ohchr.org – Iran committed multiple human rights violations in shooting down Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 and in the aftermath of the deadly attack, two UN experts said today.* “The inconsistencies in the official explanations seem designed to create a maximum of confusion and a minimum of clarity. They seem contrived to mislead and bewilder,” Agnes Callamard, the Special Rapporteur …

VOA – Jailed and exiled activists of an Iranian religious sect have denounced Iran’s Islamist leadership for Sunday’s death of a detained Dervish dissident whom they say was denied proper medical care for a serious neurological condition for months while in the custody of Iranian authorities.  A group of five jailed activists of Iran’s Gonabadi Dervish minority sent a statement to VOA …

RFL/RE – The UN nuclear watchdog said on February 23 that it is “deeply concerned” that Iran secretly kept “undeclared nuclear material” at an “undeclared location” as the agency warned that Tehran continued to exceed “many limits” set by its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also confirmed in a pair of reports that …

Iranwire – Pictures published on social media, which have since been confirmed by local sources, show that today, Tuesday, February 23, protesters in Saravan in Sistan and Baluchistan broke into the governor’s office and took control of the building. Since yesterday, images of the bloodied seats of burning cars, and videos depicting the sound of gunshots and a police car …

Iranwire – Leila Hosseinzadeh, a student activist, has been sentenced to five years in prison and a two-year internet ban for wishing happy birthday to a fellow jailed student. The sentence was handed down to Hosseinzadeh Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran. Amir Raeisian, her lawyer, announced the news on his Twitter page, saying the Tehran University scholar had been …

Iranwire – More than 60,000 Iranian males aged 10 to 18 are married, according to population studies recently cited in Iranian media. On Wednesday, February 24, the demographer Shahla Kazemipour told ISNA news agencythat according to the 2016 census, “about 1.2 percent of 10- to 14-year-old boys, 2.3 percent of 15- to 19-year-old boys, and  about 2 percent of 10-18-year-old boys – …

Iranwire – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most incendiary remarks concerning speakers of the Iranian parliament always seem to fall on a Sunday. Back on February 3, 2013, on a day some principlists later referred to as Black Sunday, the then-president used an open session of parliament to play a video clip of a meeting involving Fazel Larijani, the brother of then-speaker of parliament Ali …

CHRI —The death of prisoner of conscience Behnam Mahjoubi, who died on February 21, 2021, after untreated medical conditions that included serious neurological issues, reflects the continued crisis in Iran’s prisons, where prisoners, especially prisoners of conscience and political prisoners, are denied proper medical treatment. “Many prisoners in Iran are in desperate need of medical treatment and more will die without …

Iran-HRM – Iranian security forces fired tear gas on Tuesday to disperse demonstrators gathered in the southeastern city of Saravan, witnesses told Iran HRM, and there was a heavy presence of forces in the city. Videos posted on social media from inside Iran showed the state security forces using tear gas and bullets to disperse angry locals who are protesting …

Amnesty – Mehran Raoof, a British-Iranian national and a labour rights activist, is being arbitrarily detained in Tehran’s Evin prison. Revolutionary Guards agents arrested him on 16 October 2020. He is being held in prolonged solitary confinement, in violation of the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. He is a prisoner of conscience and must be immediately and unconditionally …