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Egypt Muslim Brotherhood ‘never’ to recognize Israel

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

01/03/2012

By: Reza Kahlili

Rashad al-Bayoumi, a senior member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood says it will never recognize the state of Israel and will put Cairo-Tel Aviv Peace Treaty to the test of public opinion once a new government takes office in the North African country.

According to ParsTV, the mouthpiece of the Islamic Regime in Iran, The group’s second-in-command, Rashad al-Bayoumi, said in an interview with the London-based Al-Hayat Arabic daily that no member of the Muslim Brotherhood will ever negotiate with an Israeli.

“This is not possible, no matter what the circumstances are. We do not recognize Israel at all. It is a criminal enemy occupier… I will never allow myself to sit down with a criminal,” Bayoumi said, noting that Israel is illegally occupying the Palestinian land.

He said that the Muslim Brotherhood respects all international agreements signed by Egypt during the current “interim” period but it has the right to reconsider a treaty signed without the consent of the Egyptian people.

Bayoumi went on to say that once a new government is in place, the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty would be re-evaluated in a national referendum.

“We will take all the correct legal procedures regarding to the treaty. The people will have their say,” he said, adding,” We have the right to present it to the people and the elected parliament so that they can come to a decision about it.

Since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in early 2011, anti-Israeli sentiments have been on the rise, with many people demanding an end to the peace agreement.

Power was handed to Supreme Council of the Armed Forces following Mubarak’s ouster in February.

The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has won around 50 percent of the seats in the first two phases of Egypt’s three-stage parliamentary elections.

It must be noted that the radicals ruling Iran have voiced their support for the removal of the military rule in Egypt and are engaged with the Muslim Brotherhood to achieve such goal. Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic regime in Iran has praised Egyptian protesters and has criticized the U.S. for what he called “adopting a double standard” toward the developments occurring in Egypt and other countries, adding that any popular, democratic and patriotic person who comes to power in one of those countries will definitely oppose the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel.

Also See:  U.S. Delusional about Arab Spring, Iran Insists

 

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Judge hands Ahmadinejad defeat in torture injury claim

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

Now hearing to be held to uncover Islamic regime’s ‘inhuman atrocities’

By Bob Unruh – WND

12/10/2011

A federal judge in Washington has entered a default judgment against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a lawsuit brought on behalf of victims of his radical Islamic regime.

The case will now proceed to a hearing to determine damages, according to a lawyer who brought the case and predicts the world will be horrified by the coming testimony.

The complaint asks for damages of $10 billion.

“At this trial, the testimony of the victims of the regime will be heard and resonate throughout the world,” said Larry Klayman ofFreedomWatchUSA.org, who pursued the original legal action on behalf of people including Nasrin Mohammadi, whose brother, an activist for freedom and rights in Iran during the 1990s, was jailed, tortured and killed for his efforts.

“In effect, the trial could ultimately prove similar to the historic Nuremberg trials, vividly exposing in graphic detail the inhuman atrocities of this radical Islamic regime, much as occurred with the Nazis, in a court of law,” Klayman said.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington granted a default against Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Sayid Ali Hoseyni Khamenei, the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The case is a class action claim on behalf of victims of the regime.

Klayman explained that the action is not only important in the pursuit of justice for the victims and their families, “but at this time in history for the world to be confronted with the reality that Iran is the most heinous of all the terrorist states.”

He continued, “Iran is a major threat to world peace, and the regime must be finally dealt with, rendered impotent, and removed by the civilized world before another ‘Holocaust’ results,” he said. “In so doing, no only will the Persian people be freed from bondage and terror, but the nuclear threat will have been largely eliminated, and Israel and the West protected from the horrors of this regime.”


Court order

Western nations have presented evidence that Ahmadinejad’s regime, which has threatened to destroy Israel, is developing  a nuclear weapons program.

The case is on behalf of the late Akbar Mohammadi and his surviving brother Manoucher, who “were the first to call for regime change during the early stages of the modern freedom movement in Iran.

“Akbar, was tortured and murdered in Evin prison, and Manoucher was also tortured and held for seven years, under a death sentence. Manoucher ultimately escaped and found freedom in the United States. But the case is far broader than just these two heroic freedom fighters and was brought on behalf of all of the victims of the regime, including U.S. servicemen who were murdered as a result of Iranian bounties put on their heads,” Klayman explained.

A status conference will be held Dec. 16 to determine further proceedings. Klayman told WND Manoucher is expected to testify about the torture he endured and what he witnessed others suffer.

The claim is for all Iranians who have had their civil and human rights violated, been assaulted, battered, tortured and even murdered to “keep a vicious, illegitimate and inhuman radical regime in power, all at the expense of the great, courageous, pro-Western, extremely well educated and highly sophisticated Persian civilization.”

The motion for default, filed in September, explained: “Plaintiff’s complaint was filed July 10, 2009, entered July 14, 2009. On September 23, 2009, plaintiff served the initial complaint on defendant Ahmadinejad at a state dinner that he was attending at the Barlay Intercontinental Hotel. Such service occurred while defendant was meeting with the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. Plaintiff received no response from defendant. Plaintiff, on December 15, 2010, again served defendants through Mohammad Tagli Mosleghi. Mosleghi, who was over eighteen years of age and a U.S. citizen who had no relation to any of the defendants, effectuated proper service on this date at 12:55PM. Defendant personally served each and every one of the named defendants by serving the Embassy of Switzerland (2900 Cathedral Avenue Northwest Washington D.C., DC 20008-3405), which is the representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its government officials and entities with regard to the United States. Service was made by hand and copies of the amended complaint and summons, along with certified translation in the Farsi language were served on the document intake person inside the embassy,” the filing explains.

The case was brought Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991. Klayman noted, “Foreign sovereigns are not immune in cases in which money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury occurring in the U.S. and caused by the tortious act of that foreign state or of any official of that foreign state while acting within the scope of his office. … Through tortious and violent acts, defendants have caused extreme [injury] to plaintiffs, citizens of the United States, not only by the brutal killing of their brother. As such, immunity is not provided for such defendants.”

He continued, “There is no doubt that defendants, acting individually and in concert with al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups, were and remain engaged in terrorism and violations of human and civil rights in violation of the law of nations and international law. Plaintiff’s brother, Akbar Mohammadi, … was a student of the University of Tehran and a critic of the Iranian regime.”

“It’s time for the American people to take action,” Klayman told WND at the time. “Our government of Democrats and Republicans has ignored the serious threat from Iran. We the people must do the job ourselves.”

According to the filing, Akbar Mohammadi was “was taken into custody by violent Iranian police and locked away in Evin Prison in Tehran, a place notorious for its cruel imprisonment of political dissidents. Seeking to intimidate its population from engaging in political dissidence, defendants sought to make an example of plaintiff’s brother. However, defendants went beyond a mere imprisonment. While in prison, Akbar was subjected to repeated bouts of torture and cruel and unusual forms of punishment, forced to suffer from defendants’ acts that would be clear violations of United States law. … Through continuous, brutal and repulsive acts of defendants, plaintiff’s brother spent his final years in a constant state of agony.”

Eventually, even though Iranian doctors recommended he be moved to a hospital and treated, he was not. He died July 31, 2006.

Besides the actual acts of torture, Ahamdinejad “has been involved with various worldwide terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, al-Qaida … and others, all officially designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department.”

He’s also “directly and through their agents … provided substantial support to assortment of terrorist organizations.”

“One cannot imagine the emotional suffering plaintiff faced, receiving letters from her brutally beaten and tortured brother, describing the torment he faced on a daily basis,” the court filings say.

The default motion requested $10 billion, and hearings will determine to what extent the plaintiffs will be compensated for their injuries.

 

 

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John & Kathy Word Radio

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

John & Kathy Word Radio

Discussion on Iran before and after the revolution, my activities and the need to support people of Iran with their desire for regime change.

December 06, 2011

Listen Here

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Syria Would Cut Iran Military Tie, Opposition Head Says

Saturday, December 3rd, 2011

The wall Street Journal

By JAY SOLOMON and NOUR MALAS

12/02/2011

PARIS—A Syrian government run by the country’s main opposition group would cut Damascus’s military relationship to Iran and end arms supplies to Middle East militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, the group’s leader said, raising the prospect of a dramatic realignment of powers at the region’s core.

Burhan Ghalioun, the president of the Syrian National Council, said such moves would be part of a broader Syrian reorientation back into an alliance with the region’s major Arab powers. Mr. Ghalioun’s comments came Wednesday, in his first major media interview since he was made SNC leader in October.

Mr. Ghalioun also called on the international community to take aggressive new steps, including the possible establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria.

“Our main objective is finding mechanisms to protect civilians and stop the killing machine,” Mr. Ghalioun, a 66-year-old university professor, said from his home in south Paris. “We say it is imperative to use forceful measures to force the regime to respect human rights.”

Underscoring those concerns, the United Nations human-rights commission estimated Thursday that Syria’s crackdown on its nine-month uprising has claimed “much more” than 4,000 lives, a toll that has grown by the hundreds in recent weeks.

This year’s political uprisings in the Middle East increasingly have devolved into a power struggle pitting the U.S. and its Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia, against Iran and its allies. Syria is viewed as the central prize, due to its strategic position and role in the Arab-Israeli struggle.

Syria would also appear ripe for realignment. President Bashar al-Assad’s government is Iran’s closest military and strategic ally in the region. Damascus and Tehran coordinate closely in funneling arms and funds to the Hezbollah movement that controls Lebanon and the militant group Hamas, which is fighting Israeli forces.

Mr. Assad and many of his top officials are Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The regime’s alliance with Iran, which is Shiite-dominated and Persian, is seen as unnatural by Syria’s Sunni Arab majority; Mr. Ghalioun called it “abnormal.” The SNC, and Syria’s broader opposition, generally support dissolving the ties.

Such a position is welcomed by U.S. and European officials, who believe Mr. Assad’s overthrow could cripple Iran’s ability to project its power into the Palestinian territories and Egypt.

“There will be no special relationship with Iran,” Mr. Ghalioun said in the interview. “Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic, military alliance,” he said, adding that “after the fall of the Syrian regime, [Hezbollah] won’t be the same.”

Mr. Assad, or members of his Alawite sect, could remain in power, of course. But should Damascus break from Tehran, diplomats believe, Iran’s own pro-democracy movement, snuffed out in 2009, could be reinvigorated. Efforts to contain the spread of sophisticated weapons systems could also be aided. Skepticism remains high, however, that such a development will help solve the Arab-Israel conflict, as new governments from Egypt to Tunisia appear just as committed to the Palestinian cause.

The Syrian National Council, formally established in October, serves as the face of Syria’s opposition to the international community and has proposed to lead a one-year transition to democratic rule. It is the broadest-based opposition coalition since protests broke out in Syria in mid-March, unifying Sunni Muslims, Christians, Kurds, youth committees and others.

But several Damascus-based political dissidents, and newer movements for political change, say the council was formed largely outside Syria and doesn’t adequately represent the spectrum of Syrian society. Factions within the SNC have differed over issues of regional autonomy, the question of foreign intervention in Syria’s crisis and the role of religion and Arab nationalism in any new state. The organization has also been hobbled by the lack of operating territory inside Syria and the cohesion of Mr. Assad’s military and government.

U.S. and European officials have voiced particular concern about the SNC’s lack of representation for women and religious minorities. They have also said that Sunni religious groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, could end up dominating the council.

But in recent days, U.S. officials have said Mr. Ghalioun is effectively building bridges between Syria’s political factions.

“He’s doing an impressive job,” said a U.S. official. The officials added that momentum seems to be building behind the SNC, particularly after the Arab League nations voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to impose financial sanctions on the Assad government.

Mr. Ghalioun acknowledged in the interview that the SNC has faced challenges in uniting Syria’s opposition after more than 40 years of the Assad family’s dictatorial rule.

He said Syria’s Kurdish minority has 33 parties, making the choice of representation difficult. He said the SNC has also made a special outreach to Christians, including sending a mission to the Vatican, amid fears that Christians’ religious, economic and political rights could be curtailed in a post-Assad Syria.

Indeed, he said Syria, though roughly 70% Sunni Muslim, has a history of religious and ethnic diversity that would never allow it to be dominated by Islamist parties or Islamist law.

“I don’t think there’s a real fear in Syria of a monopoly of Islamists, not even 10%,” he said. “The Muslim Brotherhood has largely been in exile for 30 years and their internal coordination is non-existent.”

Mr. Ghalioun, too, has lived abroad for decades following the seizure of power by the Baath Party and a coup by Hafez al-Assad—Mr. Assad’s father—as president in 1970. Mr. Ghalioun has served as a political sociology professor at the Paris Sorbonne University, while intermittently returning to Syria to agitate for political reform. A self-declared secular Sunni, he has called for religion and state to be separate.

His role as opposition leader could end as early as this month under the committee’s bylaws, but discussions are under way to potentially extend his term.

In the interview, Mr. Ghalioun stressed that Syria will remain committed to reclaiming the Golan Heights territory from Israel, which Damascus lost during the 1967 Six Day War. But he said Syria would focus its interests through negotiations rather than armed conflict or the support of proxies.

He added that a new Syrian government would normalize relations with neighboring Lebanon after decades of dominating the country through its militarily and intelligence channels. A U.N. investigation has charged members of Hezbollah with assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, a charge the group has denied.

The SNC’s president joined the U.S. and European Union with charging Iran of assisting Mr. Assad in cracking down on the political rebellion. Tehran has repeatedly denied this charge. But Iranian officials, as well as Hezbollah, have been vocal in their support for the continuation of the Assad regime.

Mr. Ghalioun and the SNC have been conducting stepped-up negotiations with the Arab League, Turkey, Russia and European powers in recent days to find ways to protect Syrians and guarantee the supply of humanitarian aid, according to participants in the talks. The SNC president has met with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Turkey, which on Wednesday joined the Arab League, U.S. and European Union in imposing financial sanctions on Mr. Assad’s government, has raised the possibility of establishing a buffer zone inside Syria to protect civilians from Mr. Assad’s forces. Mr. Juppé and the U.S. are pressing a plan to protect international monitors inside Syria.

The SNC’s chief visited the Turkish border this week to meet the commanders of the Free Syrian Army, which is made up of defectors from the mostly Sunni mid-ranks of the Syrian military. The FSA has claimed responsibility in recent weeks of at least one attack on a state security building. But Mr. Ghalioun said he had reached agreement with the FSA’s commanders that their military operations would focus solely on protecting Syrian civilians and not on offensive operations.

“We don’t want, after the fall of the regime in Syria, armed militias outside the control of the state,” Mr. Ghalioun said. “They assured us they will implement our agreement and abide by requests not to launch any offensive operations.”

Mr. Ghalioun echoed Western confidence that President Assad’s leadership is untenable in the long-term due to Damascus’s mounting financial woes and diplomatic isolation, saying Mr. Assad can survive only “months” more in office. U.S. and European officials believe it could take much longer.

The SNC believes Damascus’s foreign-exchange reserves are now below $10 billion, its leader says; Damascus officially cites between $17 billion and $18 billion. He also said that Syria’s economy will contract by at least 10% this year. Syrian economists say the government is projecting growth of around 4%.

“There isn’t even 1% chance that Assad will survive,” the SNC president said. “His only choice to carry on…is to continue the killing. They know that if they stop, they’re over.”

 

 

 

 

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America’s Radio News Network

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

America’s Radio News Network

With Ernie Brown

The nuclear threat posed by the radicals ruling Iran, the effects of the sanctions and what needs to be done. Also discussing the situation in Egypt.

November 24, 2011

Listen Here

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Iran’s Thugocracy Attacks Again

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

11/16/2011

FRONTPAGEMAG

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

The 35-year-old son of the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Mohsen Rezai, was found dead in a luxury suites hotel in Dubai on Sunday, a death his family deemed “suspicious.”

Ahmad Rezai had gone to Dubai on September 8 to visit his family, who maintain a residence in Dubai. He has been unable to travel to Iran since he was released from house arrest by the regime on May 1, 2008.

According to the Tehran Times, the younger Rezai “died after receiving an electric shock.” An opposition Iranian source told me he was followed back from Tehran by two members of the Quds Force who may have carried out the hit.

The younger Rezai’s murder was discovered just hours after a series of explosions rocked the main depot for the Revolutionary Guards stockpile of Shahab-3 missiles in the southwestern suburbs of Tehran, killing one of Iran’s top missile experts, Brig. Gen. Hassan Moghadam.

It’s unclear if the two events are related, as many bloggers have beensuggesting. However, Gen. Mohsen Rezai commands a substantial following within the IRGC even today, fourteen years after he was replaced as IRGC commander. The murder of his son by another faction of regime thugs will surely have repercussions inside Iran.

To me, this feels like the murder of Ahmad Shah Massood in Afghanistan on Sept 9, 2001. I can still remember hearing of Masood’s murder and thinking at the time: this is the beginning of something really bad.

By the very fact that he lived in the United States and had U.S. citizenship, Ahmad Rezai gave his father an “American connection” the regime jinned up into a massive conspiracy. The fact that they couldn’t prove any of their allegations against him, despite many years of efforts, only convinced them further that father and son constituted a threat to the regime.

Combine this murder with the missile base explosion, the latest IAEA report that reveals ongoing nuclear warhead work – despite the CIA’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate to the contrary – and the intense factional warfare inside the regime that is pitting Ahmadinejad against Khamenei and splitting the IRGC into multiple, mutually-hostile factions – and you’ve laid the table for a dramatic series of events. Something bad is going to happen. And the target is likely to be Israel.

Family background

Gen. Rezai has twice run for president, both times against Ahmadinejad. After the stolen election of June 2009, he joined the other failed candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, in calling for a full investigation of election fraud.

But as street protests in Tehran and elsewhere intensified, Rezai caved into pressure from Ayatollah Khamenei – including threats to his family – and retreated to Mashad for several months where he lectured at the local university. (He holds a PhD in economics.)

Khamenei also threatened the family of Rezai’s boss at the Expediency Council, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, was arrested after the election on allegations of failing to pay import duties on large quantities of green “mantos” – the head to toe covering, usually in black, that Iranian women are forced to wear in public – she was planning to distribute thanks to grants from NGOs with ties to George Soros and his Open Society Institute.

Rafsanjani’s son, Mehdi Hashemi, was planning to return to Iran from London after the election, but was ultimately warned away from returning by Ahmad Rezai, who learned that the regime had issued an arrest warrant for Hashemi and fully intended to carry it out if he came to Tehran.

Ahmad Rezai has been in the gunsights of the regime ever since he defected to the United States in 1997 at the age of 22.

I first interviewed him in Los Angeles the following year, when he blasted the regime for carrying out terrorist attacks, including the Khobar Towers bombing.

“Three persons sign off on every order to commit a foreign terrorist action: Ayatollah Khamene’i, Rafsanjani, and Khamene’i’s chief of staff, Hojjat-ol eslam Mohammadi-Golpayegani,” he told me in that interview.

In 1999, his father dispatched two people to lure Ahmad away from Los Angeles, where he had obtained political asylum, to the estate of a wealthy Iranian businessman in Costa Rica, on the pretext that Iranian agents in Los Angeles were trying to kill him.

Gen. Rezai was trying to get Ahmad to return to Iran, where he thought he could get the regime to “forgive” his outspoken radio and television interviews. At the time, President Khatami was leading a reformist movement that included a loosening up of the regime’s intelligence apparatus. Gen. Rezai was working with Khatami at the time.

In the end, the younger Rezai managed to return to the United States from Costa Rica, with help from the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, which I founded in 1995. He learned English in my basement by watching Jackie Chan movies for three months while getting resettled into the United States.

He eventually moved to Los Angeles but shunned the Iranian exile community, which distrusted him because of his family background. For several years he worked at ordinary jobs. He got married, had a child, and tried to lead a normal life. In 2004, he became a U.S. citizen.

But Iran was always close to his heart.

Even as a 16-year-old, Ahmad Rezai rebelled against the repression of the regime his own father represented. As a young “inspector” within the Bassij corp, he would visit jails around the country, and quietly work to get political prisoners released.

On January 28, 2007, after reconciling with his father, Ahmad returned to Iran with his South Korean wife and their three-year-old daughter, with the understanding that his past “sins” would be forgiven and he could help his father build a political base after his first failed run for president in 2005.

But as soon as they arrived at the Tehran airport, regime agents confiscated his passports and accused him of being a U.S. spy. His wife and child were allowed to leave after ten days, but the younger Rezai was subjected to fourteen months of hell.

Regime intelligence agents interned him in a Tehran hospital to conduct extensive body scans looking for a “CIA chip,” and ultimately subjected him to several rounds of brutal electro-shocks, hoping to break his will. These sessions were video-taped by his father’s security guards, to make sure the regime doctors didn’t kill him outright.

An intelligence officer named Akbar Baghari accompanied the entire Rezai family on the Haj to Mecca in March 2007. He insisted that Ahmad marry a Muslim woman, and began presenting young women to him as potential brides. “I told these young women, ‘I am already married. This is who I am, I am not going to be your husband. I am under pressure,’” Ahmad told me later.

Baghari made clear that if he refused to take an Iranian Muslim wife, he would be jailed or killed, so in May 2007 the younger Rezai agreed to a white marriage with the daughter of an IRGC general, all the while he kept trying to get his passport back so he could leave Iran to rejoin his wife and child back in California.

Ultimately, Gen. Rezai wrote a report detailing the torture Ahmad had been subjected to and threatened to circulate it throughout the IRGC officer corps if the regime did not agree to allow his son to leave the country, and so on May 2, 2008, he was finally allowed to leave Iran to return to the United States.

Mexican stand-off

When his father declared his candidacy for president in early 2009, Ahmad again sought to return to Iran, thinking to assist his campaign.

After a failed effort in February 2009, he flew to Tehran from Dubai in April 2009 where armed intelligence agents were waiting to arrest him on the other side of the immigration line. Ahmad called his father, who dispatched armed guards to the airport, where they engaged in a Mexican stand-off with the MOIS goons until Ahmad abandoned his attempt to enter Iran and got on the next flight back to Dubai.

As Ahmad said in his initial interview with me in 1998, he represents 30 million young Iranians who are fed up with the violence and repression of this regime. That is why he was so dangerous then, and why he continued to be considered a threat to the regime today.

The regime was all the more determined to crush him after he reconciled with his father and joined his effort to reform the regime from within, an effort that is rejected by many Iranian opposition activists who believe that reform is impossible.

For those who think the Iranian regime is a government like any other, contemplate this: On the eve of a planned trip to Washington, DC in April 2010, where he was scheduled to brief Congressional staff on political developments inside Iran, Ahmad was brutally attacked and beaten almost to death by Armenian gang members while playing pick-up basketball at a 24-hour gym in Glendale, CA.

Although the police treated it as gang-related activity, his father phoned him from Tehran and warned him to stay away from public places, convinced that the attack on his son was the work of regime agents.

Mysterious death

Many questions remain surrounding Ahmad’s death.

-      Who were the two Quds force goons who apparently shadowed him back from Tehran?

-      When exactly was he murdered, and how? Some sources say he was drugged and suffocated three days before he was found; others say he was electrocuted.

-      What was he doing in the Gloria Hotel to begin with, when his family maintained a residence in Dubai where he normally stayed when visiting there?

-      What action has the U.S. government taken to ensure that the murder of an American citizen is properly investigated by the Dubai authorities?

Ahmad’s widow asked me what she should say to their seven-year old daughter. Here is what I told her: “Tell her that her dad was a hero, and that he was killed because he wanted people in Iran to enjoy the same freedoms that you enjoy here in America.”

 

 

 

 

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Authorities prolong case of detained lawyer

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

RadioZamaneh

Tue, 11/15/2011
Abdolfattah Soltani

The wife of detained human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani says the prolonged detention of her husband under unknown conditions is “immoral and illegal.”

Massoumeh Dehghan told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that Iranian authorities have so far refused to process Soltani’s case. She said her husband has been told by authorities that it is simply taking them a long time to review his file.

Soltani is a prominent Iranian lawyer who has defended several human rights cases, including those of Akbar Ganji, Haleh Esfandiaria and Zahra Kazemi.

He had been previously arrested after the controversial 2009 elections and was released on bail after 70 days.

In the aftermath of the 2009 election protests, several human rights lawyers have been arrested and persecuted by the Islamic Republic authorities. The establishment claims that human rights organizations are being used to wage a “soft war” against the regime.

 

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Death Toll Rises To 27 In Iran Military Base Blast

Saturday, November 12th, 2011

RFE/RL

11/12/2011

Iranian state television quotes a spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as saying the death toll from an explosion at an Iranian military base today has risen to 27 people. 

The explosion ocurred at an ammunition depot on the base in Bid Ganeh, near the town of Malard on the western outskirts of Tehran.

All the casualties were said to be IRGC members.

At least 16 people were also reported wounded in the blast.

There were no reports linking the blast to any air strike or other attack, and authorities were said to be treating the blast as an accident.

On October 12, 2010, a similar blast at an IRGC munitions store in Khoramabad in western Irankilled and wounded several servicemen.

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Human Rights Organization Documents Cases of Injured Protesters Being Beaten by Security Agents in Hospitals

Monday, October 24th, 2011

10/24/2011

(New York) — The Syrian government has turned hospitals into instruments of repression in its efforts to crush opposition, Amnesty International said today in a new report that documents the torture of injured patients and of medical professionals suspected of treating wounded protesters.

Afraid of the consequences of going to a government hospital, many people have chosen to seek treatment either at private hospitals or at poorly equipped makeshift field hospitals.

Doctors at the National Hospital in Homs told Amnesty International that the number of admissions for firearms wounds has dropped significantly since May, in contrast to the spiralling toll of deaths and injuries on the streets outside as a result of the uprising.

The 39-page report, “Health Crisis: Syrian Government Targets the Wounded and Health Workers,” documents how wounded patients in at least four government-run hospitals have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including by medical workers.

Hospital workers suspected of treating protesters and others injured in unrest-related incidents have themselves faced arrest and torture.

“It is deeply alarming that the Syrian authorities seem to have given the security forces a free rein in hospitals, and that in many cases hospital staff appear to have taken part in torture and ill treatment of the very people they are supposed to care for,” said Cilina Nasser, Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa researcher.

“Given the scale and seriousness of the injuries being sustained by people across the country, it is disturbing to find that many consider it safer to risk not having major wounds treated rather than going to proper medical facilities.”

Amnesty International found that patients have been assaulted by medical staff, health workers and security personnel in  national hospitals in Banias, Homs and Tell Kalakh and the military hospital in Homs.

The organization’s researchers interviewed 40 people for the report, including 30 people who witnessed the events described firsthand.

One doctor at Homs military hospital told Amnesty International he had seen four doctors and more than 20 nurses abusing patients.

”Ahmed” was delivered unconscious to the National Hospital in Tell Kalakh on August 22 after being beaten by security forces. A witness saw him in the emergency room:

“There were around seven or eight security men, some carrying rifles, and nurses wearing white robes crowded around him. He opened his eyes and said: ‘Where am I?’ They all suddenly jumped on him and started beating him and hitting him.”

Patients have also been removed from hospitals. On September 7, security forces looking for an alleged armed field commander opposed to the government raided al-Birr wa al-Khadamat Hospital in Homs. When they did not find him, they arrested 18 wounded people.

A health worker present during the raid told Amnesty International he saw at least one unconscious patient having his ventilator removed before he was taken away.

Because  blood supplies in Syria can only be obtained from the Central Blood Bank, which is controlled by the Defense Ministry, private hospitals are faced with a terrible dilemma. One medic who had worked a private hospital in Homs told Amnesty International:

“We faced a dilemma every time we received a patient with a firearm injury and an urgent need of blood: if we send a request to the Central Blood Bank, the security would know about him and we would be putting him at risk or arrest and torture, and possibly death in custody.”

Medical workers have themselves been targeted by security forces, some for treating injured people, others on suspicion of attending demonstrations or filming protesters.

On August 7, around 20 soldiers and security forces raided a government hospital in Homs governorate, arresting seven hospital workers. One of the group told Amnesty International about his interrogation, during which some of his colleagues were badly beaten:

“[The interrogator] asked: ‘Do you want to be tortured or do you want to talk?’ … He accused me and my colleagues of treating the wounded without reporting them to the authorities, and asked me for the names of the wounded.”

Amnesty International called on the Syrian authorities to give strict and clear instructions to all hospitals to accept and treat all wounded patients without delay, and to prioritize the needs of patients over all else..

“Syrian medical workers are being placed in an impossible situation – forced to choose between treating wounded people and preserving their own safety,” said Nasser.

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 2.8 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
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For more information, please visit: www.amnestyusa.org.

 

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Roses In Evin Prison

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

The U.S. hiker recently freed from Evin Prison in Iran, Sarah Shourd, stated in an editorial on CNN that while she was in prison, she was treated with respect and that her captors showed compassion and understanding. She recalls how a guard brought her homegrown roses twice a week and how the guard consoled her and told her that everything was going to be okay.

She then continues on about the need for improved relations between America and the current regime of Iran, blaming her 410 days of confinement on the lack of such relations. She then states “I hope our leaders find the courage to begin to break from our nations’ hostile past, just as the prison guard who brought me flowers was able to see past my nationality and recognize our common humanity.”

It is very disturbing to hear Sarah talk about her captors with such passion and with such a lack of understanding of the Islamic government of Iran.  She should know that her reckless actions, along with her companions, to hike in a region filled with instability and hostility, first shows a lack of understanding of the geopolitics of the area and then she compounds this mistake by playing right into the hand of the Iranian Islamic regime’s game plan of hostage taking and bargaining with America.

Since its inception, the Islamic regime has masterfully played this game by taking hostages and then bargaining for better terms with the West, sometimes with deadly consequences. Some of the hostages were tortured and killed, including William Buckley, the CIA officer in Beirut, and others who have gone missing not to be heard of again — like Robert Levinson, the private detective and former FBI agent, who went missing while visiting Iran’s Kish Island.

During the last uprising in Iran, the world got to witness the brutality of the Islamic regime in Iran. One would expect that Sarah might have at least heard about it or one might expect that she would do a little research into human rights violations in Iran before talking so passionately about the radicals in Iran.

The roses given to her by her guard were grown in the blood of Iranian sons and daughters, who have been raped, tortured in unimaginable ways and then executed en masse in the same prison.

There is not a day that students, teachers, writers and others are not arrested by the Guards and agents of the Intelligence Ministry and taken to Evin Prison or other prisons around the country because they have spoken out against injustice and the brutal ways of the Islamic regime.

There is not a day when political prisoners are not dragged towards the noose to be hanged because they desired freedom and democracy over a Thugocracy. The regime has even gone as far as arresting the fathers and mothers of those arrested because they have objected to the treatment of their loved ones.

Sarah should be ashamed of herself. She has no right to speak for the people of Iran who are paying with their blood to free themselves from this evil regime. She should be ashamed that she is providing the kind of propaganda that the Islamic regime desires, which is to fool the people of the world about their true intentions.

Sarah should know that the roses given to her not only had the blood of tens of thousands of sons and daughters of Iran brutally killed by the regime, but also had the blood of hundreds of our heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting at the frontlines to protect freedom and democracy, and to defeat radicalism, injustice and inhumanity.

Sarah’s desperation for the freedom of her fiancé, Shane Bauer, has perhaps affected her judgment, but she should know that no matter what she does or says, the Islamic Regime in Iran will do what it wants using the other two hikers as bargaining chips for as long as they see fit.

The lesson is: One should never sidestep their principles of humanity and dignity; for bitter truth is always better than a sweet lie!

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Letter from an Iranian Torture Chamber

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
You need to read this to understand why what Ahmadinejad claims as Iranians being free in Iran is nothing but a lie. It is a shame that criminals like him are given status as a dignitary in the U.S. and allowed a platform to expand on his propaganda.

It is a shame that Yale students attend a private meeting with a dictator who does not provide any rights to the students in Iran, where any objection to his rule is met with an iron fist.

It is a shame that many leaders and representatives of anti-war, labor and media rushed to a private meeting with Ahmadinejad, turning their backs on every principle of humanity and buying into the lies of a dictator, who not only has the blood on his hands of thousands of innocent boys and girls in Iran, but also our sons and daughters who are fighting for democracy and freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan. History will remember those as the true defenders of freedom and those leaders and representatives who indulged Ahmadinejad as betrayers of humanity.

This is the Iran where Ahmadinejad and the clerics rule and this is what they do:

What You Might Not Learn from an Iranian President at Yale

In 1981, I met a young woman who spent almost a year of her life in Iran’s Evin Prison, the infamous torture chamber where political prisoners are held. I was relieved she was free but felt helpless knowing this teenage girl spent a year in suffering and was now broken, mentally and physically. Shortly after we met, she sent me a letter. My heartbreak returns every time I read it and relive the pain and anguish I first experienced after I received the letter all those years ago.

Today, after 30 years, that damned prison remains open. Prisoners there live — and die — as no human deserves to.

Her letter symbolizes the struggles experienced by an entire nation in its quest of having a free country. She wrote:

Reza Khan,

…While I was in the prison, I wished many times that I could be free, that I could get out and forget about what happened in there. But now that I am out, I wish I were one of those girls who were lucky enough to go in front of the firing squad. They took everything from me in that prison. I have nothing left.

…When I was released from prison, I rushed home to see my mother, but she wasn’t there. She had a stroke a few months after I was arrested. I did not know I could cause so much agony and grief. I feel as though I killed her. Every day I blame myself for the pain I brought her. I prayed to God to let me see her one more time when I was in the prison. I asked God to send me home to her and let me put my head on her shoulder and cry, to ask for forgiveness. She was the only one I had. Now there was nobody to tell what happened to me. I had nobody to cry to. My mom was not there to hug me and tell me that it’s okay – it’s not your fault, Roya, it’s not your fault to have a binamoos touch your body, private and sacred, which God forbids a namahram to see. She was not there to tell me – it’s not your fault that they whipped you every day, beat your bare feet with cables. I could not tell her that I bled so hard that I would faint, never knowing what they did to my unconscious body.

When I was in solitary confinement, these filthy, evil men would come to my cell — every time a different rotten, dirty, nasty guard. Not even animals would do what they did to me. I am embarrassed even to say what they did. They raped me, but it was more than rape. They said the most disgusting things to me. When they were through, they kicked me in the back as hard as they could, threw me down next to the toilet, and told me, “You piece of shit do your namaz now.” Reza Khan, I am a Muslim. I believe in God, and my faith kept me alive in there. I did my namaz every single day, but these shameless people, worship Satan, not God.

…There are thousands of innocent young girls being held in there. When I was finally released from solitary, they took me to a small cell, a cell designed for just a few, but which held more than thirty women. I had no complaints about being squashed in with these women. Seeing their tormented bodies and minds gave me the strength and the feeling that I was not alone.

Every few days they would call out names over the loudspeaker. We knew what that meant, and we would gather together, hold each other’s hands, and pray that they would not call our names. But always at least one or two from our cell would have to go in front of the firing squad. We could hear the sound of the screams, the pleas for forgiveness, and then the gunshots filling the air.

They would line up the rest of us and make us hold one leg up for a long time. If you got tired, they would lash you on the tired leg and make you stand on it. All of us were crying. Some would faint from the pain and bleeding…

This was the routine.

…One day they released me. Even thinking about it gives me shivers.

A mullah who was in charge of guiding the prisoners to the Islamic path, became fond of me. In the third meeting I had with him, he told me of his interest in me and said that he would arrange my freedom if I agreed to become sigheh to him. I don’t think I gave much thought to it. Being free was enough reason for me to make a bad decision. I made that decision not understanding that I had to give myself to another demented person; not understanding that I was committing myself to more torture and mental anguish by accepting the sigheh, by being temporarily married to a man who already had a wife or two.

For a few months, there was no physical pain, no beatings, no lashings, and no breaking bones. But I was disgusted with myself, of betraying myself, selling my pride to a mullah in return for my freedom. Was it really freedom? I did not know at the time. I did not know the heavy price I had to pay to get back to my life. The only life I knew.

Nothing is the same; it won’t be the same for anybody that has been in that damned prison.

…I can’t live like this anymore. You are habs, a prisoner, forever. This is what’s happening to every prisoner in there…

Roya

Roya had hanged herself shortly after mailing the letter.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons. A Time to Betray, his book about his double life as a CIA agent in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was published by Simon & Schuster earlier this year.

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Let Us Never Forget 9/11

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

Let’s say a prayer today on the anniversary of 9/11 that God helps us to never witness such heinous act again; that He provides peace and comfort to the families of the 9/11 victims; and that He empowers us to defeat evil where human kind will be able to live peacefully side by side. God Bless the souls of 9/11 victims and all those who have paid with their blood to fight for freedom, democracy and justice.

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