Bazaar strike continues on its 12th day
Acording to National Council of Resistance’s report in the third week of protests in Tehran Bazaar, Farvardin shopping center, the most important market for gold and jewelry in Tehran and other cities, was closed and on all out strike on Saturday morning July 17. Further, the bazaar near Sabz-e Meidan Square was also half-closed. Carpet sellers in Rahimia Bazaar, most of whom are sellers of carpets for export, were on complete strike. The shops in Akbarieh, Vazir, Park, Mojtabaii, Yameen and Azad passages were also on full strike. NCRI added: on Friday, despite weekend holiday where shops are closed, the clerical regime, fearful of solidarity of the populous with the Bazaar strike, stationed thirty-five vehicles of suppressive State Security Force and intelligence forces in Sabz-e-Maidan Square. State Security Forces also patrolled the whole Bazaar.
Appeal court orders review of Iranian group’s terrorist designation
US medias reported that a federal appeals court for the District of Columbia Saturday ordered the US State Department to review the designation of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) as a foreign terrorist group. The decision, issued by a three-judge panel, is a foreign policy setback for the administration of President Barack Obama, who currently has a number of groups to add to the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The PMOI, also known as the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq) has appealed the U.S. decision for years to take it off from the blacklist of the State Department. It maintains that it was listed in 1997 by former President Bill Clinton’s administration to curry favor with the Iranian government, which considers the PMOI a threat. In its ruling, the court indicates that the State Department violated due process protections of the group because it did not give it the opportunity to challenge non-confidential information used to justify the listing. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in January 2009 reinstated the listing, in what was one of her last decisions in office.
The group has argued that it ceased its military campaign against the Iranian regime in 2001, voluntarily surrendered its weapons to U.S. forces in 2003, providing a wealth of information to U.S. intelligence services on the Iranian regime’s nuclear program. It has also convinced the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) to remove it from the list of terrorist organizations. The State Department, meanwhile, said it has received the order of the court and will study it 'carefully.' However, it stressed that the court has left in force the designation of the PMOI as a foreign terrorist organization until the State Department completes its review. 'The U.S. government still sees MEK as a terrorist organization,' it said in a statement.On the same not Mrs Maryam Rajavi the president elect of the Iranian resistance said yesterday that the time has come for the US government to respect the rule of law and justice and should acknowledge the removal of the PMOI from the terror list. She stipulated that the time has come that the West to respect the will of the Iranian people to overthrow the clerical rule.
Tens members of the Iranian regime military forces were killed or injured in the blast in Zahedan Iran
According to Reuters at least 21 people, including members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, were killed and 100 wounded in suicide attack at a Shi’ite mosque in the southeast Iranian city of Zahedan on Thursday, Iranian media reported. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the two suicide bombings in front of Zahedan’s Grand Mosque, although a lawmaker said he believed the Sunni rebel group Jundollah was behind the attack. Iran’s deputy Interior Minister said ’a number of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were killed and injured,’ the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan one of poorest provinces in Iran. The rate of self suicide among girls and young women is the highest in the country. Recently the Iranian regime executed a man called Riggi who was know to be the head of “Jundollah” that attacks on the Iranian regime’s military forces in Sistan-Baluchestn.
