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Authorities hanged a man in public in the province of Golestan on Tuesday, northern Iran, state media reported. The man, identified as Nasser-Morad Qolipour, was hanged in the town of Gonbad-e Kavous, said the state broadcasting corporation IRIB in a report on its website.Qolipour had been convicted of killing an agent of Iran’s State Security Force (SSF) some two months ago.
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Iranian authorities hanged three men in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan on Monday, state media reported.The men were identified as Abdul-Aziz Ismaeil Zehi, Abdul-Jamal Shahbakhsh and Ali-Akbar Shahbakhsh. The official state broadcasting corporation IRIB said in a report on its website that the men were hanged earlier in the day in a prison in the provincial capital Zahedan.It said that they had been convicted of drug smuggling and taking part in armed attacks.Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on bogus charges such as armed robbery and drug trafficking.
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National Council of Resistance of Iran announced on Friday: “ In past two months, The SSF gave 977,000 street warnings and arrested 4,000 others on the bogus charges of “hooliganism” NCRI - Commander of the State Security Forces (SSF) in Tehran province, Brig. Gen. Reza Zarei presented some hair-raising statistics as outcome of the so-called “public security” plan so far. “4,000 individuals were arrested by the SSF on the charges of hooliganism… In Tehran province, 93,000 individuals received street warnings while 4,012 others including 2,891 women were summoned to the local police stations,” said Zarei to the state-run news agency Fars on Wednesday. Earlier, Deputy Commander of SSF, Brig. Gen. Hossein Zolfaqari announced, “Since the beginning of the public security plan, 977,000 individuals in Tehran have received street warnings and 4,209 of them were arrested… Some of them were detained in the SSF facilities and some other were sent for judicial review,” the state-run news agency ISNA reported on August 2. In the same period, the mullahs’ regime arrested 43,300 drug addicts. An increase in the number of street executions, before anything else, is to create public fear. It is also a sign of desperation on the part of the regime which is faced with uprisings, strikes, and demonstrations in its demise. The Iranian Resistance drew the attention of international bodies to the new wave of executions as well as a rise in suppression and the need for adopting urgent measures to stop the appalling trend in Iran.”
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According to Associated France Press the Iranian police said on Thursday they have arrested 20 young people in a raid at a party in the city of Karaj outside Tehran, the site of an illegal rock concert last week where 230 were detained. Police Colonel Majid Bazmun told the state IRNA news agency that police surrounded the building where the "decadent gathering" was taking place after acting on a tip-off from a member of the public. "All the people who attended the party were arrested by the police forces. The case will be handed over to the judiciary when the investigation has been completed," he added. The latest action comes a week after police arrested 230 people in a raid on a "Satan-worshipping" underground rock concert in Karaj, in one of the biggest such arrests in recent months. There has been no further information over the fate of those arrested at the rock concert. Iran is currently in the midst of one of its tightest moral crackdowns in years, which has already seen thousands of women warned by the police for dressing that is deemed to be un Islamic. Mixed-sex parties are strictly illegal in Iran. It is forbidden to consume alcohol in public or private and attend gatherings with improperly-clad members of the opposite sex. Dancing to Western music is also frowned upon. Iran's overall police chief Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghaddam said that the moral crackdown, dubbed the drive to "elevate security in society", would continue as it had proved popular with the public. "With respect to the evaluation of the police and people's satisfaction the plan to elevate security in society will be pursued with full force," he told the Mehr news agency. "The plan of elevating social security, which has been imposed in different phases, has made people feel more secure in society and increased people's confidence in the police," he added.
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A prominent press freedoms organization urged Iran to release a newly-arrested journalist.Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for the release of Soheil Assefi, a journalist who was arrested when he presented himself to a Tehran court on August 4th in response to a summons. "Neither his family nor his lawyers know where he is being held or what he is charged with. Officials from the prosecutor’s office searched his home on 31 July, taking personal documents and his computer’s hard disk", it said in a statement.“This situation is unacceptable”, RSF said. “He is the third journalist to be arrested in the space of [a] week. His detention brings to 11 the number of journalists and cyber-dissidents held in Iran, which is the Middle East’s biggest prison for the press. Iran must stop hounding journalists by bringing trumped-up charges against them”.On 31 July, journalists Masoud Bastani and Farshad Gorbanpour were arrested by authorities. Bastani was freed after several hours but Gorbanpour was transferred to security section 209 in Tehran’s Evin prison on the orders of Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, RSF said. The group also condemned the suspension earlier this week of the daily Shargh on the orders of the Commission for Media Authorization and Surveillance for publishing an interview with Saghi Ghahraman, a writer, poet and editor of the online exile newspaper Cheraq, in which she defended homosexuals. The commission is controlled by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
