Category: News

Birjand Prison Executes Four Afghan Nationals

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Executions
Afghani Immigrants, Ahmad Shah Issa Zehi, Birjand, Birjand Prison, Eid Mohammad Miran Zehi, executions, executions in iran, iran executions, Mohammad Miran Zehi, Shah Mohammad Miran Zehi

Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) – Six years ago, four Afghan nationals planned to use underground channels to migrate to Iran, where they had invested hopes of a better life. In the early morning hours of October 2, 2018, they were executed on charges of “armed drug trafficking,” a charge to which they reportedly confessed under the duress of torture.

Shah Mohammad Miran Zehi, Ahmad Shah Issa Zehi, Mohammad Miran Zehi, and Eid Mohammad Miran Zehi were married with children and had been in Birjand Central Prison for over six years.

In an open letter, the prisoners explained the circumstances in which they were detained and coerced to utter false confessions. Mohammad Miran Zehi wrote that they had filed into a Toyota set to take them to Birjand from Zabul when they got into a dispute with their driver near the village of Bandan [a tributary of Nahbandan on the Afghanistan-Southern Khorasan border]. Claiming he needed gas, he reportedly dropped the group off at a private residence and said he would be back.

“When [the driver] returned, he was flanked by authorities. They struck me in the head and took us to the Bandan police station. They subjected us to the cruelest forms of torture in there,” Mohammad Miran Zehi said.

Accusing them of transporting more than 300 pounds of opium and two Kalashnikov rifles, Bandar authorities used violence to press them to confess, going as far as pulling a toenail from Mohammad’s right foot.

The case file against the four was set into motion when they finally acceded to the torturers’ demands, “under the pressure, the fear for our lives, the inability to take it any longer, and hoping that maybe it would make them stop,” their letter explained.

The case file was then forwarded to judicial authorities and spent five years in suspense before Judges Nabavi and Seyfzadeh of Birjand Revolutionary Court Branch 2 issued the execution sentence on January 31, 2017. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for Shah Mohammad Miran Zehi, Ahmad Shah Issa Zehi, Mohammad Miran Zehi, and Eid Mohammad Miran Zehi; the death sentence of Saraj Gavkhur, a fifth defendant on the same case file, was commuted to 25 years’ imprisonment.

According to a close source, the group was made scapegoats for an armed conflict that had taken the life of a security agent days before their entry into Iran.

Birjand Central Prison is in the city of Birjand, capital of Southern Khorasan Province.

According to Amnesty International’s annual report, Iran ranks first in the world in executions per capita. An annual report published by the Center of Statistics at Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI) states that more than 60% of executions in Iran are not reported by the state or the Judiciary. These executions are referred to as “secret executions.”

According to registered data from 2,945 reports by the Statistics, Publications, and Achievements Division of HRAI, in the past year (from March 21, 2017, to March 18, 2018) at least 322 citizens were executed and 236 others were sentenced to death in Iran. Among these were the executions of four juvenile offenders and 23 public hangings.

Three Hundred Gachsaran Prisoners Break into Protest

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Prisoners
Gachsaran, hunger strike prisoner, iran human rights, protests

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) – Around 300 prisoners in Gachsaran, in the southwestern province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad, have launched protests and gone on hunger strike in opposition to patterns of injustice plaguing the quality of life in their region.

In phone calls to loved ones, several prisoners expressed discontent with the Gachsaran prosecutor’s unseemly behavior towards their families, the living conditions with which their families were faced, and authorities’ discriminatory treatment of prisoners, including their refusal to grant furlough to those who are eligible.

A source with two family members in the prison told HRANA that protestors were expressing their frustration and despair in very different ways. “During the protests, one prisoner, Hamed Pirayesh, cut his own ear and was subsequently transferred to solitary confinement. Today, another prisoner attempted suicide. Mir Mohammad Miri, an imprisoned political activist from Deyl village in Gachsaran county, is on his third day of hunger strike to protest the rejection of his furlough request.”

Miri was arrested July 21, 2018, to serve his sentence of lashings and two years in prison on charges of “insulting the supreme leader” and “propaganda against the regime.” The Gachsaran Revolutionary Court issued his verdict, which Branch 3 of the Appeals Court later upheld the sentence.

Iranian Authorities Execute Three Prisoners, Slate Four More for Gallows

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Executions, Prisoners, Women
Changiz Irani, child executions, Death Penalty, hassan hajilou, iran executions, juvenile executions, Juvenile Offenders, juvenile offenders in iran, Mousa Nomani, salman khan alilou, Salman Khan Alilu, Zeinab Sekaanvand, zeinab sekanvand

Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) – State-run news agencies in Iran have yet to confirm the executions of three prisoners this morning, October 2nd, in Urmia: Salman Khan Alilou, Hassan Hajilou, and Zeinab Sekaanvand. Sekaanvand was executed for a crime she had allegedly committed as a minor.

Yesterday, Amnesty International released a statement expressing concern about Sekaanvand’s transfer to a solitary confinement cell, the protocol for prisoners whose death sentence is imminent. “The authorities must immediately quash Zeinab Sekaanvand’s conviction and grant her a fair retrial without recourse to the death penalty, and in accordance with principles of juvenile justice,” the statement read.

Sekaanvand, born June 22, 1994, was 17 when she was detained March 1, 2012, on accusations of killing her husband. Branch 2 of Urmia Criminal Court issued her a death sentence, which was confirmed in Branch 8 of the Supreme Court. Married in March of 2009 at the age of 15, Sekaanvand reportedly endured physical violence at the hands of her husband.

Having spent two years in Khoy Prison since her initial arrest, Sekaanvand was transferred to the Women’s Ward of Urmia prison after being issued the death sentence. Prison authorities would later approve her marriage to a fellow Urmia prisoner. She delivered a stillborn baby on Friday, October 1, [2016].

Yesterday, HRANA reported on the transfer of at least four prisoners — all of whom were reportedly charged with first-degree murder — to solitary cells in various detention centers across Urmia in preparation for their executions.

The same day, two more prisoners — Mousa Nomani from Ward 3-4 and Changiz Irani from the Psychotherapy Ward — were granted execution stays of one month and fifteen days, respectively, to attempt to obtain pardon from the families of their victims, which would exempt them from capital punishment.

According to Amnesty International’s annual report, Iran ranks first in the world in executions per capita. An annual report published by the Center of Statistics at Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI) states that more than 60% of executions in Iran are not reported by the state or the Judiciary. These executions are referred to as “secret executions.”

According to registered data from 2,945 reports by the Statistics, Publications, and Achievements Division of HRAI, in the past year (from March 21, 2017, to March 18, 2018) at least 322 citizens were executed and 236 others were sentenced to death in Iran. Among these were the executions of four juvenile offenders and 23 public hangings.

Soheil Arabi Sentenced to More Prison Time

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Freedom of Expression, Prisoners
great tehran penitentiary, iran human rights, judge Salavati, prisoner of conscience, Soheil Arabi

Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) – Pursuant to a new case brought against him by Judge Ahmadzadeh of Tehran Revolutionary Court Branch 26, Soheil Arabi, a prisoner of conscience in Great Tehran Penitentiary, was sentenced September 22nd to three years in prison, three years in exile, and a fine of approximately 40 million IRR [approximately $400 USD] on charges of “propaganda against the regime” and “disturbing the public mind.” His lawyer did not learn of the verdict until eight days later.

A source close to Arabi told HRANA that the courts pursued new charges against him because of voicemail messages he left from prison; in one of these, he reportedly compared the Great Tehran Penitentiary to a torture chamber.

Arabi’s mother Farangis Mazloum told HRANA, “When I went to Great Tehran Penitentiary to see Soheil this morning, prison authorities told me that they had taken my son to court and that he is banned from having visitors,” she said.

Judge Moghiseh previously sentenced Arabi, along with his ex-wife Nastaran Naeimi, to prison time: six years for Arabi on charges of “blasphemy” and “propaganda against the regime,” and a year and a half for Naeimi, for “propaganda against the regime” and “aiding and abetting.”

Soheil Arabi, a 33-year-old photographer, was arrested by Sarallah-based agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on November 7, 2013, for comments he had posted on his Facebook page. Judge Siamak Modir Khorasani cited the Facebook posts as evidence of “insulting the prophet” — a charge that can incur capital punishment — in Branch 76 of Tehran’s Criminal Court.

Arabi’s lawyers subsequently appealed to Branch 36 of Supreme Court, pleading Article 263 of the Islamic Penal Code. While Article 262 recommends the death sentence for those who insult the prophet, Article 263 reduces the death sentence to 74 lashes for defendants whose statements “have been under coercion or mistake, or in a state of drunkenness, or anger or slip of the tongue, or without paying attention to the meaning of the words, or quoting someone else…”.

Unmoved by the Article-263 argument, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, unlawfully adding to his case file the charge of “corruption on earth.”

A retrial request was later accepted in Supreme Court Branch 34, which acquitted him of “insulting the prophet” and commuted his death sentence to seven and a half years’ imprisonment, plus a two-year travel ban and two years of religious probation to evaluate his repentance upon his release.

Arabi had not seen the end of his legal troubles, however — in 2014, Branch 10 of Iran’s Court for Government Employees would sentence him to a 5 million IRR fine [approximately $50 USD] and 30 lashings for insulting the following three people with his Facebook posts: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Gholamali Haddad Adel, and the Director of Allameh Tabatabai University. That same year, Judge Abolghassem Salavati of Revolutionary Court Branch 15 would sentence him to three years in prison for “insulting Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic” and “propaganda against the regime.” Branch 54 of Appeals Court upheld the latter sentence a short time later.

Arabi has been in prison without furlough since November 7, 2013.

Civil Rights Activist Mehrnaz Haghighi Conditionally Released

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Prisoners, Women
Evin Prison, iran human rights, Mehrnaz Haghighi, prisoner of conscience

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) – Mehrnaz Haghighi, a civil rights activist and doctor from Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf coast, was conditionally released on Monday, October 1st after meeting a minimum detention requirement for previous time spent in custody.

HRANA reported September 22nd on Haghighi’s transfer to Bandar Abbas Prison to serve her six-month sentence for “propaganda against the regime.”

Haghighi was first arrested by intelligence agents in her home on February 19, 2017. For a week after her arrest, she was held in solitary confinement in the city’s intelligence office before being transferred to the Women’s Ward of Bandar Abbas Prison. She was sent to Ward 209 of Evin Prison on April 12, 2017, where she stayed until being released on bail May 28th, 2017.

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Open Letter: Baha’i Prisoner Hopeful Amid Fraught Traditions of New Academic Year

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Cultural, Religious Minorities
Azita Rafizadeh, Baha'i, baha'i barred from education, baha'is in iran, baha'is of iran, imprisoned baha'is, Peyman Kushak Baghi

Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA)- As a new academic year unfolds in Iran, Baha’i prisoner Azita Rafizadeh speaks out in an open letter about the systemic barriers between post-secondary education opportunities and the country’s Baha’i citizens.

HRANA has reported on several cases over the past few weeks of students whose hopes of attending college have been eliminated by nothing more than the insidious alert of “deficiency on file.” Since 2006, this message has been a common method for disqualifying Baha’i students from university enrollment.

In direct violation of the law, Baha’is are prevented from pursuing degrees or employment in government offices, per under-the-table directives from the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. Every year, a new cohort of Baha’is is either barred from higher education altogether or thwarted before culminating their degrees.

Since the 1979 revolution, the office of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran has repeatedly protested the Iranian government’s animosity towards its Baha’i population, particularly in preventing these citizens from furthering their studies. According to the UN, such directives demonstrate a blatant disregard of multiple international treaties.

Rafizadeh reacts to these prohibitions in the letter below, translated into English by HRANA:

It is the third year that I’ve languished in the corner of a jail cell as schools and universities reopen their doors. I’m kept far from the thrills of a new academic term, from seeing the bright-eyed university students excited to pursue their higher education, and from seeing upperclassmen resume their course.

Over the past few years, I have tried to preserve in my heart the warm glow of that atmosphere, and pray sincerely that all those who are striving, serving, and studying will succeed. Even still, these days, when news reaches me of those students who love learning yet get ‘deficiency on file’ for their 2018 results from Konkur [a nationally-competitive college entrance exam], the bitterness of discrimination and prejudice comes flooding back, and my hopes for doing away with these measures is diminished. To be sure, [this pattern] at least confirms the perseverance of hope and love for learning in young people who, despite a life of deprivation, still do their best to enter universities by participating in Konkur in hopes of gaining knowledge, the greatest virtue of the human world.

It is the existence of these hopeful and eager-to-learn youth that has, over the years, helped the Free Baha’i Institute of Higher Education (BIHE) to thrive in spite of the pressures and systematic attempts to dissolve it. This institute continues to steadfastly serve young Baha’is who are deprived of continuing their education.

When I heard the happy (albeit delayed) news of Holaku Rahmanian’s graduation from Santa Cruz University, my heart brimmed with happiness and resolve. I was certain that although I have been forbidden from serving the youth of my country, better and more qualified individuals will graduate from this institute every year, who are well-versed in the sciences of the day and whose hearts beat to serve the institute and their countrymen.

Hoping for the day when the cloak of discrimination is lifted from the country’s youth, so that they may serve each other and build our country’s future side by side.

Azita Rafizadeh
Evin Prison
October 2018

***

Azita Rafizadeh is an Iranian Baha’i whose spouse Peyman Kushak Baghi is also imprisoned at Evin. Prisoners of conscience, both were sentenced to 4 and 5 years in prison, respectively, on charges of “membership in the illegal and misguided Baha’i group with the aim of acting against national security through illegal activities at the BIHE educational institute.”

Iranian Baha’i citizens are systematically deprived of religious freedoms, while according to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, everyone is entitled to freedom of religion and belief, and the right to adopt and manifest the religion of their choice, be it individually, in groups, in public, or in private.

Based on unofficial sources, more than 300,000 Baha’is live in Iran. However, Iran’s Constitution only recognizes Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, and does not acknowledge the Baha’i faith as an official religion. Consequently, the rights of Baha’is are systematically violated in Iran.

Stakes and Arrests Climb Higher as Truckers’ Strike Enters 11th Day

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Labor and Guilds
labor activists in iran, labor union iran, truck driver strikes

Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) – The Iranian truckers’ strike entered its eleventh day on Tuesday, October 2nd, catching fire in additional cities where 15 more were arrested and public prosecutors have begun threatening participants with the death penalty. The total number of arrestees is now at 171.

Cities currently host to strike activity and its corollary transport stoppages include Tehran, Isfahan, Arak, Qom, Bandar Abbas, Sirjan, Mashhad, Yazd, Tabriz, Sari, Kashan, Bukan, Khosroshah, Dezful, Rezvanshahr, Karaj, Dorood, Marvdasht, Garmsar, Khorramabad, Meshkat, Naqadeh, Malayer, Bandar Imam Khomeini, Ardakan, Sirjan, Shahr Babak, Shirvan, Sanandaj, Gorgan, Shahroud, and Zarinshahr.

Police Commander of Kangan county Colonel Rezaei confirmed that two people in his jurisdiction had been arrested and had their vehicles seized. Heydar Asiyayi, Semnan Province’s General and Revolutionary Prosecutor, confirmed 11 arrests in his locality, as did Alireza Mazaheri, police commander of North Khorasan province. According to the Prosecutor of Razan County, Hamedan Province, said seven more drivers have been arrested and charged with “acting against national security.”

Hadi Mostafavi (General and Revolutionary Prosecutor in Nahavand, Hamedan Province) and Ali Pakdel (police chief of Bojnord, Northern Khorasan Province) recently confirmed that four people had been arrested in each of their respective cities. Eighty-one citizens had already been arrested this past week in the provinces of Qazvin, Alborz, Ardebil, Isfahan, and Fars, as well as in Pakdasht Country, Tehran province.

Arrestees in the latter-named regions stand charged with both “disrupting order and security” and a second charge that has been known to carry the death penalty: Qata al-Tariq, i.e. “banditry” or highway robbery.

Iran’s National Prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri evoked Qata al-Tariq as a charge that could potentially be leveraged against the strikers. He was echoed by Fars Province Judiciary Head Ali Alghasimehr, who added that strikers were exposing themselves to charges of “corruption on earth,” also punishable by death.

Kerman Province’s Revolutionary and General Prosecutor Dadkhoda Salari also reminded truckers of how high the stakes of their strike might go, saying “anything that disrupts public order could be considered enmity against god or corruption on earth, based on the article 286 of the Islamic Penal code.”

Death threats from on high continued into Monday when Judiciary head Sadeq Larijani ominously put truckers on guard that they “disrupt[ing] roadway security.”

Strikes have been active since September 23rd when the Iran National Truck Driver’s Trade Union called on truckers to cease their operations until authorities fulfilled a list of 15 conditions, including an increase in pensions, a decrease in part prices, a 70-percent increase in wages, a decrease in insurance premiums, and a crackdown on bribery in the industry.

HRANA has been able to confirm the strike’s disruption of usual commercial activity, per interviews with industry professionals: Head of Tehran Poultry Farm Union Mohammad Yousefi recently stated that food prices have risen as a result of the strike, due to stalled cross-country transports of chicken meat, while a group of Afghan merchants complained that the strike has stalled the transport of their goods to Afghanistan.

According to Minister of Industry, Mine, and Trade Mohammad Shariatmadari, the truckers’ long-awaited supply of tires is already available thanks to improved distribution via the Iran Road Maintenance and Transportation Organization (IRMTO), a subsidiary of the Roads and Urban Planning Ministry. Soon, he predicted, 80 million dollars will be allocated to the import of tires every month.

According to previous comments from Deputy Head of IRMTO Daryoosh Amani, the Industry Ministry refused to fulfill truckers’ past demands for tires. Yet Seyyed Hassan Hosseini Shahroudi, vice-chair of parliament’s Economic Committee, imputed both the IRMTO and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development for falling short of truckers’ needs. More than 153 MPs backed the truckers’ demands in a letter addressed to President Hassan Rouhani, which was recently read to parliament by Akbar Ranjzade, a member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly Presidium.

In another recent speech, Ranjzade delivered a double-edged message to a gathering of truck drivers in Asadbad, Hamedan province. In one breath he promised their demands would be addressed; in another, he made it known that they were flirting with capital punishment.

Soccer Player Shayan Mosleh Provokes Outcry from Sunni Imams

Posted on by Sara
Religious Minorities
Shayan Mosleh, Sunni, sunnis in iran

Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA)- While moonlighting as a Shia orator, Shayan Mosleh — a soccer player for Tehran’s popular Persepolis club — gave a poetry reading that gained wide circulation on the internet, inciting responses from Sunni scholars, Parliamentary representatives, and the public who found it “insulting [to] Sunni sanctities.”

On September 28th, Mosleh’s name resounded in speeches from Sunni prayer imams (listed below) across the country, who condemned his commentary to the point of asking he be held accountable through the judiciary and state-run news agencies.

Friday Prayer Leaders in Iran who protested against Shayan Mosleh:

Molavi Mohammad Hossein Gargij
Azadshahr, Golestan province

Seyed Abdolbaes Ghatali
Bandar Abbas, Hormozgan province

Molavi Habib al-Rahman Motahari
Head of Ahnaf Khavaf Seminary, Khorasan Razavi Province

Molavi Abdolghafar Sheikh Jami
Kheyrabad village, Taybad County, Khorasan Razavi province

Molavi Khodabakhsh Eslamdoost
Ramin, Chabahar county, Sistan & Baluchestan province

Molavi Abdolsamad Damani
Head of Sunni seminary in Haghanieh, Iranshahr county, Sistan & Baluchestan province

Molavi Abdolrashid Shahbakhs
Zabol, Sistan & Baluchestan province

Molavi Gholam Heyday Farooghi
Birjand, South Khorasan province

Abdolkarim Javar
Gonbad Kavoos, Golestan province

Molavi Abdolahad Sarbazi
Anza, Sistan & Baluchestan province

Molavi Seyed Ahmad Abdollahi
Asadieh, South Khorasan province

Molavi Kheyrallah Nikhoy
Friday prayer speaker in Khaf, Razavi Khorasan province

Molavi Abdolhakim Seyedzade
Friday prayer speaker in Gosht, Sistan & Baluchestan province

Molavi Mohammad Tayeb
Iranshahr, Sistan & Baluchestan province

Molavi Chahani
Friday prayer speaker in Rameshk, Kerman province

Sheikh Mohammad Saleh Kheradnia
Damahi, Bandar Abbas

Sheikh Mostafa Imam
Head of Masjid Jameh in Bandar Abbas’s Khajeh Atta quarter.

While the Iranian constitution recognizes Sunni as a religious minority, it defends a specific school of Shiism as the country’s official religion. As a result, Sunnis are victim to systematic discrimination and persecution.

Iran: Actor’s Online Comments Incur Summons from Intelligence Ministry

Posted on by Sara
Freedom of Expression
Hamid Farrokhnezhad

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) – Renowned cinema and theater actor Hamid Farrokhnezhad was summoned Sunday, September 30th to the Ministry of Intelligence Office, presumably in relation to his cyber activities.

In a note, Farrokhnejad said he was being called to “to explain some issues,” elaborating that authorities wanted to follow up on critical comments and information he had published online about the state of the country.

Hamid Farrokhnejad, born in 1969 in Abadan, Southwestern Iran, is an actor, screenwriter, and director of cinema and theater productions. He obtained a degree in theatre direction from Tehran University’s College of Fine Arts.

No Word on Trial Date for Bahraini Citizen and Evin Prisoner Ruqayya Haji Mashallah

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Women
Evin Prison, Ruqayya Haji Mashallah, Women's Ward of Evin Prison

Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA)- Ruqayya Haji Mashallah, a 37-year-old citizen of Bahrain, was detained on April 20, 2018 by security forces in Mashhad. In custody ever since, she has only been able to speak to her family in Bahrain twice since her arrest.

An informed source told HRANA that Haji-Mashallah’s annual pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Eighth Shi’i Imam, located in Mashhad, has brought her under the suspicion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). “IRGC Intelligence claims that Ms. Haji-Mashallah has been tasked by the Bahraini government with identifying supporters of Issa Ghasem, a Bahraini opposition leader,” the source said.

Immediately after her April arrest, Haji-Mashallah was held in solitary confinement at an IRGC detention center for 12 days. She was then transferred to Evin’s Ward 2A, also under IRGC jurisdiction. Two months of interrogations later, she was taken to Evin’s general Women’s Ward, where she has remained since.

Severed diplomatic relations between Iran and Bahrain have prevented Haji-Mashallah from contacting her husband and three children with the prison telephone. “Since June 27th, when she was transferred to the Women’s Ward at Evin, she has been taken only twice to the IRGC Ward so that she can contact her Bahraini husband and children using the internet. Her husband has traveled to Iran once to visit her,” the source added.

Judge Salavati is presiding over Haji-Mashallah’s case file. As of the date of this report, her court date has not been set.