Cartoon 155: Proud
Just a few weeks after the publication of a 1988 audio recording on the late Grand Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri's website in which he told Judiciary and Intelligence Ministry officials at a meeting that the mass ...
Executions / Life
Twenty-Year Old On Death Row After “Confessing” on Promise of Freedom
Death Sentence for Posting “Anti-Islamic” Content on Social Media Sina Dehghan was just 19-years-old when the Revolutionary Guards told him, while they were interrogating him, that if he confessed to the charge ...
Head of Iranian Judiciary’s Human Rights Council Defends Wave of Executions
In less than a month, between August 2 and August 27, 2016, at least 37 prisoners were executed in Iran. Shortly afterwards, the head of the Iranian Judiciary’s Human Rights Council, Mohammad Javad Larijani, claimed Iran ...
More Than 100 Prominent Iranians Ask UN to Declare 1988 Massacre “Crime Against Humanity”
This article has been updated on September 12, 2016 to reflect the correct number of original signatories. In a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court, more than one hundred Iranians ...
Recording on 1988 Prison Massacre Exposes Early Fissure in the Islamic Republic of Iran
The recently released audio recording of Grand Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri sharply denouncing the mass execution of political prisoners in the summer of 1988 has highlighted disagreements among ...
Rights groups condemn recent execution of Kurdish prisoners and call for an immediate moratorium on all executions in Iran
Geneva - Iranian authorities must immediately put a halt to the execution of Kurdish political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, 22 human rights organizations stated. These organizations also urged for an immediate moratorium on the death ...
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry Tries to Hide Evidence of Massacre of Thousands of Political Prisoners in 1988
Recording of Ayatollah Montazeri’s Plea to Stop the Executions is Taken Off Website An audio file of Grand Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri—the once successor to Iran’s first supreme leader—bitterly criticizing the Islamic Republic’s mass execution of political prisoners ...
Five Prisoners Hanged in Iran in Accelerating Rate of Executions
Hangings Follow Twenty Prisoners Executed Last Week Five prisoners were hanged inside Iran’s Orumiyeh Central Prison in West Azerbaijan Province on the morning of August 8, ...
Mother of Executed Iranian Scientist Describes Last Visit With Son Day Before His Death
Marzieh Amiri: “I had kept silent only for the sake of my son.” The mother of Shahram Amiri, the Iranian nuclear scientist who allegedly spied for the U.S. and was executed ...
Cartoon 152: Executions in Iran
Iranian cartoonist Touka Neyestani's take on the recent surge in prison executions in Iran....
Names of Mass Execution Victims in Iran Still Not Released
Only 10 of the 20 Sunni Prisoners Killed Are Identified by Authorities Iran is withholding the names of ten of the twenty Sunni prisoners who were executed in Rajaee Shahr Prison in ...
Iran Executes Kurdish Prisoner despite Claim of Forced Confession
As Many As 20 Others May Have Been Executed Too Kurdish prisoner Shahram Ahmadi was hanged in the courtyard of Iran’s Rajaee Shahr Prison today, August 2, 2016, at 4:53 p.m., according to a member of his ...
Cartoon 149: Worthless Versus Valuable “Likes”
At a June 23, 2016 public meeting with poets chosen and invited by his administration, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said: "I have heard that some publish their poetry on the Internet. For example, someone wrote something that is worthless, but imagine that ...
Cartoon 148: Orlando
Iranian cartoonist Touka Neyestani reacts to the June 12, 2016 shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 patrons were killed and 53 more were injured. The perpetrator, Omar S. Mateen, who was also killed in the incident, had called ...
Commentary: Iran’s Hard-Liners Crack Down as Their Base of Support Narrows
This commentary was originally published in the World Politics Review. Hadi Ghaemi There is a crackdown underway in Iran. But it is no longer just a crackdown on dissent. Rather it is ...
Kurdish Political Prisoner Denied Urgent Medical Care
Prisoner of conscience Zeinab Jalalian, condemned to life in prison in northwestern Iran, needs urgent medical treatment for her eye and tongue infections and has not received ...
Leading Iranian Human Rights Activist to Serve Ten Years in Prison
Narges Mohammadi Sentenced for Her Peaceful Activism in Iran May 19, 2016—The prominent Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to serve ten years of a 16-year ...
Imprisoned Spiritual Leader Slapped with New Charges Upon Completing Sentence
Mohammad Ali Taheri, an imprisoned spiritual leader who was supposed to be freed more than two months ago after completing a five-year prison sentence, has again been charged ...
Hunger Striker in Critical Condition Vows to Continue Strike
Political Prisoner Protests His Imprisonment and Denial of Medical Care Prisoner of conscience Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, who has been on dry and wet hunger strikes since March ...
Voices from Iran: What are your expectations of President Rouhani?
In this new video, the Campaign asks Iranians from all walks of life inside and outside Iran to share their hopes and expectations of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani for the New Persian year....
“Blood Money” Frees Imprisoned Ranger Who Killed Poacher In Self-Defense
Gholam-Hossein Khaledi, an Iranian park ranger sentenced to death for killing a poacher in 2010, was released on March 18, 2016 after paying 12 billion rials (about $400,000 USD) diyah (“blood money”) to the ...
Why the UN Human Rights Mechanisms Must Continue to Monitor Iran’s Human Rights Situation
This video explains why it is so imperative that the United Nations Human Rights Council ensures the Special Rapporteur and other UN mechanisms continue their critical work of monitoring Iran’s human rights situation, given the severe rights violations that persist in Iran and Tehran’s refusal to implement the dozens of promises it has made to ...
Cartoon 138: “Explosion of Light,” Not!
The Islamic Republic of Iran refers to the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution as the “Explosion of Light.” But the reality is quite dark…filled with repression, denial of the most basic rights and freedoms, ...
Sunni Detainees Still Held a Year After Arrest, Reports of Torture and Forced Confessions
A year after the arrest of more than two dozen Sunni Muslim men in southeast Iran, some of them still remain in detention and have reportedly been subjected to torture aimed ...
Judiciary Claims No Knowledge of Student Not Heard from Since His Arrest Almost 17 Years Ago
The mother of a student who has not been heard from since soon after his arrest in Tehran in 1999 has dismissed the Iranian Judiciary’s claim that there was no evidence he was ever arrested. Saeed ...