Iran says it has publicly hanged a 23-year-old in what is the second execution linked to the recent anti-government protests.
Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, was hanged early on Monday in the city of Mashhad, the judiciary said.
A court convicted him of “enmity against God” after finding he had stabbed to death two members of the paramilitary Basij Resistance Force.
Almost three months after the current popular uprising against the Islamic Republic started in Iran, three things are clear.
The first is that even if the uprising hits an interlude to recuperate, as is often the case with such movements, it is unlikely to simply fade away. It has mobilized energies that cannot be tamed with time, and raised such hopes and expectations that even the most hard-boiled cynics in power won’t be able to disregard.
Next, most of those who have mobilized those energies, that is to say the thousands of young men and women who risked all to openly challenge one of the most brutal regimes in contemporary history, while knowing what they want, don’t know how to translate their desiderata into the cold political reality of securing and using power.
A poignant video of the 450+ protestors killed thus far in Iran. It’s not a coincidence that many of them are remembered singing and dancing; they died protesting a regime that has criminalized both activities. pic.twitter.com/mReLyPQmlD
— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) December 7, 2022
During a press conference in Tehran on 3 December, Iran’s Attorney General, Mohammad Javad Montazeri was asked by a journalist what had happened to the country’s morality police, which have been strangely absent from Iran’s streets. Clearly irritated by the question, Montazeri snapped that the morality police had nothing to do with the judiciary and they had been ‘abolished’ by the same body that had installed them. The word he used could also be translated as ‘suspended’ but the implication that the force had been in some way removed was seized upon by international journalists that something was beginning to give in the Islamic Republic. But as is often the case with the Islamic Republic, it is always worth pausing and reading the small print before rushing to judgement.
Even though the Iranian regime has been increasing its military support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a gift that poses a significant threat to the European Union – the EU’s appeasement policy toward the ruling mullahs of Iran barrels on.
Iranian security forces are targeting women at anti-regime protests with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts and genitals, according to interviews with medics across the country.
Doctors and nurses – treating demonstrators in secret to avoid arrest – said they first observed the practice after noticing that women often arrived with different wounds to men, who more commonly had shotgun pellets in their legs, buttocks and backs.
I salute the courageous university students who rose up today across #Iran despite brutal attacks and massive arrests by repressive forces. With chants of “Death to Khamenei,” they seek the criminal mullahs’ overthrow. #IranRevolution pic.twitter.com/yZgIPoT1bO
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) December 7, 2022
Iran has announced the first execution of a protester convicted over the recent anti-government unrest.
Mohsen Shekari was hanged on Thursday morning after being found guilty by a Revolutionary Court of “enmity against God”, state media reported.
He was accused of being a “rioter” who blocked a main road in Tehran on 25 September and wounded a member of the paramilitary Basij force with a knife.
Iranian news agency says students were struck down by ‘food poisoning’ which led to them dumping their food onto the streets
More than a thousand Iranian university students appear to have been poisoned the night before they were due to attend mass anti-regime protests being held across the country this week.
According to ISNA, an Iranian news agency, 1,200 students at Kharazmi and Ark universities were taken ill with vomiting, severe body aches and hallucinations. Similar illnesses were also reported at at least four other universities.
“These hostile [Iranian] activities and foreign interference undermine the security of Canada and Canadians, as well as our democratic values and sovereignty,” said a spokesperson from Canada’s intelligence agency.
Iran is ramping up its crackdowns on dissidents, including political activists and journalists, living abroad, and recruiting third-party criminals for assassination attempts against Iranian and Israeli nationals in Europe and North America, according to a Washington Post report.
The Post report comes on the heels of a recent warning to Iranians in the UK from the country’s MI5 intelligence agency. MI5 told dissidents that Iranian agents and paid criminals acting on their behalf were attempting to kidnap and kill critics of the regime living in London and other British localities.
BERLIN — On a balmy September evening last year, an Azeri man carrying a Russian passport crossed the border from northern Cyprus into southern Cyprus. He traveled light: a pistol, a handful of bullets and a silencer.
It was going to be the perfect hit job.
Then, just as the man was about to step into a rental car and carry out his mission — which prosecutors say was to gun down five Jewish businessmen, including an Israeli billionaire — the police surrounded him.
… According to Sobhani, Fardid regarded “liberal democracy” as the most vicious enemy of the project to fulfill the “Islamic destiny of mankind”. This is why the Islamic Republic must face the Western powers with determination, always with “the finger on the trigger.” This is meant to justify the Islamic Republic’s growing closeness to Russia and Communist China which, though repressing their Muslim citizens, compensate for that misdeed by also combating the West and its liberal democracy.
British Columbia’s Ramin Joubin is on a mission.
The Burnaby-based lawyer recently joined forces with lawyers across Canada, the U.S. and Iran to identify Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members and their associates living in Canada.
Together, they’ve created a website called stopirgc.com, where people report their findings. The team verifies and later report cases to government agencies and police.
When Mullah regime supporters of the IRGC’s ‘heroes’ brazenly gather at memorials in our streets it’s probably too late.
But hey, importing 5th columns is what the Trudeau government is all about.
Iran has abolished its morality police, AFP reported citing Iran’s Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri.
This comes after the ongoing protests erupted across the country about the death of Mahsa Amini two months ago, who was arrested by Iranian morality police for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women.
It’s disinformation that Islamic Republic of Iran has abolished it’s morality police. It’s a tactic to stop the uprising.
Protesters are not facing guns and bullets to abolish morality police or forced hijab.They want to end Islamic regime.#MahsaAmini
pic.twitter.com/qRcY0Kaepc pic.twitter.com/6ShBqnSbMn— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 4, 2022
Never trust the mullahs.
When millions of citizens poured into the streets of Iran in June 2009 to protest against the country’s regime, the Obama administration was silent as many people in Iran cried out, “Are you with us, or are you with them [the ruling mullahs]?” Now, the Biden administration appears to be repeating Obama administration’s policy of choosing to be silent in the face of the Iranian regime’s bloodshed, human rights violations, and crackdowns that kill and wound peaceful protesters — and has the same policy regarding brave Chinese protestors as well.
Canada has sanctioned a high-profile former Tehran police chief whose appearance at a Toronto-area gym last year sparked outrage and allegations that Canada is a haven for high-ranking members of Iran’s regime and their relatives.
Morteza Talaei is a retired second brigadier general with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was in charge of Tehran’s police in 2003 when Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was beaten to death in custody.
Kazemi was arrested in 2003 for taking photos of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where protests were taking place over students detained by the regime.
Iranian security forces have killed at least 488 people in a crackdown on protests, the Iranian Human Rights (IHR) group said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a general of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said “more than 300 martyrs and people” have been killed in the unrest, the first time authorities have acknowledged such a figure.
After the #football match between #Iran and #America, Iranian people poured into the streets and shouted slogans against the Islamic Republic. Death to the baby-killing government. #WorldCup #fifaworldcup #mahsa_amini #opiran #humanrights #IranRevoIution #IranProtests #USA pic.twitter.com/Z8z4VkNHUA
— nima (@niimaaaaaaaa) November 29, 2022
