Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.

Telegraph.co.uk – Almost 40 years ago I was taken hostage with 51 of my colleagues in Iran and held for 444 days in captivity. Today, international captives are being held again, including the British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. She was captured in April when she was visiting family with her two-year old daughter. Information about her condition is scarce. We know …

Iranhumanrights.org – Recording of Ayatollah Montazeri’s Plea to Stop the Executions is Taken Off Website An audio file of Grand Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri—the once successor to Iran’s first supreme leader—bitterly criticizing the Islamic Republic’s mass execution of political prisoners in 1988 and arguing for an end to the killings, has been removed from his official website upon “request” from Iran’s …

Iranhumanrights.org – Soheil Arabi, whose death sentence for “insulting the prophet” was struck down by Iran’s Supreme Court in 2015 but remains imprisoned for posting comments critical of the Islamic Republic on social media, is seeking a reduced prison term. A source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that although the death sentence against Soheil Arabi was …

Al-monitor – Sept. 24, 2015, was a tragic day. More than 700 people were killed in a stampede during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. The disaster occurred on the first day of Eid al-Adha, when pilgrims perform the ritual known as “stoning the devil” in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca. In Iran, the event is remembered …

PayvandNews – While the United States is moving towards wrapping its rather unusual election, Iran is about to begin its electoral cycle. The date for the combined presidential and municipal elections was set for May 19, prior to the start of the fasting month of Ramadan, in order to avoid the hardship imposed on hundreds of thousands of election workers. …