Human rights

Iranwire – IranWire has received reports from inside Iran that on Tuesday, May 18, a number of reporters and information activists were contacted and warned against publishing any negative coverage of presidential candidate Ebrahim Raeesi. A former political correspondent told IranWire they had received a call from a man who introduced himself as a member of the judiciary, which is …

Iranwire – Chief justice Ebrahim Raeesi’s is standing for election as president on a “fighting corruption” ticket. For months now, powerful media outlets close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the office of the Supreme Leader have been portraying Raeesi as a trailblazer against nepotism and embezzlement within the rank and file. The reality, though, is a little different. …

Iranwire – Mohammad Ali Zahmatkesh is a teachers’ unionist from Fars province, currently being held in Adelabad Prison in Shiraz after a Revolutionary Court found him guilty of “propaganda against the regime” and “insulting the authorities” and gave him an eight-month prison sentence. He is also a fellow inmate of Habib Afkari, one of three brothers arrested for allegedly taking part in protests in 2018. Habib’s …

Iranwire – The Tehran Journalists’ Association has condemned the violent attack on a journalist in Tehran as she was reporting on a vaccination roll-out, citing it as evidence of how the “insecurity of the journalism profession in Iran” had intensified. Faezeh Momeni, a reporter for Sobh-e newspaper and the Rouydad 24 website, suffered broken fingers on May 18 after she was …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – A prisoner sentenced to death on rape charges, has been executed in Mashhad Central Prison. According to Khorasan newspaper, a man was executed in Mashhad Central Prison in the early hours of this morning. The 31-year-old prisoner only identified as Ghassem.B,  was arrested and sentenced to death for raping 14 boys and a 15 year …

Iranwire – Roozbeh Piri, a translator and civil rights activist in Tabriz, has been fined for publishing a post on his Instagram page about the physical consequences of his brother’s beating and torture by the Basij. According to reports received by IranWire, Branch 103 of the Criminal Court of Tabriz, headed by Judge Mikaeil Watankhah, sentenced Piri to a fine …

Iranwire – On Saturday, May 15, IranWire published an audio file related to the shooting of four former generals of the Pahlavi regime in mid-February 1979, shortly after the Islamic Revolution. The recording includes the charges read against General Nematollah Nassiri, the then-head of Savak (the Shah’s secret police), General Mehdi Rahimi, commander of Tehran Police and Tehran’s then-military commander, General Reza …

Iran-HRM – Iran arrests 16 Ahwazi Arabs including elderly mother of slain protester Iranian authorities have embarked on a wave of arbitrary arrests of more than a dozen citizens in Ahvaz, capital of the southwestern Khuzestan Province. Among those arbitrarily arrested is the mother of one of the November 2019 uprising martyrs. The clerical regime arrested some 15 young men …

CHRI – In 1985, my parents were taken to court in Tehran by a tenant who was trying to stop them from selling a property he was renting from them at the time. My parents were surprised to learn about the lawsuit. After all, they had given the tenant several months to vacate. He had no legitimate legal argument. On …

Iranwire – “Jews have the same rights as Muslims in the Islamic Republic!” This was one of the many claims made by Homayoon Sameh Yeh Najafabadi, a Jewish MP and representative of the Jewish community in the Iranian parliament, in a recent interview with the state-controlled Young Journalists Club. During the discussion, the chair of the Tehran Jewish Committee insisted his community …