Iran-HRM Prison guards at the Greater Tehran Penitentiary violently transferred four imprisoned Gonabadi Dervishes to another ward on May 2, endangering their lives amid the coronavirus.Prison guards have transferred four members of Iran’s Gonabadi Dervish minority, Mohammad Sharifi Moghaddam, Kianoush Abbaszadeh, Abbas Dehghan and Mostafa Abdi to a hall in Ward 5, placing them beside common criminals.The transfer of the four Gonabadi Dervishes is …

RFL/RE – Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for a “thorough investigation” into “shocking” allegations that Iranian border guards beat and then forced a group of Afghan migrants into a river. Afghan officials said up to 70 migrants last week illegally crossed into Iran, where they were beaten, tortured, and then forced into a river by Iranian border guards. Authorities …

RFL/RE – Iran’s OPEC governor, Hossein Kazempur Ardebili, is in a coma after suffering a “severe” brain hemorrhage. In a tweet on May 3, the country’s Oil Ministry said Ardebili was hospitalized on May 1. It did not provide further details. Ardebili is a key figure in Iran’s energy industry and served as the deputy foreign minister and deputy oil …

PayvandNews – During a press conference on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said the ministry is following up on Asgari’s case both in Iran and in the U.S. Asgari, who has been pleading for weeks to be released from a U.S. immigration jail due to health problems, is in an isolation cell inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) …

Radiofarda – Last month the United States offered a prize for providing “any information on the activities, networks and colleagues” of a senior Lebanese Hezbollah official, thought to have replaced Qassem Soleimani as an operative in the region. A picture taken in 2010 shows Lebanese Shiite cleric Muhammad Kawtharani (L), who has long spearheaded Hezbollah’s Iraq policy, alongside Iraqi Shiite …

Radiofarda – The Spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Monday said Iran is still prepared for prisoner exchange with the United States and European countries. Combo image of four Iranian dual nationals who were detained in Iran, (R to L) British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Iranian-American Karen Vafadari, Iranian- American Siamak Namazi, and British-Iranian Kamal Foroughi, who was later released. “We had …

Radiofarda – The former mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Ali Najafi, who is being held in prison for the murder of his second wife said he has paid 100 billion rials (roughly $650,000) to the victim’s immediate relatives and acquired their forgiveness. In Iran’s Islamic criminal code, if a dead victim’s family forgives the killer, the death penalty can be avoided. …

Radiofarda – The Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) claims that the unemployment rate in 2019 decreased by about 1.5 percent compared with 2018 and went down to 10.7 percent. Decreasing unemployment however runs counter to the factual economic conditions last year. Iran faced its worst economic downturn in 2019, with 6.5 to 9 percent contraction in Gross Domestic Product. The …

Radiofarda – A top Iranian official on Sunday warned that a nuclear deal the US withdrew unilaterally from would “die forever” if an arms embargo on Tehran is extended. The United States is campaigning to extend the ban on selling conventional weapons to Iran, which is set to be progressively lifted as of October. The ban’s lifting is part of …

Radiofarda – Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s approach to news dissemination about the epidemic has been one of chaotic management, secrecy and lies. Iranian officials first denied the existence of the disease, then refused to quarantine Qom and its religious sites. This behavior was followed by the dissemination of fake news and all …