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Thursday, 13 January 2005 |
 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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Thursday, 13 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 13 – Sixteen Iranian students were killed when a fire broke out in a school in western Iran at midday. Reports confirm that the fire broke out in Safilan village's local school in Chahar Mahale Bakhtiari province (west Iran) after a schoolteacher attempted to turn on a gas heater which was near flammable liquids which caught fire upon contact. |
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Wednesday, 12 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 12 - A woman sentenced to death for killing a senior police officer who tried to rape her has been pardoned by the victim's family according to a judiciary official, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. Afsaneh Nowrouzi was ordered to pay the family of Colonel Behzad Moghaddam $62,500 as blood money in order to escape the execution. |
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Wednesday, 12 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 12 – In a meeting with Japan's ambassador to Tehran, Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) secretary said, "Iran will start enriching uranium in the near future". Hassan Rowhani, Iran's nuclear point-man in negotiations with the European Union's big three added, "Iran will not allow other countries to pursue a halt in its (nuclear) enrichment". |
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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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Tuesday, 11 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Baghdad, Jan. 11 - Twelve Iranians were arrested by Iraqi police yesterday in the city of al-Kut, south of Baghdad. The individuals who crossed the Iran-Iraq border travelled without valid visas.
Iraqi authorities had demanded in recent weeks that Tehran shut down illegal crossings between the 1500km border. |
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Monday, 10 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 10 - Iran’s Friday Prayers Leader for the city of Urumiyeh (northwest Iran) demanded a harsher crackdown on “mal-veiling” in the Islamic republic.
Hojatolislam Gholamreza Hassani speaking to a state-run news agency accused security forces of acting too softly on women who do not fully cover their hair, calling the issue the root of Iran’s social problems. |
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Monday, 10 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 10 – Angry residents from the town of Baneh in Kurdistan province (Western Iran) attacked the governor’s office with stones and sticks at the start of the New Year after hearing of the murder of an individual by State Security Forces (SSF). Eyewitnesses reported seeing
shattered glass from the windows of the governor’s office scattered nearby. |
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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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Sunday, 09 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 09 – A Tehran court put a young woman on trial for keeping six kittens in her apartment, the state television reported yesterday. The state television aired the court proceedings in which the judge in branch 19 of Tehran’s court questioned the woman about why she was keeping the kittens in her apartment and how she was feeding them.
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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 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 07 - Iran’s vice-President in the Headquarters to Combat Narcotics announced drug abuse is affecting 11 million Iranians across the country. Dr. Ali Hashemi said that this staggeringly high figure represented people from all walks of life, including families whose lives had been totally destroyed due to drug abuse by family members. |
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Friday, 07 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 07 - Iran announced there are at least half a million Iraqis presently in the country eligible to vote in
the upcoming January 30th election in Iraq. “More than 500,000 Iraqis residing in Iran can take part in (Iraq’s) January elections”, Ahmad Hosseini, the head of Foreign Citizens
Office of the Interior Ministry, said on Wednesday. |
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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: Baghdad, Jan. 06 - Iraq’s Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan scolded Iran on the eve of the meeting by the Foreign Ministers of Iraq’s neighbouring countries in Amman and said that over a million Iranians had entered the country to pose as Iraqis in the upcoming January 30th elections. In an interview with the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas yesterday, Shaalan repeated his previous assertions and accused the Iranian regime of, “interfering (in Iraq) with money, guns, and intelligence”. |
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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, 05 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 05 – There are more than 600,000 illiterate people in East Azerbaijan province (northwest Iran), according to the head of Literacy Front of East Azerbaijan.
“This figure represents seventeen percent of the province’s population”, Mokhtar Mohammadian said. |
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Wednesday, 05 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 05 – A young man was killed by agents of Iran’s State Security Forces (SSF) in the town of Sanandaj (western province of Kurdistan) after he came to the aid of a young woman being assaulted by the SSF agents earlier this week. |
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Tuesday, 04 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 04 - A homeless man was eaten alive by wild wolves in the village of Vali-Asr, near the town of Torbat Heydariya (northeast Iran), Sunday evening. Witnesses at the scene said that they phoned emergency services for help and attempted to fight off the wolves until police arrived but failed as the police did not show up. |
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Tuesday, 04 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 04 - A demonstration was held today by over 500 nurses in Shiraz (capital of the southern Fars province in Iran).
The majority of nurses from both public and private hospitals in Shiraz took part in the demonstration which was held from day-brake in Faculty of Medicine in the University of Shiraz. |
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Tuesday, 04 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 04 - A member of Iran’s Majlis (parliament) today admitted to the systematic use of excess force by security forces against citizens. Fakhroldin Heydari, a Majlis deputy from the town of Baneh (northwest Iran) revealed that two individuals in his constituency were shot and killed by “aggressive security forces” in the past month alone and a number of others were badly wounded. |
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Tuesday, 04 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Cairo, Jan. 04 – Iraq’s Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan rejected the idea of direct dialogue with Iran yesterday, saying that Iran had no interest in dialogue and only sought to destabilise Iraq. Speaking to reporters after a meeting with the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Al-Gaith, Shaalan also hinted that Iraq should postpone its January 30th general election if Sunni groups who have threatened to boycott the election were willing to participate in one set for a later date. |
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Tuesday, 04 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 04 - Students from the University of Tabriz (northwestern Iran) have continued their protest on campus following the dean’s decision to suspend two student union spokespersons.
The demonstration by a large number of students started Monday morning. |
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Tuesday, 04 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 04 - The head of Iran’s Office to Combat Smuggled Goods estimated that nearly $6 billion of
all foreign imports come from the black-market every year and hinted at widespread government corruption as the cause. |
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Monday, 03 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus Analysis: Tehran, Jan. 03 – Candidates set to stand in Iran’s June 17th presidential elections are seen by many Iran experts as right-wing extremists loyal to hardline Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Several of them, including former heads of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), have announced their candidacy for president. |
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Monday, 03 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 03 - Angry residents in Tehran’s 17th district blockaded the main freeway on Saturday protesting against the unsafe conditions which regularly result in fatal accidents.
Protesters stopped all traffic flowing on the Javaneh freeway between the 17th and 19th districts in the Iranian capital. |
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Sunday, 02 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Baghdad, Jan. 02 – Iranian agents are systematically kidnapping Iraqis for ransom in the southern Iraqi province of Missan, local residents say. “Iranian terrorist agents kidnap Iraqis on the Ozeys route and take them to Iran, demanding large ransoms for their return”, a local Iraqi said. |
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Sunday, 02 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Jan. 02 – An Iranian official in charge of combating drugs in Iran stated that there are presently more than four million drug addicts in the country. Moussalreza Servati, a member of the Iranian Majlis’ Social Committee,
said yesterday, “At the start of the revolution we had perhaps 150,000 addicts, but presently we are facing four million addicts”. |
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Sunday, 02 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Tehran, Dec. 02 – All schools and kindergartens throughout Tehran and Shahre-Rey, south of the Iranian capital, are closed today due to extreme air pollution in the region. Following an emergency meeting by representatives of Iran’s Health and Interior Ministries yesterday on Tehran’s weather conditions it was announced that all schools and kindergartens would be closed today. |
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Saturday, 01 January 2005 |
 Iran Focus: Baghdad, Jan. 01 – Iraq’s Defence Minister,
Hazem Shaalan, accused Iran today of attempting to “create a Safavian-style Shiite Crescent stretching from Iran all the
way to Syria and Lebanon, engulfing Iraq and bringing about corruption in the country”. |
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