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Iran jails ex-football chief detained after election |
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Sunday, 17 January 2010 |
 TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior reformer who used to head Iran's football federation has been sentenced to six years in jail, his lawyer was quoted as saying on Sunday.
Mohsen Safaie Farahani, also a former deputy economy minister and a former MP, was one of many leading pro-reform figures detained after Iran's disputed presidential election in June, which plunged the Islamic Republic into turmoil.
Several other leading opposition supporters have earlier received jail terms on charges including acting against national security and spreading propaganda against the Islamic system.
"The court has sentenced my client to six years of compulsory jail," the semi-official Fars News Agency quoted his lawyer Houshang Pourbabie as saying, giving no further details. Under Iranian law, he has 20 days to appeal the sentence.
Last year's election sparked Iran's biggest unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The opposition says the vote was rigged to secure hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.
The authorities have denied the charge of vote fraud and portrayed the huge opposition protests that followed the poll as a foreign-backed bid to undermine Iran's clerical leadership.
Thousands of people protesting against the conduct of the vote were arrested. Most of them have since been released, though more than 80 people have received jail sentences of up to 15 years and five people have been sentenced to death.
In November and December, two other leading reformers, former government spokesman Abdullah Ramezanzadeh and former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, also received six-year jail terms.
Ramezanzadeh, Abtahi and Safaie Farahani held their government posts under the 1997-2005 presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who backed defeated candidate Mirhossein Mousavi in the June election.
Safaie Farahani, who also backed Mousavi's campaign, was football federation head in 1998-2002.
Separately on Sunday, the opposition Jaras website said two members of the banned Freedom Movement, Solmaze Ali Moraddi and Farid Taheri, had been detained. The party is led by former foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi, who was detained last month.
Majid Dorri, a pro-reform student activist, was sentenced to 11 years in jail on Sunday accused of having relations with the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) and of acting against national security by participating in illegal gatherings, Jaras said.
The PMOI is an exile group opposed to Iran's Islamic system of government.
(Reporting by Hashem Kalantari; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Jon Hemming) |
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Iran's nuclear standoff |
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AP: Iran on Tuesday urged China to resist pressure by the United States and its allies for new sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program.
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New York Times: In the Iranian desert, at a sprawling industrial site ringed by barbed wire and antiaircraft guns, a shift in the enrichment of uranium is producing global jitters because it could shorten Iran’s path to the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
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AFP: Gabon will "work closely" with the United States and others to pressure Iran to comply with UN demands over its nuclear program, Gabonese President Ali Bongo said Monday.
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Reuters: China's Foreign Minister said on Sunday new sanctions on Iran will not solve the standoff over its nuclear program, while chiding the United States after two months of tensions between the big powers.
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Washington Post: The Obama administration is pushing to carve out an exemption for China and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council from legislation pending in the Senate and the House that would tighten sanctions on companies doing business in Iran, administration and congressional sources said.
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AFP: Western nations pitched new sanctions against Iran in the Security Council Thursday amid signs that several members are reluctant to back a fourth round of punitive measures to deter Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
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AP: China said Thursday it will continue to push for a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear standoff, rebuffing efforts by Western powers to introduce a new set of sanctions against Iran.
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Iran Focus: Tehran, Mar. 03 - Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gloated on Wednesday that all serious threats against his government's nuclear program have been thwarted, state media reported.
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AFP: The United States and the European Union said Wednesday that there must be more sanctions against Iran's nuclear programme standoff if diplomacy fails to shift Tehran.
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Iran Focus: Tehran, Mar. 03 - Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asghar Soltanieh on Wednesday criticised the IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano's report on Iran’s nuclear file for opening doors which had already been closed by Iran, state media reported.
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