Iran regime plans to blind man with acid next week
Wednesday, 04 May 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI
Iran’s fundamentalist regime plans to completely blind a man with acid next week as a form of punishment under the mullahs’ brutal retribution law, according to news received from inside Iran.Mojtaba Saheli (Sabeqi), 31, who was previously blinded in his left eye by the regime, has been informed by prison officials that he is to be blinded in the right eye with acid next week in Gohardasht (Rajai-Shahr) Prison in Karaj, north-west of Tehran. On August 3, 2009 he allegedly blinded a driver in Qom, south of Tehran, with acid. The regime’s court in Qom sentenced Mr. Saheli to be blinded in both eyes with acid, pay blood money and serve a 10-year prison term as part of the regime’s inhumane law of retribution (qisas). On March 3, 2015 he was blinded in one eye with acid in Gohardasht Prison in the presence of the regime’s deputy prosecutor in Tehran Mohammad Shahriari and prison officials after the draconian sentence was upheld by the regime’s Supreme Court. Mr. Saheli is currently imprisoned in Ward 2 of Hall 4 of Gohardasht Prison. He had been told to pay blood money to avoid the new blinding sentence from being implemented on his right eye. Dr. Sanabargh Zahedi, chairman of the Judicial Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said: “The inhumane law of retribution (qisas) has been implemented against the Iranian people for the past 37 years. These punishments date back to the medieval ages and show the clerical regime’s reactionary nature. These inhuman punishments are clear violations of all principles and norms of a modern judiciary, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and all civil and political covenants. Such punishments undoubtedly constitute a savage form of torture and should be condemned by any freedom-seeking person. The Iranian Resistance and NCRI members have since 1980 condemned the regime’s qisas law as anti-human.” “According to the logic of the Quran and modern democratic Islam the first principle which applies to the penal code is dynamism. Thus the Islamic penal provision should be interpreted within the context of social and economic conditions and scientific progress. The clerical regime is centuries away from this logic, and as such it is clear that there is no possibility of reform within this regime,” he added. Amnesty International in a statement on March 5, 2015 condemned the Iranian regime for blinding Mr. Saheli in his left eye two days earlier. “Punishing someone by deliberately blinding them is an unspeakably cruel and shocking act,” said Raha Bahreini, Amnesty International’s Iran Researcher. “This punishment exposes the utter brutality of Iran’s justice system and underlines the Iranian authorities’ shocking disregard for basic humanity. Meting out cruel and inhuman retribution punishments is not justice. Blinding, like stoning, amputation and flogging, is a form of corporal punishment prohibited by international law. Such punishments should not be carried out under any circumstances.”
Iranian students show support for political prisoners
Thursday, 05 May 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI – Students at the Tehran Polytechnic University (Amirkabir University of Technology) have shown their solidarity and support for teachers imprisoned in Iran over their political opinion. The students on Sunday, May 1, put up supportive statements and photographs of the imprisoned teachers, several of who are now on hunger strike in Iran’s notorious jails. Esmail Abdi and Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, two teachers who are behind bars in Evin Prison, are currently on hunger strike. Another political prisoner Ali Moezzi, whose relatives are members of the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), has announced that he plans to join Abdi and other political prisoners on hunger strike as a sign of solidarity beginning on Friday. Separately, students at the Medical University of Qom expressed their support for political prisoner Omid Kokabee. On Saturday, April 30, the students put up banners and signs calling for Mr. Kokabee’s release from prison. Mr. Kokabee, a 34-year-old physicist, underwent surgery last month to remove his cancerous right kidney. His relatives had repeatedly warned about his various problematic health conditions, but the mullahs’ regime systematically ignored their warnings in the past five years that he has been behind bars. Human rights groups say Mr. Kokabee is a prisoner of conscience held solely for his refusal to work on military projects in Iran and as a result of spurious charges related to his legitimate scholastic ties with academic institutions outside of Iran. In May 2012, after an unfair trial in the regime’s so-called Revolutionary Court at which it is understood that no evidence was presented against him, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having “connections with a hostile government,” according to Amnesty International. His sentence was upheld on appeal in August 2012. According to human rights groups, Iranian authorities unduly delayed Mr. Kokabee’s access to medical treatment in the past. In 2012, after an initial examination found that he had a tumor, Mr. Kokabee experienced a long delay in getting permission to be transferred from a prison health clinic to a hospital for critical medical examinations. In an open letter written from prison in April 2013, Mr. Kokabee said: “During interrogations which were conducted in solitary confinement, while all my communication with my family and the outside world was cut off, and while I was constantly being put under pressure and threats by receiving news about the horrible physical and mental state of my family, I was asked again and again to write up various versions of my personal history after 2005.”
Iran regime arrests two bloggers
Wednesday, 04 May 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI – The Iranian regime’s repressive Cyber Police (FATA) has arrested two young webloggers in Rasht and Roudbar, northern Iran, charging them with “computer crimes.”The head of the FATA police in Gilan Province, Colonel Iraj Mohammadkhani, announced the arrests on Tuesday, adding that “[illegal] production, distribution and access to any data, software or any type of electronic devices are regarded as computer crimes and anyone committing such acts will be sentenced from 91 days to one year of imprisonment, or will have to pay a fine of five million to 20 million Rials (U.S. $166 to $662), or both.”Tuesday, May 3, marked World Press Freedom Day 2016. As recently as March 2016, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Iran is still one of the world’s five biggest prisons for media personnel and is ranked 173rd out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. Shahin Gobadi of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on Tuesday said: “Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are non-existent in Iran under the mullahs’ regime. Not only does the regime severely clamp down on journalists for reporting on subjects considered sensitive by the mullahs, it even goes so far as arresting and torturing to death dissident bloggers such as Sattar Beheshti.” “The regime’s draconian measures against news organizations have become more aggressive since Hassan Rouhani took office as President in 2013. Several international human rights organizations have attested to this reality,” Mr. Gobadi added.
