest the death in custody of a Quebec-based photojournalist.
Pettigrew, who was on his first visit to the European Union as Canada's new foreign affairs minister, said he discussed the case of slain Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi with EU counterparts during two days of meetings in Brussels. |
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Sunday, 29 August 2004 |
 The Washington Times: Iran's parliament is preparing fashion designs for national Islamic costumes to combat what they call the corrupting influence of Western fashion.
Agence France Presse reports the move comes after the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned the nation about a "cultural invasion" and the dangers to public morality of imitating foreigners. Iranians needed to design their own styles, he said. |
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Sunday, 29 August 2004 |
 Sunday Telegraph: Atefeh Rajabi appears to have been a fairly normal 16-year-old: sulky, disobedient, and eager to have sex. In London, those attributes earn lectures from parents and teachers on the importance of acting responsibly and not being offensive. In the city of Neka in Iran, where Atefeh Rajabi comes from, they get you hauled up in front of a judge.
Atefeh's typical teenage behaviour meant that she was charged and found guilty of "acts incompatible with chastity". |
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Thursday, 26 August 2004 |
 AFP: The door to Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi's home was forced open twice in the past 10 days, she said Wednesday, adding that she believed the break-ins were intended as a threat.
"I'm taking it as a threat, some people want to make me understand that, even at home, I am not secure," she told AFP. |
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Tuesday, 24 August 2004 |
 Chicago Sun Times: A leading human rights group on Tuesday denounced Iran's reported public execution of a teen girl in a controversial chastity case.
The judge in the case said he was punishing the 16-year-old for her "sharp tongue," according to the Iran Focus Web site. |
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Saturday, 21 August 2004 |
 Iran Focus: On Sunday, August 15, a 16-year-old girl in the town of Neka, northern Iran, was executed. Ateqeh Sahaleh was hanged in public on Simetry Street off Rah Ahan Street at the city center. |
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Saturday, 21 August 2004 |
 Reuters: Iran has hanged three drug smugglers in a public square in the southern province of Kerman, the Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper reported on Saturday.
Under Iran's strict Islamic law, in place since the 1979 revolution, the death sentence is usually reserved for murder, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking. |
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Thursday, 19 August 2004 |
 AFP: Iran's conservative-controlled parliament on Wednesday blocked a plan to define political crimes which would have clarified the status of political prisoners, said the student news agency ISNA.
The parliament, or Majlis, blocked a proposal that asked the government to give a legal definition of political crimes. |
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Monday, 16 August 2004 |
 VOA: Like despotic rulers everywhere, the extremist Muslim clerics who run Iran consider the people their greatest enemy. That is why, says U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Iran’s rulers are worried about the movement toward democracy in Iraq: |
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