Human rights

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) – Political prisoner Khaled Zamani is serving his 13th year of a 30 year moharebeh (enmity against god) sentence in Yazd Central Prison for “giving directions to two villages.” There are currently five prisoners on security charges in Yazd Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, political prisoner, Khaled Zamani from Khoy, has been behind …

Al-Arabia – A senior member of the United Nations has spoken of his “deep concern” over Iran’s death penalty policies and the number of executions of child offenders during an interview with Al Arabiya. Javaid Rehman, special rapporteur on human rights for the UN, said Iran has one of the highest numbers of yearly executions and remains one of the few countries …

Iranwire – Afghan refugees trying to enter Iran have been indiscriminately shot at by border guards and many have been killed, IranWire has been told. Two eyewitnesses said that at the time of their attempted crossing in mid-August, the survivors and the wounded were arrested by IRGC agents and sent back to Afghanistan. When they crossed over, both said, Iranian border …

Iranwire- Iranian-American Baquer Namazi, who has been detained in Iran since 2016, underwent surgery on Tuesday, October 26 to clear a life-threatening blockage in an artery to his brain. Prior to the operation, Namazi’s son Babak had pleaded with Iranian authorities to lift the travel ban on his father so he could receive medical care overseas. Babak’s brother Siamak Namazi is also jailed in Iran after being arrested in …

VOA – “It was this black box and nobody talked about it,” Amir Soltani says of Evin Prison. When he was growing up in Tehran, Soltani’s school was directly behind the notorious Iranian prison where journalists, activists and political prisoners are held. When several of his friends were imprisoned and later released, they returned with stories of humiliation, flogging, torture …

Iran-HRM – A woman was hanged in Qazvin and another faces imminent execution in Sanandaj, the capital of the Iranian Kurdistan province. The authorities of the Central Prison of Qazvin hanged a 31-year-old woman at dawn on Wednesday, October 27. Susan Rezaei-pour was on the death row after being convicted of killing her husband six years ago. She had acted …

CHRI – Two months after the inauguration of ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s state-run Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice organization has announced plans to launch religious college-level courses dedicated to the “promotion of virtue and prevention of vice”, according to Iran’s Islamic government’s interpretations. The courses also promise to train students to work as “ethics instructors in public councils and …

CHRI – In a speech to the UN General Assembly for his fourth annual report, Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, criticized three vague criminal charges in Iran that carry the death penalty and are often used against political opponents or political protesters. Following is the UN’s press release on the …

RFL/RE – The Iranian Parliament is set to decide soon on whether women should be allowed into soccer stadiums, a move pushed hard in recent years by FIFA, the world governing body for the sport. Women have been banned from attending soccer matches in stadiums for four decades in the conservative Muslim nation. “The Football Federation of Iran [FFI] has …

Iranwire – This week, a photo was circulated showing Amir Hossein Moradi on temporary release from prison, embracing his mother in hospital. The image engendered all kinds of reactions – relief, well-wishes, anger at his plight – and amongst them, more than a few people noticed the young man’s significant weight gain. Comparing photos of Moradi before and after his …