NEWS))))))
On Jan. 19, Tehran's Plasco commercial building collapsed and tens of people including firefighters died due to fire. 17 story Plasco building was Iran's oldest high-rise and contained a shopping center with 600 shops and 400 clothing suppliers, came down after a four-hour blaze. Habib Elghanian was a prominent Iranian Jewish businessman who served as the president of the Tehran Jewish Society and acted as the symbolic head of the Iranian Jewish community in the 1970s. He was executed on Spring of 1979 by Sadegh Khalkhali with charges of Moharebeh (enemy of God) and contacts with Israel. He was the first Jew and businessman to be executed by the Iranian regime.
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According to reports prisoner Saeed Nohi of section 7 in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison died on Monday, January 16 due to lack of medical care.
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Amnesty International issued a report on January 18, criticizing "persistent use of cruel and inhuman punishments, including floggings, amputations and forced blinding over the past year" by the Iranian regime. The report includes examples of flogging and harassment of Iranian women.
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Two women were among at least 14 prisoners who were executed in the Central Prison of Karaj on January 14. The prisoners had been transferred to solitary confinement on January 8. The women have not been identified.
The Iranian regime hanged Shamseddin R in Kerman prison on Sunday, January 15 and Babak Asghari 37 on Thursday, January 12 in the central prison of Hamedan.
The Iranian regime collectively hanged 20 prisoners on Saturday, January 14 in the Gohardasht and Ghezelhesar prisons in the city of Karaj. The regime also hanged two prisoners in the central prison of Lakan in Rasht, and another one in the northern town of Sari.
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Agents of the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Corps arrested a number of women's rights activists in Tehran on Monday, January 16. The arrests are aimed at preventing their gatherings in Tehran to protest recent acid attacks on women. Two of those arrested have been reported to be Zahra Khandan, journalist and former student activist at Amir Kabir University, and Soha Mortezaii, also student activist. They were both arrested at their residences in Tehran.
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119 infants have been abandoned in the streets of Alborz Province- central Iran from March 2015 to December 2016, according to the figures announced by the Welfare Organization of Alborz Province. Daryoush Bayat-Nejad said: "Last year, the Welfare Organization of Alborz accepted 295 children, 77 of whom had been abandoned. Another 42 abandoned infants were accepted from March to December 2016." Poverty is the main reason many destitute women are forced to abandon or sell their newborns.
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According to IRNA state-run news agency Jan. 14, A law professor at Beheshti University told a gathering on the situation of women in Iran, "The Civil Code adopted in 1982 and reformed in 2002, set the age of marriage for girls at 13. We tried hard to leave the age of maturity out of the law, to no avail."
Hossein Mehrpour said, "In Article 16 of CEDAW, it has been reiterated that engaging children and wed them is considered illegal… Presently, in our country, according to the Civil Code and the Law of Islamic Punishment adopted in 2013, the age of maturity is 9 for girls and 15 for boys. We have arguments on this".
