Human rights

RFL/RE – An Iranian court has adjourned a new trial of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has spent more than four years in jail or under house arrest. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said on November 2 that his wife was taken from her parents’ Tehran home to a Revolutionary Court on charges of “spreading propaganda against the regime.” “Nazanin was …

RFL/RE – The former leader of the separatist group the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA) has been arrested and transferred to Iran under unclear circumstances. The group, which has an armed branch and seeks a separate state for ethnic Arabs in Iran’s oil-producing southwestern province of Khuzestan, was named by Tehran as being behind a deadly …

VOA – An Iranian dissident living in Turkey says an Iranian court has handed her a one-year prison term for joining anti-government protests in Iran last year, when she says authorities detained and tortured her into making a false confession and tried to enlist her in a kidnap plot.   Speaking to VOA Persian from Turkey on October 28, 32-year-old …

Iran-HRM – Reports from the Central Prison of Mashhad indicate disastrous prison conditions as prisons across Iran are plagued with the coronavirus. Rights groups say between five and six inmates in this prison lose their lives every day in this prison. As for reason of these deaths, prison authorities say they die of natural causes to cover up the disastrous …

CBC.ca – More than 850 sign petition for Tirgan to cut ties with Aydin Aghdashloo after allegations of sexual assault Shanifa Nasser · CBC News · Posted: Nov 02, 2020 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: November 2 Last month, The New York Times released a report detailing multiple allegations of sexual harassment, assault and misconduct against prominent 80-year-old Iranian contemporary painter Aydin Aghdashloo. (Dave …

Iran-HRM – October saw the State Security Force’s violent approach towards Iranian citizens, even torturing them in public. This comes in tandem with the clerical regime’s expansion of its repressive plans to contain increasing social discontent, particularly on the eve of the anniversary of the protests in November 2019. On October 18, SSF forces tied a young man, Mehrdad Sepehri, to …

Radiofarda – Weddings, wakes and conferences will be banned in the Iranian capital until further notice as the Middle East’s hardest-hit nation battles a third wave of COVID-19, police said on Saturday. President Hassan Rouhani meanwhile announced new restrictions that will take effect on Wednesday in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces for 10 days. The official IRNA news agency said …

Iran-wire – Top Iranian chess referee Shohreh Bayat has been granted asylum in the UK after being photographed without a hijab at an international tournament last year. The 32-year-old is an arbiter for the International Chess Federation (FIDE) and was chief arbiter of the Women’s World Chess Championship 2020. What should have been a career highlight pitched Bayat into the centre of …

Iran-HRM- A recent report from a social worker in Iran has shed more light on the abysmal conditions inside Iranian jails. The shocking report by Mr. Ali Mohammadzadeh who aids victims of addiction in prisons reveals new dimensions of the crimes committed years against inmates in the clerical regime’s dungeons, especially against death-row prisoners. Horror verdicts The report received Iran …

VOA – An Iranian teachers union leader, who has been jailed in Iran since 2016 and whose prison term was recently extended by a decade, is receiving inadequate medical treatment for severe pain, according to his wife. In a Tuesday interview with VOA Persian from her home in Tehran, the wife of Esmail Abdi said the dissident told her about …