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Thousands of teachers took to the streets outside the Iranian Majlis, (Parliament) on Saturday in an anti-government protest despite preventative measures by state security forces.The protestors complained of rampant corruption and mismanagement in the Education Ministry and demanded their overdue salaries.The demonstrators, some of whom held Farsi and English banners, chanted slogans including, “Oh teachers rise to end discrimination”, “If our troubles are not resolved, schools will be shut down”, and “We will not stay calm until we get our rights”.They also called for the resignation of Iran’s Education Minister, chanting, “Incompetent minister, resign, resign”.At one point the teachers began to chant “Come out Haddad, come out”, referring to Majlis Speaker Gholam-Hossein Haddad-Adel who has been accused of turning a blind eye to economic mismanagement by the hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Minutes after the protest demonstration, a large number of agents of the state security forces swarmed around the Majlis building and prevented people in the vicinity from joining the protestors.

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A man in his twenties was hanged in public in the holy Iranian city of Qom, a semi-official daily reported on Tuesday.The man, identified as 26-year-old Mohammad Sadeghi, was hanged in a public square on Monday, the hard-line daily Jomhouri Islami wrote.Sadeghi was accused of kidnapping and rape.

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Iranian authorities have amputated the fingers of a man in his forties in public for stealing money, the official news agency IRNA said on Monday.The 46-year-old man, identified only as F. Hosseini, had four of the fingers on his right hand amputated in public in the western city of Kermanshah, according to Daniel Hoderji, an official in the judiciary.Hosseini was accused of mainly robbing safes.Iran’s Islamic penal system regularly practices centuries-old sentences for petty crimes, such as amputation of limbs, eye gouging, stoning to death, and throwing prisoners off a cliff in a sac.

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The Guardian reported on Friday that the Iranian students involved in an angry protest against the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been expelled and earmarked for compulsory military service in an apparent act of official retribution.Authorities at Tehran's Amir Kabir University, a traditional hotbed of student protest, have ended the studies of 54 students, ostensibly for repeatedly failing their exams. However, most of the students singled out are political activists who took part in December's demonstration at the university at which President Ahmadinejad was greeted with chants of "death to the dictator". Many students with equally poor academic records have been allowed to continue, activists said.The demonstration, which sparked violent clashes between protesters and Basij volunteers loyal to the president, was triggered by student anger over a campus clampdown by the government. One activist displayed a banner reading: "Fascist president, the polytechnic is not for you." Others held portraits of Mr Ahmadinejad upside down and set them alight. One student had his nose broken by a cabinet minister's aide and a member of Ahmadinejad's security team fired a stun grenade to disperse demonstrators.Several protesters later went into hiding fearing for their lives after being threatened by the president's supporters.The protest against Ahmadinejad was also related to moves to segregate female and male students, the closure of campus magazines and the demolition of buildings belonging to the students committee. Campus guards were also ordered to refuse admission to women wearing make-up and "too short" coats.

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The Associated Press reported Lawyers for an exiled Iranian resistance movement appealed to the European Union on Thursday, demanding the 27-nation bloc remove the Paris-based group from its blacklist of terror organizations.The People's Mujahadeen of Iran had won a legal battle in the EU's Court of Justice last year when the court annulled a 2002 decision to freeze all European assets of the group, known by the acronyms PMOI and MEK.It was the first time an appeal to the EU's terror list was successful at the EU court.However, the EU's Council of Ministers, which represents all 27 EU governments, has refused so far to remove the group from its list.EU governments had asked the group to submit a legal reply to the ruling to state why it should not be on the list. The ruling had said EU governments failed to give the group a fair hearing.A Jan. 30 meeting of EU finance ministers gave the group until March 1 "to present its views, together with any supporting documentation," to prove why it should be removed."There can be no question of the Council being able to maintain the PMOI on the list," said Mohammad Mohaddessin, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran — an umbrella group that includes the PMOI. Several European Parliament lawmakers and national lawmakers have backed the group's cause.The letter submitted to EU legal experts and seen by The Associated Press said that keeping the group on the list was "unlawful" following the EU court's decision. It argued that the decision to place the PMOI on the list was based "only on material available in March 2001, and not thereafter and cannot possibly be sufficient now to constitute a relevant decision" to keep the group listed and its assets frozen.The EU's legal team of experts at the Council has said it would study the reply before any final decision on the list, which includes groups and people like Osama bin Laden, Hamas and al-Qaida.The list is regularly reviewed, usually every six months.The legal counsel to the 27 EU governments, Jean-Claude Piris said in December that the judgment did not call into question the original decision that the Mujahadeen is a terrorist organization, but that the EU court annulled the decision because of procedure.The U.S. also lists the group as a terrorist organization.However, the PMOI, founded by students at Tehran University in the 1960s, insists it advocates the overthrow of Iran's hard-line clerical regime in Tehran by peaceful means.The list, set up after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, is done in secret by a special committee of security representatives from each member state.
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Canada imposed sanctions on Iranian regime on Tuesday in line with a United Nations Security Council resolution in December which ordered a blockade of the country’s suspected nuclear weapons program.“The Government of Canada has satisfied its obligations and is fully implementing Resolution 1737, which is intended to bring about the verifiable suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment program”, Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said in a statement.The Security Council voted unanimously in December in favour of Resolution 1737, imposing mild sanctions against Tehran for its nuclear defiance. It gave Tehran two months to suspend uranium enrichment and return to the negotiating table. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced last week that Tehran had failed to meet the deadline.“Canada believes that if Iran wishes to regain the confidence of the international community, as represented by the Security Council, it must earnestly submit to the requirements of Resolution 1737”, MacKay said.On February 22, the Governor-in-Council made new regulations under the United Nations Act: the Regulations Implementing the United Nations Resolution on Iran. Together with existing relevant provisions of the Canada Shipping Act, the Export and Import Permits Act and the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, these regulations will enable Canada to fully implement in Canadian law the sanctions mandated by Resolution 1737 of the Security Council, the statement said. The regulations impose an embargo on certain goods and services that could contribute to Iran’s activities linked to enrichment, reprocessing, heavy water or the development of nuclear weapons delivery systems. They also address an assets freeze and a travel notification requirement.