RFL/RE – Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) last year urged the judiciary to issue travel bans against several oil officials for fear they could expose the “secret” tactics Tehran has used to evade U.S. sanctions and sell its oil, according to a leaked confidential document. The “highly confidential” IRGC document was leaked to the London-based Iran International television …

Iranwire – Ex-Iranian vice president Ataollah Mohajerani now lives in the UK. An academic and writer, he promotes “interreligious and intercultural dialogue” to online audiences of thousands. But he never talks about his book, Critique of the Satanic Verses Conspiracy, penned in the wake of the 1989 fatwa calling for the execution of author Salman Rushdie. In it, Mohajerani defended Ruhollah …

Iranwire – At one point on Wednesday, as many as 20,000 people online were tracking the live, charted progress of Titan Airways Flight ZT601 as it made its way across mainland Europe, reducing the distance minute by minute to the destination: England. The plane took off from Muscat a little before 5pm local time, carrying what is likely to be …

Iranwire – At about 1.10am on Thursday, March 17, Iranian-British citizens Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri returned to Britain after years of captivity. Apart from IRGC-aligned media, which quickly re-hashed the fabricated cases against the two “spy” hostages, Iranian reformists and principalists wasted no time in presenting their own narratives around the event and its meaning. It has by now been widely reported that the …

Iran-wire – Ali-Asghar Honarmand, an Iranian journalist and founder of the tech news website Narenji (Orange), has been released from prison after eight years. In a tweet announcing his return Wednesday, Honarmand wrote: “Hello world! The first tweet in eight years… What happened to us is indescribable.” Founded in 2007 and operated by a group of bloggers from a small office in …

VOA – Two British-Iranian nationals who had been jailed in Iran arrived Thursday in Britain to emotional homecomings. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was met by her husband Richard Ratcliffe, and their daughter, Gabriella, 7, at the Brize Norton air force base west of London in the early hours of Thursday morning. It was the first time the family had been together in …

Iran-HRM – The Iranian Judiciary executed at least 14 prisoners from March 12 to 16, 2022. The executions of at least 14 prisoners took place in the prisons of Gohardasht (Karaj), Shiraz, Isfahan, Urmia, Bushehr, Zahedan, and Khash. Two brothers, Behnam Gholam-Ali and Abbas Khargir, and another inmate by the name of Mohsen Jahangiri were among the 14 prisoners executed in recent …

Iran-HRM – Student activist Hasti Amiri was sentenced to one year in jail for opposing the death penalty. This action is one of the examples of violation of the right to freedom of expression and opinion in Iran. On Monday, March 14, 2022, it was announced that Ms. Hasti Amiri had been sentenced to one year in prison. She was also …

amnesty – ARTICLE 19 and Amnesty International welcome the report of the Special Rapporteur which highlights institutional impunity for crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations in Iran. View Report in English DOWNLOAD PDF

standard.co.uk – Downing Street has defended the payment of £400 million to Iran after the Government was accused of paying “blood money” to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the UK was “rewarding hostage-takers” and that the funds would be used by the regime in Tehran to “terrorise” Israel, Britain and the United States. However, Downing Street insisted …