|
Saturday, 16 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 16 - Anti-government protests erupted yesterday through the night in the city of Ahwaz, southwest Khuzestan province in Iran, leaving at least six people dead and hundreds injured or arrested. Ahwaz, close to the Iraqi border, is a major hub of Iranian ethnic minority groups, and its largely Arab population has faced brutal repression undere clerical rule. |
|
|
Friday, 15 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 15 – Iran’s former president Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accused Mohammad Khatami’s government of having a hand in the 1998 dissident serial murders. Speaking to a gathering of students north of Tehran, Rafsanjani said, “A crime occurred for which the present government is responsible. They should have answered for it”. |
|
|
Friday, 15 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 15 - A teenager was sentenced to death for a crime he is alleged to have committed when he
was 17 years old, according to a state-run daily.
The boy who was only identified by his first name Saeid is to
be executed shortly, the Ettemad daily reported. |
|
|
Friday, 15 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Washington, D.C., Apr. 14 - Iranians from across the United States gathered in the Constitution Hall here today
to take part in what they called Iranian-American National Convention for Democratic Change in Iran. |
|
|
Thursday, 14 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 14 – Nearly a quarter of the more than 825 people discovered sleeping in the streets of Tehran who had been rounded up during the last four months had received good education according to the Director of Social Risks Department of Tehran’s Governorship. |
|
|
Thursday, 14 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Washington, DC, Apr. 12 – Thousands of members of the Iranian Diaspora across the United States are expected to convene at Washington's Constitution Hall to voice support for a democratic, secular republic in Iran, organisers said. The political convention will be held with the support of leading American and international figures calling for a firm policy against the theocratic regime in Iran, according to organisers. |
|
|
Thursday, 14 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 13 – A young man in Iran is to have his right hand and left leg amputated today for theft, a state-run
daily reported. The young man identified only as Mohammad B. is currently being held in Karoon prison in the south-western town of Ahwaz. |
|
|
Wednesday, 13 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 13 - A father and his 17-year-old son will be executed by hanging on Saturday after being convicted of rape and theft, a state-run newspaper reported today. The execution of Mousa Ali-Mohammadi and his son Rasoul will take place at dawn on Saturday before which each will receive 74 lashes, the Iran daily wrote. Mousa Ali-Mohammadi is due
to be hanged in public, while his son will be simultaneously hanged in Isfahan prison. |
|
|
Monday, 11 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: London, Apr. 11 – Iran’s state-run media and press reacted harshly to a recent meeting held in the United States Congress by an Iran policy group in Washington, at the invitation of the newly-formed Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the U.S. House of Representative. Iran’s state-run radio said in a commentary yesterday, “A number of U.S. personalities and groups have for some time attempted to beautify this organisation and remove its name from the list of terrorist organisations, so as to put pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran... |
|
|
Monday, 11 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Neka (Iran), Apr. 11 – A number of government officials and security officers were arrested during raids on at least five houses used as brothels in and around the town of Neka (northern Iran).
The raids, conducted during the past two weeks, uncovered several organised child prostitution rings running the brothels.
Many runaway girls, some as young as 13, were being forced into prostitution by these gangs. . |
|
|
Sunday, 10 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Baghdad, Apr. 10 - More than 30 armed agents dispatched from Iran were arrested in the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala, according to sources close to the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin. Sources said that the 30 agents were mercenaries of the elite Qods (Jerusalem) Force branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. |
|
|
Sunday, 10 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 10 – More than 1,000 residents of an Iranian village in the suburbs of the city of Shiraz yesterday took part in anti-government demonstrations, setting fires to tyres and blockading roads in the area. Residents in Darivan put rocks in the main route 35 kilometres from Shiraz to the town of Kharameh, blocking all traffic for more than five hours. |
|
|
Saturday, 09 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 09 - The city of Mahabad (western Iranian province of Kurdistan) was placed under de facto martial law after three days of social unrest and numerous clashes between residents and agents of Iran’s State Security Forces, leaving one 13-year-old boy dead. |
|
|
Saturday, 09 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 09 – Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence against a longtime political prisoner in Iran, making his execution imminent.
Hojjat Zamani, 29 years old, has been imprisoned in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran since the year 2000 for being a member of the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). |
|
|
Saturday, 09 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Baghdad, Apr. 09 – Two organised gangs responsible for a number of kidnappings and violent operations are run by a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to information obtained by sources close to the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin. |
|
|
Friday, 08 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Baghdad, Apr. 08 – Some four tons of illicit drugs imported from Iran were confiscated in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, according to an Iraqi daily. The Al-Mashreq daily wrote yesterday, “On Wednesday authorities in the southern Iraqi city of Basra announced that security forces had rounded up four tons of cannabis which had been smuggled from Iran”. |
|
|
Friday, 08 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 08 – At least 1,500 anti-government protests, strikes, and clashes took place in Iran during the year that ended on March 20. More than 450 strikes, demonstrations, and gatherings by white- and blue-collar workers, were reported in state-run and opposition media. |
|
|
Friday, 08 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Baghdad, Apr. 08 – A prominent Iraqi daily accused Iran’s leadership of dispatching mercenaries to one of Shiite Iraq’s holiest cities.
The Al-Forat daily reported that Iranian agents were planning to infiltrate Karbala following the establishment of Iraq’s new interim-government. |
|
|
Thursday, 07 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Washington, Apr. 07 – A leading Iran-policy group
in Washington discussed U.S. policy options towards the clerical state, in a conference on Capitol Hill yesterday, at the invitation of the Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the U.S. House of Representative. |
|
|
Tuesday, 05 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Paris, Apr. 05 – Thousands of Iranians marched in downtown Paris today to protest the visit to France by the Iranian regime’s President Mohammad Khatami. The demonstration was organised by the French anti-racist movement, MRAP, and the Movement for Peace, two of the largest non-governmental organisations in France. |
|
|
Monday, 04 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: London, Apr. 04 – Iran’s hard-line leaders are setting up a “secret government” in Iraq, according to a prominent Arabic language news outlet. The Saudi-affiliated Elaph website wrote in its Friday issue, “The Iranian Intelligence Ministry is creating a secret government in Iraq”. |
|
|
Sunday, 03 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Apr. 03 – Workers in Iran are living far below the minimum wage after a recent government decision to hold the minimum wage line at 122,000 Toumans (the equivalent of 1.22 million Rials or $120) per month, according to an Iranian labour expert. Saeid Keyani, speaking to a state-run news agency, said, “Workers in provinces such as Bandar Abbas, the economical hubs of the country, not only are unable to see the colour of meat year by year, but just so as to get their family by they are forced to look for food in city waste-bins”. |
|
|
Saturday, 02 April 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Ottawa, Apr. 02 – Iranians residing in Canada held a rally in front of the Foreign Ministry headquarters yesterday in response to an expatriate Iranian doctor’s testimony which has shed new light on the 2003 state murder of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist. Demonstrators who were rallied by the Committee for Defence of Human Rights in Iran called for an end to Canada’s diplomatic relations with the ... |
|
|
Thursday, 31 March 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Paris, Mar. 31 – The Iranian regime is on a fast-track to obtain nuclear weapons, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the main opposition coalition, who made new revelations at a press conference in Paris today. Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI, told reporters that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had allocated 2.5 billion dollars to acquire three nuclear warheads. |
|
|
Wednesday, 30 March 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Mar. 30 – Widespread clashes erupted between people and State Security Forces in the north-western Iranian town of Baneh (Kurdistan province) yesterday following two separate shootings by government agents which left at two people dead. Scores of people were injured or arrested, according to eye-witnesses who reported also that two security vehicles were set alight and government buildings ransacked during the outbreak. |
|
|
Saturday, 26 March 2005 |
 Iran Focus: London, Mar. 26 – The European Union must immediately abandon “its failed and counterproductive policy
of appeasement" towards Iran and instead support the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people and their resistance, according to a London-based legal expert. |
|
|
Saturday, 26 March 2005 |
|
Iran Focus: Tehran, 25. Mar – At least five people were killed and dozens left injured outside the Azadi stadium in Tehran after anti-government protests erupted at the end of the Iran–Japan World Cup qualifier football match this evening. Eye-witnesses reported that the regime used special anti-riot units and hundreds of State Security Forces (SSF) to launch an offensive on the 100,000-strong crowd, after spectators started chanting anti-government slogans. |
|
|
Tuesday, 22 March 2005 |
 Iran Focus: London, Mar. 22 – Dozens of British parliamentarians and prominent international law experts called today on Whitehall to remove Iran's main opposition group, the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), from the UK list of proscribed organisations. |
|
|
Tuesday, 15 March 2005 |
|
Iran Focus: Tehran, Mar. 15 – Tehran was left in a standstill this evening as the population poured into the streets to mark the national 'fire' festival of Chahar-shanbeh Souri despite intense pressures by the Iranian regime to prevent a possible uprising. Eye-witnesses reported that full-size puppets of high-ranking officials, such as the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime's president Mohammad Khatami, were set on fire by youths at numerous locations throughout the Iranian capital. |
|
|
Wednesday, 09 March 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Mar. 09 - On the event of International Women's Day, 1,000 women staged a demonstration at
central Tehran’s Laleh Park yesterday afternoon.
Clashes erupted between the protesters and State Security Forces (SSF) as local residents reported tight security in the vicinity of the park since daybreak. |
|
