Human rights

VOA – Two Iranian Baha’i women have reported to a prison in eastern Iran to begin serving sentences for peacefully practicing their faith after authorities apparently ignored appeals to spare them from potential coronavirus exposure in jail, according to a knowledgeable source. Speaking to VOA Persian in a Tuesday interview from Iran, the source said Arezoo Mohammadi and Banafsheh Mokhtari …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – A prisoner sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder has been executed at Sari Central Prison. According to Iran Human Rights, on the morning of Sunday, October 4, a male prisoner was executed in Sari Central Prison. His identity has been established as Nabi Saberi-Lahijani, who had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder. An informed …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – A female prisoner sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder, has been executed at Mashhad Central Prison. According to the Bashgah Khabarnegaran Javan (Young Journalists Club), on the morning of Sunday, October 11, a female prisoner was executed at Mashhad Central Prison. The female prisoner, who has only been identified as 33 year old Razieh had …

Radiofarda – More than 160 current and former United Nations officials are calling on Iran to end the “horror and pain” for two Iranian-American dual nationals who are currently spending their fourth and fifth year in Tehran’s Evin jail, respectively. 49-year-old Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi was arrested and imprisoned on October 13, 2015, on charges of “collaborating with the U.S. …

VOA – The husband of a jailed Iranian human rights lawyer suffering health complications from a recent hunger strike this week denounced Iran’s government for not allowing his wife to seek immediate medical treatment outside of prison. Speaking to VOA Persian in a Tuesday interview from Tehran, Reza Khandan accused Iranian judiciary officials of acting stubbornly by not responding to …

Iran-HRM – The clerical regime has stepped up its repressive measures and terror campaigns across the country fearing the volatile state of Iranian society. As the society gets poorer every day, deprived of the minimum resources to deal with the deadly coronavirus, outbreak of angry protests is very likely. The Iranian Judiciary, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the State Security …

Amnesty – Azerbaijani Turkic activist, Abbas Lesani, arbitrarily imprisoned in Ardabil prison, Ardabil province, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by an appeal court after a grossly unfair trial. The appeal proceedings were presided over by a judge who had filed the charges against him in his previous capacity as prosecutor. In July 2020, the Supreme Court rejected his …

Al-Monitor – Threats by an influential hard-line cleric against Iranian women with loose headscarves has opened up old wounds left behind in acid attacks perpetrated by religious extremists. We must make the social environment unsafe for these people. … We can’t let them simply break the norms in streets and parks,” said Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabai-Nejad in reference to Iranian women who violate the …

Radiofarda – In Iran’s capital city of Tehran, a young teacher, Reza Nahzat, was sentenced to 45 lashes for “insulting” Iran’s Minister of Education and his deputy. A photo of the verdict is widely circulating on the Iranian social media. Nahzat is accused of “insulting” the Minister, Mohsen Haj Mirzaei, and his Deputy, Allahyar Torkamanyar, in a satirical note on …

RFL/RE – Internet freedom has declined for the 10th consecutive year as governments around the world are using the coronavirus pandemic as a “cover” to expand online surveillance, crack down on dissent, and build new technological systems to control society, Freedom House says in a new report. The Washington-based human rights watchdog’s annual Freedom Of The Net report, released on …