(Commentary) What does it mean to defend something “unabashedly”? The use of the word “unabashed” here might mean that we have received a “shameful” proposal. In such cases, we usually mean that someone suggested something ugly to us without shame, whereas we feel he should have been more remorseful. What lies behind our expectation of ...
(February 13, 2013) The Iranian authorities should immediately release from arbitrary house arrest two former presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard, author and political activist, and cease harassing or detaining without cause the couple’s two daughters and Mehdi Karroubi’s son, said the Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi and ...
Nearly two years since Iranian opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Zahra Rahnavard were placed under illegal house arrest in Tehran, Iranian authorities have summoned their children, a source close to the families told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. ...
Today three United Nations experts spoke out against the continued detention of former Iranian presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi and cultural leader Zahra Rahnavard, as well as the recent detention and interrogation of their children. This Friday, February 15, will mark two years of the opposition leaders’ house arrest. ...
Following the arrest of Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran’s former press court judge and prosecutor, Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “The timing and the manner of arrest of Saeed Mortazavi, a suspect in the Kahrizak Detention Center case and the Zahra Kazemi murder case, once again showed that ...
The only evidence in the case of five Arab Iranians sentenced to death and a sixth sentenced to 20 years in prison is based on confessions given under torture, a cousin of two of the accused told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Kamel Alboshokeh, a cousin of condemned prisoners Jaber and Mokhtar ...
Former Tehran Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi should be prosecuted for his role in prisoners’ deaths, not political score-settling, prominent lawyer Abdol-Karim Lahidji told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Mortazavi, currently the head of Iran’s Social Security Organization, was arrested Tuesday and detained for 24 hours following a public exposé by President Ahmadinejad during ...
Another wave of summonses and arrests of journalists has taken place in Iran, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced on February 5. In a statement published by Fars News Agency, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Intelligence Ministry stated that the journalists were arrested for their contact with the BBC and that the arrests, which ...
In the last week of January, Iranian security forces arrested at least 16 journalists and charged them with “spying and ties with foreign news organizations.” Iranian authorities are accusing the journalists of working with the Persian-language services of the BBC and Voice of America, based in the UK and the US, respectively. ...
Two years since the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Iranian physicist and student Omid Kokabee, scientific societies are redoubling their efforts to secure his release. Students from the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) have released a short film about his situation. ...
Nearly 200 Iranian journalists inside and outside Iran signed a statement, objecting to the widespread arrests of fellow journalists which began on Sunday, January 27 and has continued this week. The journalists asked Iran’s judicial authorities to release their colleagues immediately and prove that they respect the law. ...
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has launched a new, weekly podcast on human rights in Iran by Iranian artist and satirist Kambiz Hosseini. “Five in the Afternoon,” a half-hour of news and developments on human rights in Iran began airing on Friday, January 25. The podcast will be available every Friday on ...
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran demands that the Iranian Judiciary suspend the execution sentences of five Ahvazi Arab activists, conduct an independent investigation into the judicial process of the case, and investigate the suspects’ allegations of torture during their investigations. The five men are said to be activists in or founders of ...
Today five independent experts from the United Nations called on the Iranian government to halt the executions of five Ahvazi Arab activists. The UN experts include the UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, on extrajudicial, ...
The UN WGAD is a body of five independent experts who review cases of arbitrary detentions, issue opinions, and communicate their concerns to governments regarding alleged cases of arbitrary detention. The WGAD acts under the ...
Asked when the transfer would take place, Marzieh Rahimi told the Campaign, “We have no idea. He was scheduled for a February 14 trial for one of the letters he wrote. I’m not sure which letter this trial was about. But the trial session was suddenly held on Monday, January 7. The Judge said, ‘I ...
Today we speak with award-winning journalist Tara Kangarlou about her new film, “Beyond the Electronic Curtain,” and the issue of Internet censorship in Iran. “Beyond the Electronic Curtain” documents the effects of unrelenting censorship on Iranian society. Through the stories of the many journalists in Iran who have been imprisoned for doing their job, the ...
The 73-page comprehensive report, The Cost of Faith: Persecution of Christian Protestants and Converts in Iran, documents a pattern of rights violations that extends to all walks of life for Protestant converts in Iran: they face severe restrictions on religious practice and association, arbitrary arrests and detentions for practicing their faith, and violations of the ...
One year ago, an Iranian judiciary handed down a death sentence to Iranian-American Amir Hekmati, accusing him of being a spy for the CIA. These are allegations that both his family and the State Department deny. In March, this sentence was vacated and a new trial was ordered, but since then, there has been little ...
(Commentary) These days, the subject of violent robberies, usually carried out in public with knives and daggers, has become a hot topic in Iranian public opinion. Though armed robberies are not a new phenomenon, YouTube images captured by a surveillance camera of four men robbing a man on a not-so-secluded street in Tehran have made ...
Maryam Dadkhah, the daughter of human rights lawyer and prisoner of conscience Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that she was able to visit with her father on December 24 and 31, 2012, and that she found him to be in “strong spirits” and enjoying “exemplary sharpness,” discussing daily ...
In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the daughter of Abdolfattah Soltani said that her father was hospitalized two weeks ago, following a deterioration in his health. Maedeh Soltani told the Campaign that the Iranian judicial authorities finally agreed to her father’s medical treatment outside the prison after months of ...
Amir Hekmati, a 29 year-old US citizen and decorated Iraq war veteran, traveled to Iran in August of 2011 to visit his grandmother and extended family. Within weeks of entering the country for the first time, he was arrested, interrogated, and sent to Evin Prison, with no explanation to his family. ...
In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Robabeh Rezaei, the wife of imprisoned labor activist Reza Shahabi, spoke about her husband’s hunger strike in protest of the prison authorities’ refusal to allow him medical treatment outside. “On Monday, December 24, when I visited with Reza through a booth, he wasn’t ...
Prisoner of conscience Faezeh Hashemi, an outspoken women’s rights activist and former Member of Parliament, was placed in solitary confinement at Evin Prison on December 29, 2012. Her voice, which joined other prisoners in the women’s ward in leading political chants of “Down with the Dictator” and “Down with the Oppressor, Be He the Shah ...