Sunday, October 14, 2007

NEWS))))))

A Christian couples were flogged in Iran for participating in an “underground Church”, an Iranian Christian group said in a report on its website earlier this week.The unnamed couples were arrested on September 21, 2005, the report said, adding that a Revolutionary Court reviewed their case in July 2007.Even though the couples had decided to marry seven years ago, the country’s marriage laws - which prohibit the union of ex-Muslims and members of other religious minorities – prevented them from obtaining a marriage certification.The report said that the woman was born a Christian in an Assyrian-Iranian family and the man was a convert to Christianity prior to getting married.The court ruled that both the man and the woman were Mortad, a description of someone who has committed apostasy by leaving Islam.

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Two men were hanged in the province of Kurdistan, north-west Iran, earlier this week on the World Day Against the Death Penalty.The two men were identified as Kiumars and Nader Mohammadi, authorities announced on Friday.The two young men's families were told that they were buried in the cemetery of Behesht Mohammad in the city of Sanandaj, about 500 kilometers from the capital Tehran, the Italian news agency AKI said.The families were asked not to organize any public memorial to avoid these turning into anti-regime protests, the report added.

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Tehran, 11 Oct. (AKI) - Up to 400 Iranian Kurds who belong to the Sunni faith have reportedly been arrested in the last three days in Saghez and other cities of Kurdistan province in the country's north-west.Two religious leaders, the imam from the Khatam al-Anbia mosque, Seyyed Seifollah Hosseini, and the imam of the Hamza mosque, Seyyed Hassan Hosseini.All those arrested belong a Sunni religious group called Maktab Quran (The Way of the Koran), which disapproves of the presence of clerics in the government. The state religion in Iran is Shiite.In Saghez, which has the greatest number of Maktab Quran followers, a curfew was imposed for three days and all religious ceremonies organized for Ramadan were suspended.On Thursday morning a group of citizens gathered in front of the government building of Kermanshah, calling for the two religious leaders and all detainees to be released.

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A group of university student at the Iran’s top university in Tehran staged a noisy protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday shortly before he gave a speech there, Associated Press reported."Ahmadinejad is Pinochet! Iran will not become Chile," the students chanted, referring to the late dictator Augusto Pinochet, a witness said, adding that they were blocked from leaving the campus by anti-riot police.The demonstrators at Tehran University, Iran's top academic institution, were calling for the release of jailed students, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. Last December, a speech by Ahmadinejad at another university in Tehran was disrupted by demonstrators protesting against a crackdown on student activist in the university.


150 workers of weaving factory held protests for their postponed salaries
150 workers of weaving factory in Khoy (western Iranian city) held a gathering protest in front of the Governorship building to follow their postponed salaries and to determine their occupational condition.The protesting workers said: 'We haven’t received our salaries for three months. The workers’ occupational status is not defined yet and the workers face problem in meeting their daily expenses.


Political Prisoners were assailed in Gohardasht Prison in Tehran
According to reports from inside Iran obtained by the Iranian ressisstence, the officials of the Gohardasht prison in Karaj (west of Tehran), attacked the political prisoners who were on hunger strike and brutally beat them up.This criminal act took place on Wednesday Oct. 10, a few hours after they started their hunger strike along with other political prisoners in other prisons in Iran by the prison guards. The order of the attack was issued by Hassan Zare’ Dehnavi also called Judge Haddad who is in charge of political prisoners’ files, and it was carried out under supervision of prison manger, his deputies and head of the ward Mohammad Mughnian; the attack itself was led by Nasser Amanian.


3 were hanged in Taibad-Iran
The Iranian regime hanged three persons in Taibad Prison and sentenced two others to death in Tehran.The initials of those hanged in Taibad, northeast of Iran, were H-A, A-A and B-A. Two prisoners by the names of Ahmad and Mahmoud were sentenced to death in Tehran.


A Young Woman Condemned to Death in Iran
The Iranian state run daily Etmad reported the Iranian judiciary system is about to execute a young woman on Oct. 18. She is Fakhteh Samadi. She is 30 years old and has been in prison since 2001.


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October 10th was 'the Universal day of struggle against execution'. Iran is among the countries with the highest rate of executions. Hundreds of people have been executed on different charges since Ahmadinejad came to power.
To commemorate this day, tens of Iranian-Canadian gathered at the Human rights monument on Elgin st. in Ottawa yesterday afternoon (Sat. Oct 13) to stage a protest against executions of the Iranian people by the ruling regime in Iran. Although there was a call for rain the forecast but it did not discourage them from participating in the protest. They demanded to end the mass execution in Iran and also warned the western governments to stop the appeasing the Iranian regime. They chanting repeatedly that mass execution of Iranian people is a result of the appeasement policy.