Journalist and blogger Arash Sigarchi, who works as a reporter for Voice of America’s Persian Service, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that his family has been summoned and threatened by Gilan Province Intelligence Office forces. “On Monday, September 9, they contacted my mother from the Gilan Intelligence Office and asked her ...
Imprisoned Iranian journalist, Issa Saharkhiz, was released on Thursday, October 3, only two months short of completing his prison sentence. “I was informed by my family that my father received his release letter sy the hospital. They will now have to complete his paperwork in order to take him home from the hospital,” his son, ...
Imprisoned lawyer Mohammad Seifzadeh appeared in court to defend himself against charges of “collusion and assembly against national security,” he wrote in a letter published September 29 on Kaleme website. Though judicial officials had told his family they planned on closing the case against him if he appeared in court, Seifzadeh wrote, the court appearance ...
An hour after her release from prison, human rights lawyer and prisoner of conscience Nasrin Sotoudeh told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “When they took me out of the prison, they told me, ‘You are free.’ Last night they told four others. They told me that my furlough was approved, but when ...
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran welcomes the release today of several prisoners of conscience in Iran, including lawyer and human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani should continue to take concrete steps towards improving the urgent human rights situation in his country as he prepares to address the United Nations, ...
Iran’s Ministry of Science announced yesterday that Iran’s most recent “starred students” can enroll in universities. “Starred students” are university students who, over the past eight years, were banned from continuing their higher education as a result of their student and/or political activities, or their religion. According to Shargh Newspaper, the Ministry of Science has ...
Dissident cleric Arash Honarvar Shojaee told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran the Judiciary has issued new charges of “insulting Imam Khomeini” against him after he expressed his personal opinions in an interview. Furthermore, despite confirmation from the Medical Examiner about his health and his inability to endure a prison sentence, he said ...
Human rights activist Mansoureh Behkish, several of whose family members were executed by the Islamic Republic in the 1980s, was summoned to Intelligence Ministry again on Wednesday, August 26, a source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. She has been summoned to the Intelligence Ministry several times in the past. ...
In an interview with Kambiz Hosseini, host of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran’s “Five in the Afternoon” weekly podcast, Reza Moini, the head of Reporters Without Borders’ Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan desk, said that his brother lost his life during the 1988 mass executions of dissidents in Iranian prisons. ...
Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, a prisoner of conscience on hunger strike in protest of his prison conditions since August 9, was transferred to Shahid Modarres Hospital on Wednesday, August 28, after his health deteriorated. The prisoner’s father told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that he did not accept intravenous feeding nor breaking his ...
Saeed Malekpour, a web developer who had previously been sentenced to death for blasphemy, was sentenced to life in prison after he repented at the Supreme Court. Malekpour’s lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaee, told ISNA News Agency on Monday, August 26, that after his death sentence was upheld at the Supreme Court, he repented and showed ...
Throughout the 35 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there have been numerous accounts of phone tapping and surveillance of dissident, opposition, civil society, and public figures, journalists and activists and even celebrities, by Iranian officials who have used the information to coerce, pressure, and intimidate citizens to conform, to become ...
“When people tell you that nothing will ever really change, just remember that however clever and intelligent they sound, they have kind of been proved wrong on many occasions in the past,” Steve Crawshaw, co-author of Small Acts of Resistance, tells us. ...
During his 2013 presidential campaign, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani promised to uphold the “rights of the people” enumerated in the country’s constitution. Millions of his supporters demanded social and political rights, including the release of political prisoners from prison and house ...
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani should take concrete steps to curb widespread human rights abuses by the government of Iran and reinstate the rule of law in the country, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today. ...
A group of Iranian political and human rights activists, academics, and students inside and outside Iran wrote a letter this week to US President Barack Obama asking him to engage with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to “work towards the elimination of sanctions and the lowering of tensions between Iran and the United States.” The letter ...
Prisoner of conscience Hossein Ronaghi Maleki has been on a hunger strike since Sunday, August 11, to protest the prison authorities’ lack of attention to his and other sick prisoners’ conditions, and to support Abolfazl Abedini, a prisoner on hunger strike since July 28. Ronaghi’s mother expressed concern about her son’s hunger strike and told ...
Eighteen months since imprisoned journalist Issa Saharkhiz was transferred to a hospital for severe health issues, Iranian officials have yet to excuse him from serving his sentence or to release him on furlough, causing him to remain a prisoner in the hospital, his son told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. ...
On August 11, President Hassan Rouhani appointed Elham Aminzadeh to the post of Vice President for Legal Affairs, touting her “scientific, legal, and legislative qualifications and credentials.” Though some activists have welcomed her appointment after much criticism of Rouhani’s all-male cabinet, many are concerned about her history of denying human rights abuses. ...
Children of the Jacaranda Tree, by Sahar Delijani, is a stunning debut novel set in post-Revolutionary Iran. Told in interconnected, alternating perspectives, the book follows three generations of men and women, some linked by family, others brought together by the tide of history that forces its way into their lives. ...
Peyman Roshanzamir, a blogger and web designer from Ahvaz who was sentenced to 17 months in prison in 2011, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that security forces went to search for him at his father’s house last week, aiming to take him to Karoon Prison. ...
Imprisoned journalist Fariba Pajouh, arrested July 10, is being held in solitary confinement without charges, a member of her family told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. ...
In reaction to the Medical Examiner’s Office’s final opinion stating that Sattar Beheshti’s cause of death could not have been blows while in detention, his mother recently demanded for his body to be exhumed to determine his real cause of death. ...
Imprisoned lawyer Mohammad Seifzadeh defended himself against charges of “writing letters and signing group statements in prison” in a July 17 appeals court session, his wife told the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Calling the his trial courts “unqualified” to try him, Mohammad Seifzadeh had not attended any of his previous five court sessions, ...
The Head of the Iranian Medical Examiner’s Office said on Tuesday, July 9, that according to his organization’s final report, the blows dealt to blogger Sattar Beheshti during his interrogation were not fatal and could not have caused his death, Mehr News Agency reported. Dr. Ahmad Shojaee also told Mehr that in the Medical ...