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Iran set to sharply increase nuclear activities, UN says

According to France24, Nov. 16, Iranian regime is ready to sharply expand its uranium enrichment in an underground site after installing all the centrifuges it was built for, a U.N. nuclear report showed on Friday, a development likely to fuel Western alarm over Tehran’s nuclear aims.

Tehran has produced about 233 kg (512 pounds) of higher-grade enriched uranium since 2010, an increase of 43 kg since August this year, according to the report issued in Vienna.

 The IAEA report also said that “extensive activities” at the Parchin military compound - an allusion to suspected Iranian attempts to remove evidence - would seriously undermine an agency investigation into indications that research relevant to developing a nuclear explosive were conducted there.

45 executed in one day, November 13-Iran

According to National Council of Resistance Of Iran, the Iranian regime on Tuesday November 13, hanged 35 inmates at the notorious Vakilabad prison in Mashhad collectively. Four of them, including two youths aged 21 and 26, were from Afghanistan.
On the same day, at least 8 prisoners in Karaj Gohardasht prison, one prisoner in Esfahan Central prison, and one prisoner in Neyriz, Fars Province, were hanged. The number of executions on Tuesday alone reached 45.
On Wednesday November 14, three prisoners were executed in public in Arak and another execution in Islamshahr.
Two days ago a prisoner was hanged in Ardebil. He was among 40 prisoners who, according to Ardebil’s criminal prosecutor, were sentenced to death who 'soon' would be executed.
Thus, since October 22nd, 96 prisoners have been executed, which is three times higher than the same period last year.
The number of executions since the beginning of the year is at least 440. Killing political prisoners under torture including Sattar Beheshti and Jamil Soveidi in recent days, and secret execution and annihilation of political prisoners, are part of the regime’s report card full of crimes in recent weeks and months according to NCRI.

Iranian human rights lawyer in fourth week of hunger strike

The Toronto Star wrote on Nov. 15 that Nasrin Sotoudeh’s awards would cover a wall. But 49-year-old Iranian human rights defender has no walls on which to hang them. The slight, dark-haired lawyer is locked in a grim solitary confinement cell in Tehran’s Evin prison, where she is sentenced to six years on charges of threatening national security and spreading anti-government propaganda. She is entering the fourth week of a hunger strike that her family fears she will not survive. Sotoudeh’s latest honour, awarded last month, was the European Union’s prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought — previously won by Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi. European leaders expressed outrage at her confinement, and called on Iran to urgently review her case.
For months Iran’s ministry of intelligence, which runs the prison, refused Sotoudeh family visits, and she was kept in isolation in the same jail where some of the people she defended are held. After authorities discovered she was using a tissue to write her defence for an upcoming court hearing, she was only allowed to see her children from behind a glass barrier.
 “The Iranian authorities have imposed a travel ban on her daughter and on one occasion held her husband overnight in prison for peaceful advocacy on her behalf,” said Amnesty International. “This is a shocking example of the lengths to which Iran will go to suppress criticism of their policies and practices.”
A well-known women’s and children’s rights activist, Sotoudeh campaigned against the death sentence for minors, and Iran raised the age of execution to 18.

In 2011, Sotoudeh was sentenced to five years in prison for “violating the Islamic dress code” when she appeared without a head scarf years earlier during a filmed acceptance speech for a 2008 human rights prize.
She was later given a six-year sentence on the more serious political charges, but the total term was cut to six years, with a 10-year ban from practising law in Iran.

Toronto Star added that Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died under torture in Evin prison in 2003, and two men from Canada — Saeed Malekpour and Hamid Ghassemi-Shall — are under execution orders. Sattar Beheshti, a 35-year-old blogger and government critic, died under interrogation last week.