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Two men were hanged in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, the state-run daily Tehran Emrouz reported on Thursday.The two men were identified only by their first names Ali and Reza.They were hanged inside the prison on Wednesday, the report said, adding they were charged with drug trafficking.

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Two men and a woman were flogged by authorities in the town of Ashkaneh, north-eastern Iran, state media reported on Monday.The three unnamed individuals were accused of “moral corruption”, the state-run news agency ISNA said, adding that all three were given 100 lashes.Both men were lashed in a town square in public, a local prosecutor was quoted as saying, while the woman was lashed in a different location.Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, adultery by a married woman is punishable by flogging and stoning. The law is very specific about the manner of execution and types of stones which should be used. Article 102 states that men will be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones”.

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Reuters reported that the Iranian police have launched a crackdown on women's dress before the summer season when soaring temperatures typically tempt many to flout the strict Islamic dress code, witnesses and Iranian state media said on Sunday.Such crackdowns have become a regular feature of Iranian life in the summer as police confront growing numbers of young women testing the limits of the law with shorter, brighter and skimpier clothing.Under Iran's Islamic Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures and protect their modesty.Violators can receive lashes, fines or imprisonment."Police have started from Saturday to confront those women who appear in public in an inappropriate way," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Mehdi Ahmadi, a spokesman of the capital's police force, as saying.Many young women, particularly in wealthier urban areas, shun the traditional head-to-toe black chador, wearing calf-length Capri pants, tight-fitting, thigh-length coats and brightly colored scarves pushed back to expose plenty of hair.The Islamic dress code is less commonly challenged in poor suburbs and rural regions.Police in Iran's capital, Tehran, have so far stopped more than 1,300 women and warned them against breaching the dress code, Ahmadi said, adding "the cases of 59 women have been referred to the court."The fate of women who police decide are "badly veiled" depends on the officers concerned. They may be released with a caution, or taken to a police station and freed on bail, said the Kargozaran daily."Those women who resist the guidance of police may be detained," it quoted a senior police official as saying.

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Three men were hanged in public at dawn on Saturday in southern Iran, the state-run news agency ISNA reported. Einollah G., Abdolrahman N., and Abol-Hassan Sh. - aged 55, 33, and 38 respectively - were hanged in the port city of Bandar Abbas. They were accused of drug trafficking. Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on bogus charges such as armed robbery and drug smuggling.

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Authorities hanged a man in the volatile province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan, south-eastern Iran, a semi-official daily reported.Ghader Radsar was hanged in a prison in the provincial capital of Zahedan on Thursday, the hard-line daily Kayhan wrote on Saturday.Radsar had been charged with illegal drug possession, the report said.Sistan-va-Baluchistan Province is home to Baluchis, a predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic minority. Iran has witnessed escalating unrest since 2006 in areas populated by Baluchis, who complain of discriminatory and repressive policies by the theocratic regime.Since 2006, Iranian authorities have stepped up executions in the restive province in what many Baluchis believe is a response to a spate of attacks by dissidents on government and security officials.

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A member of Iran’s para-military Bassij force was killed on Sat. according to the semi-official daily Kayhan.Kayhan said that the Bassij agent, identified as Gholam-Reza Zabouni, was killed during a shootout with “armed robbers” in the Iranian capital.The Bassij, affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), are Islamist vigilantes loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In 2005, following hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rise to the presidency, they were given powers to act as the country’s back-up police force.Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on bogus charges, such as armed robbery and drug smuggling.


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Reuters reported: the Iranian regime has begun producing nuclear fuel in its underground uranium enrichment plant, a confidential U.N. atomic watchdog document said on Wednesday, ratcheting up its defiance of the United Nations. The paper, obtained by Reuters, also said Tehran had started up more than 1,300 centrifuge machines, divided into eight cascades, or networks, in the Natanz complex, in an accelerating campaign to lay a basis for "industrial scale" enrichment. Tehran says it seeks only nuclear-generated electricity. But its past concealment of sensitive enrichment research from the International Atomic Energy Agency and continued stonewalling of IAEA inquiries have shaken confidence in its intentions. IAEA ‘s document said, inspectors conducted a "design information verification" at the plant on April 15-16 and were informed that eight cascades -- 1,312 centrifuges in all -- were running and "some" uranium was being fed into them.The three-paragraph note by IAEA deputy director Olli Heinonen also said Iran had stopped letting inspectors verify design work at the Arak heavy water reactor, under construction and due for start-up in 2009. Centrifuges spin at supersonic speed to produce fuel for power plants or, if enriched to high levels, warheads. The United Nations Security Council has passed two sanctions resolutions on Iran since December, targeting its nuclear and military sectors and severely impeding its financial transactions with the outside world.

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A senior Iranian prison official has been appointed the warden of Iran’s most notorious prison, Evin. Farjollah Sedaqat took over official duties at Evin Prison in Tehran on Monday, the state-run news agency ILNA reported.Sedaqat was previously the chief of judicial affairs at the Office of Prisons in Tehran Province. His previous titles include warden of Qasr, Qezel-Hesar, and Fardis prisons. Evin Prison was built by the Shah’s regime as a maximum security prison to house political dissidents, after the revolution it became the Islamic Republic’s most dreaded gulag and the site of thousands of political executions. Evin is the same prison where Zahra Kazemi was brutally tortured and raped.

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The head of the teachers union in Iran has been arrested for his role in union protests that have brought schools and universities to a standstill in recent weeks in several Iranian provinces. Ali-Akbar Baghani was arrested by plainclothes security agents at 9.30 am on Monday as he was teaching in Tehran, state-run news agencies reported. The arrest came as a shock to pupils in the class who were in the middle of an exam. The arrest took place without prior coordination with the school principal. There has been a surge in anti-government teachers demonstrations in Iran over the past few weeks, mostly in protest to low salaries. Some sources in Tehran have claimed that up to 1,000 teachers have been arrested in the course of the protests.

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A man was hanged in public in the south-eastern Iranian city of Kerman, state media reported on Thursday. The man was identified as Ramezan Ebrahimi. He was accused of taking part in armed clashes with state security forces.

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Associated Press reported the Iranian regime announced Monday that it has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges, defiantly expanding a nuclear program that has drawn U.N. sanctions and condemnation from the West. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony at the enrichment facility at Natanz that Iran was now capable of enriching nuclear fuel "on an industrial scale." Asked if Iran has begun injecting uranium gas into 3,000 centrifuges for enrichment, top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani replied, "Yes." He did not elaborate, but it was the first confirmation that Iran had installed the larger set of centrifuges after months of saying it intends to do so. Until now, Iran was only known to have 328 centrifuges operating. Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. nuclear watchdog group "don't believe Iran's assurances that their (nuclear) program is peaceful in nature." "Iran continues to defy the international community and further isolate itself by expanding its nuclear program, rather than suspending uranium enrichment," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. The United Nations has vowed to ratchet up sanctions as long as Iran refuses to suspend enrichment. The Security Council first imposed limited sanctions in December, then increased them slightly last month and has set a new deadline of late May.

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At least 30 people were killed and 14 others injured when a truck slammed into a passenger bus on a highway between the western Iranian cities of Ilam and Kermanshah on Sunday.Seventeen of those killed in the accident were men and 13 were women, a report in the state-run news agency Fars said on Monday, raising the original death toll of 26 that was announced on state television last night.Iran's highways are considered to be among the most dangerous in the world, with some 100,000 road-accident deaths occurring in the last five years, the equivalent of three deaths an hour.

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Tehran, Iran, Apr. 10 – A radical Islamist with a dark and chequered past has been appointed Iran’s defence attaché in the Balkans, the state-run daily Etemaad Meli reported on Monday.Hossein Allahkaram, a brigadier general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, will serve as defence attaché in the Balkans for four years, the daily quoted an “informed source” as saying.Allahkaram is the leader and one of the founders of Ansar-e Hezbollah, a paramilitary force that acts as the clerical regime’s storm troopers to put down anti-government demonstrations and instil terror in members of the public. Iranian officials have conceded in the past that the group has been organized and led by close confidants of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, such as Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati.In a revealing account of his years as a member of the leadership council of Ansar-e Hezbollah, defector Amir Farshad Ebrahimi wrote that Allahkaram had been given the go-ahead by the Supreme Leader himself in a meeting in autumn 1992 to form an Iranian version of the Lebanese group Hezbollah.In September 2005, Allahkaram announced his support for suicide operations against the West. “At a time when the American government insists on the existence of a ‘military option’ against Iran, one cannot be opposed to martyrdom-seeking operations”, he told Baztab, a Persian-language website run by former top Revolutionary Guards commanders.

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The eight sailors and seven marines who were detained by Iranian Revolutionary Guards on March 23 were released and arrived on London on Thursday. On arrival at London’s Heathrow Airport, they were taken by helicopter to a Royal Marine base Chivenor in Devon, where they were reunited with their families and underwent a debriefing and decompression. Tony Blair said that his government did not make a deal with the Iranian regime over the release of the 15 marines. He added his government was not deceived by the Iranian regime and its political games.

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CNN reported from Iraq on Friday April. 6 that an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq, despite being considered terrorists by the United States, continues to receive protection from the American military in the face of Iraqi pressure to leave the country.It's a paradox possible only because the United States considers the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, a source of valuable intelligence on Iran. The group is credited with helping expose Iran's secret nuclear program through spying on Tehran for decades. And the group is considered an ally to America because of its opposition to Tehran.However, the U.S. State Department officially considers the MEK a terrorist organization - meaning no American can deal with it; U.S. banks must freeze its assets; and any American giving support to its members is committing a crime.The U.S. military, though, regularly escorts MEK supply runs between Baghdad and its base, Camp Ashraf. "The trips for procurement of logistical needs also take place under the control and protection of the MPs," said Mojgan Parsaii, vice president of MEK and leader of Camp Ashraf.That's because, according to U.S. documents, coalition forces regard MEK as protected people under the Geneva Conventions."The coalition remains deeply committed to the security and rights of the protected people of Ashraf," U.S. Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner wrote in March 2006.The group also enjoys the protection of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "The ICRC has made clear that the residents of Camp Ashraf must not be deported, expelled or repatriated," according to an ICRC letter.Despite repeated requests, neither Iran's ambassador in Baghdad nor the U.S. military would comment on MEK, also known as Mojahedin Khalq Organization, or MKO.But former U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said, "What we have here is a policy that described the people here from the MEK as a protected group, and one of our coalition partner countries is actually protecting them in the camp where they mostly are, but there is no change in our policy, we still regard them as a terrorist organization."When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Green Berets arrived at Camp Ashraf to find gardens and monuments there, along with more than 2,000 well-maintained tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and vehicles.All 3,800 camp residents were questioned by Americans -- including, interestingly, a female tank battalion. No arrests were made, and the camp quickly surrendered under a cease-fire agreement -- an agreement that also guaranteed its safety."Everyone's entry to the camp and his departure are controlled by the U.S. military police force," Parsaii said.

Happy Sizde Be dar

In Iranian tradition, “sizdah be dar” is the custom of leaving the house for public celebrations on the thirteenth (sizdah) day of the month of Farvardin (corresponding to April 2), the last day of the Norouz (Iranian New Year) period.

This is the last phase of the New Year's celebrations which begins with the Fire Festival of Chaharshanbe Suri. In modern times people go to parks, have a picnic and throw their sabzeh – the seeds they grow near the beginning of Norooz - into a river, symbolizing the cycle of life. Some girls also tie the sprouts of sabzeh on this day, symbolizing their wish for good fortune in life and love. Some people also pull practical jokes and tell white lies on this day, calling it the thirteenth lie (this is very similar to April Fools). People will also release goldfish into a pond or river.