Iranwire – Hami Bahadori, a 26-year-old Baha’i citizen, was transferred to Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court on Wednesday, 21 June, without the knowledge of his lawyer and family and sentenced to six years in prison, IranWire reports.  The court session concluded with an immediate announcement of the verdict. Bahadori was sentenced to five years in prison on charges …

VOA —Iran met in Qatar with European Union mediator Enrique Mora as part of efforts to revive its 2015 nuclear pact with world powers, as Tehran and Washington seek to cool tensions with a mutual understanding to help end the deadlock. Having failed to revive the deal in indirect talks that have stalled since September, Iranian and Western officials have …

Al-Monitor — The British government has opened an investigation into whether around a dozen UK universities helped the Iranian regime develop technology that could be used to upgrade its Shahed 136 “kamikaze drone” program, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed Wednesday. An investigation by the Jewish Chronicle newspaper revealed on June 8 that at least 11 British universities including Cambridge University, Imperial College London and …

RFL/RE – The United States has expressed support for a raid by Albanian authorities on a camp near the capital, Tirana, that houses thousands of members of a group of exiled opponents of the Iranian government. Albanian state police seized dozens of computers on June 20 during a raid of the Ashraf 3 camp where some 2,800 members of the …

RFL/RE – The Iranian hacktivist group Edalat-e Ali has published documents that it says show that a top Iranian prosecutor confirmed that a “full naked body inspection” of a female political prisoner had taken place at a police detention center. The information, which Edalat-e Ali said it obtained by hacking into Iran’s judiciary, came to light amid multiple complaints from …

Iranwire – Years ago, I wrote somewhere that “journalism is not poetry.” Yet over time, covering news and human rights violations in Iran, my writing has been saturated with darkness and anguish. And my conversation with Mahmonir Molaei-Rad, the mother of Kian Pirfalak, proved to be an exceptionally challenging and profound journalistic experience. Though I had prepared numerous questions, as …

Iranwire – The Islamic Republic’s judiciary has executed a Kurdish man who had spent years on death row for his alleged role in the killing of a security force member, according to a human rights organization. The authorities hanged Heyman Mustafaei early on June 21 in Sanandaj Central Prison, in western Iran, as his family and civil activists were gathered …

Iranwire – The daughter of Jamshid Sharmahd, a German-Iranian man sentenced to death in Iran, has asked authorities in Germany to open criminal proceedings against Iranian judicial authorities, alleging crimes against humanity. Gazelle Sharmahd filed a criminal complaint with the German federal prosecutor’s office against eight high-ranking members of the judiciary and the intelligence service, the Berlin-based European Center for …

Iranwire – Mandatory hijab laws cost Iranians up to 45 trillion tomans ($900 million) per year, according to new research by Iran Open Data.  In a recent article, the collaborative initiative explained that these expenses is borne by Iranians in two ways. – The indirect costs: Iran Open Data estimates that the current government budget allocates around 9 trillion tomans …

Iranwire – Albanian police have raided a camp near Tirana home to members of the exile Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalk (MEK), and seized 150 computer devices allegedly linked to prohibited activities. Albanian authorities said both police officers and Iranian dissidents were injured during clashes at the Ashraf-3 camp on June 20.  The opposition group said one person also died. …