Four Prisoners Executed for Drug-Related Charges in Southern Iran
– SEPTEMBER 22, 2014POSTED IN: EXECUTION, EXECUTION FOR DRUG CHARGES, FEATURE
Wednesday 24 September 2014
Thursday 18 September 2014
Monday 15 September 2014
Imprisoned Student Denied Medical Treatment despite Severe Illness
Omid Kokabi, an exceptional student serving a 10-year sentence, has not been allowed medical treatment outside Evin Prison despite his worsening kidney stone condition and stomach ailment, a source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
Kokabi, 33, who has not been allowed furlough once in the four years since his incarceration (a customary practice in Iran but routinely denied to political prisoners), was among the country’s top students. He was studying post-doctoral Nuclear Physics at the University of Texas at Austin at the time of his arrest at Tehran’s International Airport as he was about to leave the country on January 30, 2011, after visiting family in Iran.
He was kept in solitary confinement for over a month during his 15-month pre-trial detention. On May 14, 2012, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison by Judge Salavati for “contact with enemy states” and other falsified charges.
“Omid has been suffering from kidney stones and stomach problems for a long time. His teeth are hurting, too. But even though doctors at the prison clinic have confirmed his need for treatment outside the prison, and despite many requests by Omid, so far there has been no approval for his transfer and his condition in the prison quarantine has worsened,” the source told the Campaign.
The denial of medical treatment, especially in the case of political prisoners, is endemic throughout the Iranian judicial system, even in cases where treatment is needed for life-threatening illness or injuries.
The denial of medical treatment, especially in the case of political prisoners, is endemic throughout the Iranian judicial system, even in cases where treatment is needed for life-threatening illness or injuries.
The source described Evin Prison’s quarantine, where many political prisoners from Ward 350 have been transferred to since August 12, as a basement without windows or proper ventilation. It has four rooms with a total of 100 prisoners and only four small toilets and showers. There is no space to walk or exercise.
“Because of lack of proper ventilation and sanitation, there are lots of insects there and many of the prisoners have developed skin problems. Cultural and physical activities are banned, but even if they were allowed, there’s no space for them. Despite all these difficulties, Omid studies and teaches other prisoners, too,” the source added.
Before his trial, Kokabi wrote a letter from detention to the Head of the Judiciary, criticizing his illegal arrest, mistreatment during interrogation, 36 days of solitary confinement, and forced confession.
“Interrogators would take and read every line I wrote. Many times they would angrily yell at me and tell me to write down what they told me and I’m very sorry I did so,” he wrote. Forced confessions, often under torture or threat of harm, is a routine practice in Iran. Such confessions are typically then broadcast on state TV and used to obtain convictions.
Friday 12 September 2014
One Woman and One Man Hanged in Northern Iran for Drug-Related Charges
Iran Human Rights, September 11, 2014: A 60 year old woman and a 31 year old man were hanged in the prison of Rasht (Northern Iran) early Thursday morning (September 11), reported the Iranian state media.
According to the Iranian State Broadcasting IRIB the 31 year old man was charged with possession and trafficking of 4100 grams of the narcotic drug crystal , and the woman was charged with participation in buying, possession, trafficking and distribution of 3198 grams of heroin.
None of the prisoners were identified by name.
In Iran, the drug convicts are tried by the Revolution Courts behind the closed doors. There are many reports of unfair trials and forced confessions which are used as the basis of many death sentences issued by the Revolution Courts in Iran.
http://iranhr.net/2014/09/one-woman-and-one-man-hanged-in-northern-iran-for-drug-related-charges/
Two Young Men Hanged Publicly in Iran
Iran Human Rights, September 10, 2014: Two men were hanged in public in the city of Hamedan (Western Iran) early Wednesday morning September 10, reported the Iranian state media.
According to the state run Iranian news agency Fars, the two men were convcted of “Moharebeh” (war against God) and Corruption on earth. Disruption of order, creating fear among the people and attempt to rape are among the charges the men were convcted of, said the report.
The news website “Young Journalists Club” reported that the prisoners who were hanged this morning were identified as “Vahid Gh.” (24) and “Bahman Mousavi” (22).
Two Public Executions in Northern Iran
One of the executions was interrupted due to protests from the family of the prisoner, and carried out the next day.
Iran Human Rights, September 4, 2014: Two prisoners were hanged in the public in two different Iranian towns in the Mazanderan province (Northern Iran), reported the Iranian state media. 
One of the prisoners was a man identified as “Mohsen D.” charged with a murder in 2008, according to the official website of Mazanderan Judiciary. The execution was scheduled to take place in the town of Mahmoodabad on Monday September 1. But due to protests by the people it was interrupted and carried out on Tuesday September 2, under heavy security measures.
The other prisoner identified as “A. A.” was convicted of a murder in 2004. The execution was carried out publicly in the town of Savadkooh reported Bloghnews. Since the beginning of August 2014 at least 90 people have been executed in Iran. 17 of the executions have been carried out in the public.
Thursday 4 September 2014
Tuesday 26 August 2014
One Public and More Than 10 Unannounced Executions in Iran Today
– AUGUST 19, 2014POSTED IN: AZERBAIJANI, EXECUTION, EXECUTION FOR DRUG CHARGES, FEATURE, PUBLIC EXECUTION
A young man identified as “Soheil” was hanged publicly in the the town of Sari (Northern Iran), reported “Rooz-e-No” news site. Soheil was charged with the murder of his brother, wife and cousin, said the report.Tuesday 19 August 2014
Iran: Dozens Unlawfully Held in City’s Prisons
Others Imprisoned on Suspect Charges, Trials
EMAIL- Clockwise from top left: Loghman Moradian, Zaniar Moradian, Kourosh Ziari, Saeed Rezaei, Mohammad Ali (Pirouz) Mansouri, Masoud Bastani.© Private
- Spotlight on Political Prisoners in One Iranian CityAUGUST 18, 2014
The election of a new, avowedly moderate president a year ago raised hopes that many of Iran’s political prisoners would soon walk free, but many remain behind bars. The lion’s share of responsibility for releasing these prisoners rests with the judiciary, but President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet should be doing more to press for their release.
(Beirut) – Several dozen prisoners in a northern city are serving prison terms for exercising their basic rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Iranian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners, Human Rights Watch said.
The 59-page report, “Locked Up in Karaj: Spotlight on Political Prisoners in One Iranian City,” is based on a review of 189 cases in three prisons in the city of Karaj, near the capital, Tehran, including the charges they faced, details of their trials before revolutionary courts, and information from lawyers, prisoners’ families, and others. Human Rights Watch concluded that in 63 of these cases, authorities had arrested the prisoners, and revolutionary courts had convicted and sentenced them, solely because they exercised fundamental rights such as free speech and rights to peaceful assembly or association. In dozens of other cases, including 35 prisoners sentenced to death on death row for terrorism-related offences, Human Rights Watch suspects egregious due process violations that may have tainted the judicial process.
“The election of a new, avowedly moderate president a year ago raised hopes that many of Iran’s political prisoners would soon walk free, but many remain behind bars,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The lion’s share of responsibility for releasing these prisoners rests with the judiciary, but President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet should be doing more to press for their release.”
The political prisoners include members of the political opposition, bloggers and journalists, a lawyer, and labor and religious minority rights activists. They are serving prison sentences on vague and sweeping charges for acts that Iran’s judiciary claims threaten the country’s national security, and are among several hundred political prisoners detained in prisons throughout Iran, according to reports released by UN rights experts.
Human Rights Watch asked the head of the Iranian judiciary in May for information on the cases of 175 prisoners, most of whom are covered in this report, including details of the charges and any evidence against them. The judiciary has not responded.
Most of the political prisoners are in one ward of Rajai Shahr prison, also known as Gohardasht prison, including 33 members of the beleaguered Baha’i community, Iran’s largest non-Muslim minority. They include five Baha’i leaders serving sentences of up to 20 years on charges that included spying, “insulting religious sanctities,” and “spreading corruption on earth,” all arising from their peaceful activities as Baha’i leaders.
At least 11 other Baha’is held in the same prison ward are faculty members and administrators affiliated with the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education, an alternative university created in 1987 for Baha’is that the government had excluded from state university education. The Baha’i International Community says that as of May 2014, 136 Baha’is were in Iranian prisons solely on religious grounds.
Karaj prison authorities are also holding two Christian pastors and two Christian converts. One of the pastors, Saeed Abedini, is serving an eight-year sentence for “intent to endanger the national security” by establishing and running home churches, his wife, Naghmeh Abedini, told Human Rights Watch.
Masoud Bastani, one of nine journalists and bloggers unlawfully imprisoned in Karaj, worked for theJomhuriyat news website before his arrest in July 2009. Mahsa Amrabadi, his wife, also a journalist, said her husband was sentenced to six years in prison for “propaganda against the state” and “assembly and collusion against the national security.”
Human Rights Watch identified seven rights defenders and a veteran human rights lawyer among those in Rajai Shahr prison. The human rights lawyer, Mohammad Seifzadeh, 67, cofounded the Defenders of Human Rights Center with Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace laureate, and other lawyers. An initial sentence of nine years was reduced to two, but six more years were added after he wrote letters and signed statements critical of the government while in prison, Ebadi told Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch also identified 126 prisoners convicted of more serious crimes, some on death row for terrorism-related offenses, whom the authorities may have targeted for their peaceful activities. While Human Rights Watch was unable to obtain sufficient information to refute the authorities’ accusations in many cases, it documented egregious due process violations in some of their cases, calling into question the legitimacy of the convictions.
One of them, Mohammad Ali (Pirouz) Mansouri, is serving 17 years for supporting the outlawed Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), an opposition group that the Iranian government considers a terrorist organization, his daughter, Masoumeh Mansouri, said. She told Human Rights Watch that a revolutionary court convicted her father of moharebeh, “enmity against God,” which can incur the death sentence, and “insulting the Supreme Leader” after two short court sessions.” The court referred to Mansouri’s visit to Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where members of the group lived in exile for years, to visit his wife and sisters, and his attending a 2007 speech at a ceremony at Khavaran cemetery in Tehran commemorating the 1988 execution of thousands of prisoners, many of them MEK members, asevidence of his guilt, she said.
Many others among the 126 describe themselves as Sunni activists or “missionaries” who support a strict, literalist interpretation of Sunni Islam. Most are from Iran’s Kurdish or Baluch minorities but others are foreign nationals, according to a source familiar with their cases. The authorities say that some participated in armed activities, including assassination attempts and murders, and that others assisted armed groups or threatened Iran’s security by other means.
Thirty-five of the 126 prisoners are on death row and at imminent risk of execution, Human Rights Watch said. Many are believed to have been held for weeks or months at Intelligence Ministry detention facilities, and tortured or otherwise ill-treated, several sources familiar with some of the cases told Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch has closely reviewed the cases of several of these men, including Zaniar and Loghman Moradi, Hamed Ahmadi, Jahangir Dehghani, Jamshid Dehghani, and Kamal Molaei, who are all accused of terrorism-related activities on behalf of opposition groups, but deny the charges and allege, in vivid detail, that security and intelligence forces subjected them to months of incommunicado detention and torture to secure coerced confessions from them.
On June 12, Human Rights Watch and 17 other rights organizations asked the Iranian government to halt the executions of the listed prisoners in Karaj prisons, and impose an immediate moratorium on all executions.
At least one of the prisoners on death row, Barzan Nasrollazadeh, is believed to have been under18 at the time of his alleged crime. International law, including under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Iran is a party, prohibits the execution of offenders who were under 18 at the time of their alleged crime.
“President Rouhani should speak out clearly for an immediate moratorium on executions given the serious doubts about the fairness of revolutionary courts trials,” Stork said. “And Iran needs to release anyone being held for exercising their legal rights.”
The 59-page report, “Locked Up in Karaj: Spotlight on Political Prisoners in One Iranian City,” is based on a review of 189 cases in three prisons in the city of Karaj, near the capital, Tehran, including the charges they faced, details of their trials before revolutionary courts, and information from lawyers, prisoners’ families, and others. Human Rights Watch concluded that in 63 of these cases, authorities had arrested the prisoners, and revolutionary courts had convicted and sentenced them, solely because they exercised fundamental rights such as free speech and rights to peaceful assembly or association. In dozens of other cases, including 35 prisoners sentenced to death on death row for terrorism-related offences, Human Rights Watch suspects egregious due process violations that may have tainted the judicial process.
“The election of a new, avowedly moderate president a year ago raised hopes that many of Iran’s political prisoners would soon walk free, but many remain behind bars,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The lion’s share of responsibility for releasing these prisoners rests with the judiciary, but President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet should be doing more to press for their release.”
The political prisoners include members of the political opposition, bloggers and journalists, a lawyer, and labor and religious minority rights activists. They are serving prison sentences on vague and sweeping charges for acts that Iran’s judiciary claims threaten the country’s national security, and are among several hundred political prisoners detained in prisons throughout Iran, according to reports released by UN rights experts.
Human Rights Watch asked the head of the Iranian judiciary in May for information on the cases of 175 prisoners, most of whom are covered in this report, including details of the charges and any evidence against them. The judiciary has not responded.
Most of the political prisoners are in one ward of Rajai Shahr prison, also known as Gohardasht prison, including 33 members of the beleaguered Baha’i community, Iran’s largest non-Muslim minority. They include five Baha’i leaders serving sentences of up to 20 years on charges that included spying, “insulting religious sanctities,” and “spreading corruption on earth,” all arising from their peaceful activities as Baha’i leaders.
At least 11 other Baha’is held in the same prison ward are faculty members and administrators affiliated with the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education, an alternative university created in 1987 for Baha’is that the government had excluded from state university education. The Baha’i International Community says that as of May 2014, 136 Baha’is were in Iranian prisons solely on religious grounds.
Karaj prison authorities are also holding two Christian pastors and two Christian converts. One of the pastors, Saeed Abedini, is serving an eight-year sentence for “intent to endanger the national security” by establishing and running home churches, his wife, Naghmeh Abedini, told Human Rights Watch.
Masoud Bastani, one of nine journalists and bloggers unlawfully imprisoned in Karaj, worked for theJomhuriyat news website before his arrest in July 2009. Mahsa Amrabadi, his wife, also a journalist, said her husband was sentenced to six years in prison for “propaganda against the state” and “assembly and collusion against the national security.”
Human Rights Watch identified seven rights defenders and a veteran human rights lawyer among those in Rajai Shahr prison. The human rights lawyer, Mohammad Seifzadeh, 67, cofounded the Defenders of Human Rights Center with Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace laureate, and other lawyers. An initial sentence of nine years was reduced to two, but six more years were added after he wrote letters and signed statements critical of the government while in prison, Ebadi told Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch also identified 126 prisoners convicted of more serious crimes, some on death row for terrorism-related offenses, whom the authorities may have targeted for their peaceful activities. While Human Rights Watch was unable to obtain sufficient information to refute the authorities’ accusations in many cases, it documented egregious due process violations in some of their cases, calling into question the legitimacy of the convictions.
One of them, Mohammad Ali (Pirouz) Mansouri, is serving 17 years for supporting the outlawed Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), an opposition group that the Iranian government considers a terrorist organization, his daughter, Masoumeh Mansouri, said. She told Human Rights Watch that a revolutionary court convicted her father of moharebeh, “enmity against God,” which can incur the death sentence, and “insulting the Supreme Leader” after two short court sessions.” The court referred to Mansouri’s visit to Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where members of the group lived in exile for years, to visit his wife and sisters, and his attending a 2007 speech at a ceremony at Khavaran cemetery in Tehran commemorating the 1988 execution of thousands of prisoners, many of them MEK members, asevidence of his guilt, she said.
Many others among the 126 describe themselves as Sunni activists or “missionaries” who support a strict, literalist interpretation of Sunni Islam. Most are from Iran’s Kurdish or Baluch minorities but others are foreign nationals, according to a source familiar with their cases. The authorities say that some participated in armed activities, including assassination attempts and murders, and that others assisted armed groups or threatened Iran’s security by other means.
Thirty-five of the 126 prisoners are on death row and at imminent risk of execution, Human Rights Watch said. Many are believed to have been held for weeks or months at Intelligence Ministry detention facilities, and tortured or otherwise ill-treated, several sources familiar with some of the cases told Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch has closely reviewed the cases of several of these men, including Zaniar and Loghman Moradi, Hamed Ahmadi, Jahangir Dehghani, Jamshid Dehghani, and Kamal Molaei, who are all accused of terrorism-related activities on behalf of opposition groups, but deny the charges and allege, in vivid detail, that security and intelligence forces subjected them to months of incommunicado detention and torture to secure coerced confessions from them.
On June 12, Human Rights Watch and 17 other rights organizations asked the Iranian government to halt the executions of the listed prisoners in Karaj prisons, and impose an immediate moratorium on all executions.
At least one of the prisoners on death row, Barzan Nasrollazadeh, is believed to have been under18 at the time of his alleged crime. International law, including under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Iran is a party, prohibits the execution of offenders who were under 18 at the time of their alleged crime.
“President Rouhani should speak out clearly for an immediate moratorium on executions given the serious doubts about the fairness of revolutionary courts trials,” Stork said. “And Iran needs to release anyone being held for exercising their legal rights.”
Thursday 14 August 2014
The condolence message of the political prisoners in Evin prison
HRANA News Agency – Some imprisoned human right activists at ward 350 of Evin prison, expressed their sorrows for sudden death of the senior member of Human Right Activists in Iran and the editor of HRANA.
According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), these prisoners have stated in their short message from the prison:
“Unbelievable death of Seyed jamal Hosseini, the journalist and editor of HRANA, made the human rights activists’ community of Iran sad. Hereby, we express our condolences to his family and all human rights activists because of the loss of Seyed Jamal Hosseini who was working to fairly cover the news of human rights.”
Mahdi Khodai, Saeid Matinpoor, Mohammad Sadigh Kaboudvand
Imprisoned human rights activist
Evin prison – August 9, 201
Four Prisoners Hanged in Iran
Iran Human Rights, August 13, 2014: Four prisoners were hanged in two different Iranian prisons, reported the state run Iranian media today. Three of the prisoners were hanged in the prison of Bandar Abbas (Southern Iran) reported the official Iranian news agency IRNA. The prisoners who were identified as Y.H (48), Y.R. , charged with tape and kidnapping, and M.T. charged with murder said the report.
Friday 8 August 2014
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