Leaked surveillance footage from Evin prison showing appalling abuse of prisoners serves as a chilling reminder of the impunity granted to prison officials in Iran who subject those in their custody to torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, Amnesty International said today.
Iranian security forces resorted to unlawful use of force, including birdhsot, and mass arrests to ruthlessly crack down on predominately peaceful protests that have erupted in various locations across Iran in recent weeks, said Amnesty International. Activists, protesters and bystanders swept up in the wave of arrests, including, children have been subjected to enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment.
Iran’s security forces have deployed unlawful force, including by firing live ammunition and birdshot, to crush mostly peaceful protests taking place across the southern province of Khuzestan, Amnesty International said today. Video footage from the past week, coupled with consistent accounts from the ground, indicate security forces used deadly automatic weapons, shotguns with inherently indiscriminate ammunition, and tear gas to disperse protesters.
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - The image on the alleged Iranian intelligence operative's device was chilling: A graphic showing photos of two Iranian dissidents captured overseas. Next to them was a picture of a journalist U.S. prosecutors say he intended to kidnap and the caption "are you coming or should we come for you?"
The last decade has seen historic political upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa: a tsunami of popular uprisings that have brought down several dictators and led to momentous transformations in political consciousness, if not always to democratic outcomes. But the last decade has also seen a concomitant counter-revolutionary roll-back across the region: authoritarian regimes, entrenched elites, ruling classes, deep states, and reactionary forces have marshalled considerable resources to torpedo these movements from below.[1]
Fervent cries of “Death to America,” endless castigations of the “Great Satan” and frequent comparisons to dogs and pigs — Iran’s leaders rarely have a good word for the U.S. But there's one American who to this day is revered in the Islamic Republic, and who even has his own statue in this northwestern Iranian city: Howard C. Baskerville.
As expected, Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi won Iran’s presidential election in a heavily engineered contest that saw the lowest voter participation rate in presidential elections since the formation of the Islamic Republic. Considering Raisi’s lack of experience in foreign policy and economic affairs, both areas in which Iran faces formidable challenges, the success of his administration will depend to some extent on who he will pick for his cabinet.
Tehran, Iran – Iran’s President-elect Ebrahim Raisi has for the first time addressed his links with the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988 when he was deputy prosecutor of Tehran.
Responding to today’s announcement declaring Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s next president, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said: “That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran. In 2018, our organization documented how Ebrahim Raisi had been a member of the ‘death commission’ which forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity.
Not unlike the wives of Henry VIII, Iran’s presidents rarely have happy endings. The first was assassinated; the second, exiled; the third, now Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, survived; but the fourth, fifth, and sixth have been censured from public life. The same fate seems to await the outgoing seventh.
