The tenth session of the trial of former Tehran Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi and two other officials for the deaths in Kahrizak Prison of three detainees in 2009 opened yesterday with the father of one of the victims withdrawing his “participation in murder” suit against Mortazavi. The eleventh and final session of the trial is being ...
Two journalists and a blogger previously released on furlough have been recalled to prison and are expected to turn themselves in today, and imprisoned lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh’s promised furlough has not been granted. Security forces have also recently summoned several other journalists in Tehran and have made telephone calls warning them not to support a ...
Mostafa Mesri, a 26-year-old Kurdish political prisoner from Oshnovieh in Western Azerbaijan Province who has been in prison for the past two years, sewed his lips shut and embarked on a hunger strike on May 19 to protest Orumiyeh Central Prison officials’ lack of attention to his request for transfer to Naghadeh Prison, a local ...
Several Mahabad citizens arrested in February have been released on bail from Mahabad Prison over the past several weeks, a local source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Two detainees, Farough Samani and his cousin Reza Samani, however, remain in “temporary detention” in a state of limbo. Another Kurdish citizen, Khedr Rasoul ...
A Kurdish political prisoner sentenced to death has been transferred back to Orumiyeh Central Prison after spending 15 months inside the Semnan Central Prison, a local source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Habibollah Golparipour had been transferred from Semnan Central Prison to an undisclosed location in the second week of May. ...
The eighth trial session of judges implicated in the Kahrizak Detention Center case was held on Monday, May 13 at Branch 76 of Tehran Penal Court under Judge Siamak Modir Khorasani. As in the previous seven sessions, the court session was held behind closed doors. Saeed Mortazavi, the main suspect charged with “participation in murder,” ...
Habibollah Golparipour, a Kurdish political prisoner on death row, was summoned by the Semnan Central Prison officials on May 9 and informed that he must prepare himself for transfer to an undisclosed location, a local source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Golparipour was not informed of the reason for his transfer. ...
Afshin Sohrabzadeh, 23, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison in exile at Minab Prison on charges of “moharebeh (enmity with God) through membership in Komalah Party,” a local source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Sohrabzadeh was transferred from the Sanandaj Central Prison to Minab Prison 14 months ago and ...
More than six months after the prison death of Sattar Beheshti, a laborer and blogger from Robat Karim (17 miles outside Tehran) who was arrested on November 3, 2012, and died the next day, his mother and sister have not been able to face in court the men who murdered the 35-year-old man under torture ...
Haj Ali Chilan, 103, is currently serving an eight-year prison term at Maku Prison on charges of “cooperating with PJAK [Party of Free Life of Kurdistan],” a local source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Chilan, from Zolka Village near Maku, is in dire physical condition as a result of old age ...
The Turkish authorities arrested Hossein Salmanzadeh, an Iranian photojournalist and a refugee in Turkey, on April 26 and have detained him inside the Ankara Security Police Detention Center, Javad Moghimi Parsa told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. According to Javad Moghimi, Salmanzadeh’s close friend and former colleague, Salmanzadeh embarked on a dry ...
Three years into his detention, imprisoned journalist Siamak Ghaderi has not been granted a single day of furlough, and he does not have permission to visit with his family, his wife told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. As a prisoner of conscience, he is also denied access to a telephone, she added. ...
Bagher Asadi, a high-ranking Iranian diplomat was detained in Tehran in March as a part of the crackdown on dissidents in the weeks leading to the Iranian presidential elections, Reuters reported. Asadi, who had previously worked in the Iranian UN Mission in New York, was a director of the Istanbul-based D8 Group of Developing Countries. ...
Riaz Sobhani, a 67-year-old Baha’i citizen imprisoned since June 2011 for financially assisting the Baha’i Institute of Higher Education (BIHE), is in dire physical and psychological conditions, especially considering his age, his son told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The Baha’i prisoner was hospitalized in May 2012 for an acute heart condition. ...
Christian pastor Saeed Abedini was conducting a routine visit to the non-profit orphanage his family helped to start in Rasht when Iranian security forces arrested him and seized his passport in July 2012. Five months later, Iranian courts convicted him of “undermining national security,” accusing him and other Christian converts of waging a “soft war” ...
Political prisoner Adel Jalali ended his 11-day hunger strike on March 28 after prison officials at Orumiyeh Central Prison agreed to cooperate with him, a local source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The source added that the Prison Intelligence Unit has been pressuring four other political prisoners at Orumiyeh, repeatedly summoning ...
Despite the family’s presentation of a property deed as collateral, Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi refused to grant furlough to imprisoned lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, the latter’s daughter told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Maedeh Soltani told the Campaign that the Prosecutor refused her father’s furlough request two days before Persian New Year, ...
Seven Dervish lawyers being held at the Intelligence Ministry’s Ward 209 at Evin Prison have not had access to light in months and have developed various illnesses, the wife of one of the lawyers told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Sedigheh Khalili, the wife of imprisoned lawyer Hamidreza Moradi, added that officials ...
The judicial orders for imprisoned lawyer Mohammad Seifzadeh, charged with “illegal border exit with the intent to act against national security,” have changed from “ceased prosecution” to “guilty” without notice, causing him to remain in prison even after serving his initial sentence on separate charges. ...
Referencing “key opposition leaders in detention” and “quite serious webs of arrests of journalists,” Dr. Ahmed Shaheed says, “In an election year, these kinds of activities can negate any sense of a legitimate ...
An Orumiyeh Penal Court found a Kurdish political prisoner guilty last week of murdering two Revolutionary Guards members, though no evidence, witnesses, nor confessions were presented in the case, a local activist told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The prisoner, Ali Ahmad Soleiman, had previously completed a six-year prison term on political ...
Six Arab-Iranian prisoners have been on hunger strike at Ahvaz’s Karoon Prison since March 3 in protest of the judicial process in their cases and their extreme sentences, a cousin of two of the prisoners told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Five of the prisoners have been sentenced to death, the sixth ...
(March 22, 2013) The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran welcomes the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 26 to 2 vote to extend the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran for the third consecutive year. The Campaign also urged Iranian authorities to cooperate with the Special Rapporteur ...
In an oral statement delivered to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) expressed extreme concern “at the rampant culture of impunity and lack of accountability that protects and encourages acts of torture” in Iran. The statement, delivered March 12, 2013, ...
As Iranians around the world prepare to celebrate the new year, hundreds of prisoners of conscience remain behind bars in Iran. The Persian New Year, Nowruz, is the most important holiday in Iran, beginning at the moment of the vernal equinox. While the news website Kaleme reports that a dozen political prisoners have been granted ...