Iran won’t pledge to release American captives as sign of goodwill

The Examiner - April 4, 2015 - As President Obama touted a tentative deal that would lift sanctions on Iran in return for reducing its number of nuclear facilities, left unmentioned were the American citizens currently held captive by the regime.
Saeed Abedini is an Idaho pastor who was sentenced to eight years for 'disturbing national security' after his work with churches in the country.

Ahwaz: anti-government slogans in Qadir Sport Stadium

Spectators at a football match in Qadir sport stadium in Ahwaz where the Foolad team of this city met Tehran’s Estghlal on Friday and ended in Ahwaz team wining shouted anti-government slogans. Security police and repressive agents of the state guard who were frightened the event would turn in to an anti-regime rally, raided the crowed arresting a number of spectators.

Bandar-Abbas: two prisoners put in the solitary before their death sentence is carried out

On Thursday, April 2nd, two prisoners in Bandar-Abbas prison, southern Iran, were moved to the quarantine to be executed soon. These two are scheduled to be hanged tomorrow, Sunday, inside the prison yard, according to an informed source.

Iran: A prisoner hanged in Zabol

NCRI – The Iranian regime’s henchman in the city of Zabol (southeastern Iran) secretly hanged a man on Saturday in the city’s main prison.

The victim identified as Amir Qaemi, was transferred to isolation last Wednesday to await his execution. He had been sentenced to death on drug related offences.

The execution in Zabol takes place after secret hanging of at least 12 inmates on Thursday (26 March 2015) in prisons in cities of Shiraz and Mashhad, according to a statement by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

A group of five prisoners were hanged in a prison in the city of Mashhad in northeast Iran while another six were collectively hanged in Pirnia Prison in the city of Shiraz in southern Iran. On the same day, another prisoner was also hanged in Adelabad Prison in the same city.

The growing number of executions, including many carried out in secret, are just trivial examples of the nationwide repression that continues to take place in Iran since Hassan Rouhani became president of the clerical regime.

The latest report on the death penalty by Amnesty International published on April 1 indicates that 607 recorded executions have been carried out in 22 countries around the world in 2014, a reduction of almost 22 percent compared to the previous year.

The reported executions were carried out in Iran more than any country in the world.

In Iran the authorities officially announced 289 executions, but hundreds more were carried out which were not officially acknowledged, Amnesty report said.

Iran is among the countries highlighted by Amnesty International as having used the death penalty "as a tool to suppress political dissent".

Mr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, reported on March 25 that some 1000 executions had been carried out during the past 15 months in Iran. Prior to that, on March 16, he told a news briefing in Geneva: "There is a lot of concern amongst the Iranian society that the nuclear file may be casting a shadow over the human rights discussion."

The U.N.'s special investigator added that the human rights situation and repression in Iran has worsened since Hassan Rouhani became president.

Iran: Mine workers sentenced to flogging and prison for protesting layoffs and low wages

NCRI - A so-called court in Iran sentenced five protesting mine workers to one year in prison and lashes for ‘disturbing public order’ during last year’s massive protests against layoffs.

Over the past two years over a thousand workers at Chadormalu iron ore mine, located in the central province of Yazd, held a series of gatherings and sit-ins protesting against layoffs and low wages.

Dozens of workers were either arrested or summoned to courts at the request of the employers. A group of 38 workers were arrested in February 2014 but released a few days later. Another group of 31 workers were summoned to a court last year. The recent court ruling was issued following members of this group of which five were sentenced to flogging and imprisonment for ‘disturbing pubic order’.

The employers at the mine company introduced the five workers as leaders of the protests and had demanded that they be dealt with harshly.

Another court in Iran sentenced four petrochemical workers last year to fifty lashes and six months in prison.

Iranian regime’s proxy groups in Iraq commit crimes in Tikrit

 

Horrific thing are happening in Iraqi city of Tikrit as Iraqi forces and armed groups affiliated to the Iranian regime have entered the city since it has been liberated from Daesh (ISIS).

Two Reuters correspondents witnessed the killing of a man by two officers who took out knives and repeatedly stabbed a man in the neck and slit his throat.

Since its recapture two days ago, the Sunni city of Tikrit has been the scene of violence and looting. In addition to the killings, Reuters correspondents also saw a convoy of Shi'ite paramilitary fighters drag a corpse through the streets behind their car.

Reuters reports that local officials said the mayhem continues. Two security officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday that dozens of homes had been torched in the city. They added that they had witnessed the looting of stores by Shi'ite militiamen.

On Friday, Ahmed al-Kraim, head of the Salahuddin Provincial Council, told Reuters that mobs had burned down "hundreds of houses" and looted shops over the past two days. Government security forces, he said, were afraid to confront the mobs. Kraim said he left the city late Friday afternoon because the situation was spinning out of control.

"Our city was burnt in front of our eyes. We can't control what is going on," Kraim said.

Shi'ite paramilitary fighters in pickup trucks raced through the city carrying goods that appeared to have been looted from homes and government offices.

The vehicles were crammed with refrigerators, air conditioners, computer printers, and furniture. A young militia fighter rode on a red bicycle, gleefully shouting: "I always dreamed of having a bike like this as a kid," Reuters reported.

On Wednesday, as Tikrit fell, militiamen were racing to stencil their names on houses in order to take credit for the victory.

An Iranian man, with a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder and a picture of the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei pinned to his chest, bragging about Tehran's role in the campaign.

"I am proud to participate in the battle to liberate Tikrit," said the man, who called himself Sheik Dawood. "Iran and Iraq are one state now."

Despite Baghdad's efforts to rein in the paramilitaries, the fingerprints of the Shi'ite militias – and of Iran itself – were all over the operation's final hours, the report added.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on March 30 he was concerned about abuses by Iraqi forces and paramilitary forces in their war against Islamic State and called for investigations into any wrongdoing.
Ban's remarks, made during a one-day visit to Iraq, amounted to the strongest warning to date by a world leader regarding the conduct of the Shi'ite paramilitaries.

Speaking alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, Ban called for the different "volunteer armed groups" -- a broad term referring to Shi'ite paramilitary factions -- to be brought under government control.

"I am ... concerned by allegations of summary killings, abductions and destruction of property perpetrated by forces and militias fighting alongside Iraqi armed forces," Ban said after meeting Iraqi officials.

"Alleged violations or abuses of human rights must be investigated and perpetrators need to be held to account."

"Civilians freed from the brutality of Daesh should not have to then fear their liberators," Ban said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

"One form of violence cannot replace another," he added, alluding to reports of abuse against ordinary Sunnis when their areas were freed from Islamic State.

A number of international organization had expressed concerns about Iranian-linked paramilitary groups committing war crimes in Iraq.

Amnesty International said in a report in last October that Shiite militias backed by the Iraqi army are committing war crimes against civilians and use the battle against ISIS as a pretext for carrying out "revenge" attacks on members of the Sunni community.

Amnesty International said: "The growing power of Shiite militias has contributed to an overall deterioration in security and an atmosphere of lawlessness," and called on the government of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to rein in the scores of militias targeting civilians across Iraq.

Amnesty said it had seen evidence of "scores" of "deliberate execution style killings" against Sunnis across Iraq as well as Sunni families having to pay tens of thousands of dollars to free abducted relatives.

Many of those kidnapped are still missing and some were killed even after their families paid hefty ransoms to secure their release, the group said in a report.

The ‘evil’ regime in Iran will be ‘vanquished’: Joseph Lieberman

Speaking to a large group of Iranians and U.S. Senate staff members in a meeting in the U.S. Senate on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, former U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman said ‘the evil empire of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be vanquished in our time and the world will begin anew.’
Addressing Iranian opposition activists, Mr Lieberman said: “I say to you today based just not on faith but on history, yes, the regime in Iran can be overthrown and I believe it will be soon.”
Excerpts of Senator Lieberman’s speech:

I've always been focused for a long time on Iran and the threat that it represents to the States, what this regime represents to the world but I wanted to work more closely with the National Council of Resistance in Iran and the MEK [the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran] and I'm very pleased to be able to do that.
This is not a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, people in the Iranian-American community and the global Iranian community who are fighting the regime in Tehran are our friends and I'm very glad that all of you are here today.
Because of the importance of stopping the radical extremist regime in Iran from getting nuclear weapons we've all been naturally focused on the negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran. The President has said, President Obama said, "No deal is better than a bad deal," and we ought to make sure that congress has the power through Corker-Menendez to reject bad deal. They have masterfully manipulated the United States and the other members of the P5+1 to a point where I think they have concluded, the Iranian regime has concluded that we want an agreement much more than they do and is anybody who has ever been involved in negotiations of any kind knows that's a bad place to be.
Why are we so fearful of the Islamic Republic of Iran getting nuclear weapons? That’s what I really want to focus on today. Obviously it's bad in itself when nuclear weapons proliferate in the world but I want to focus on the government that is involved in the most horrific and also aggressive human rights violations in the Middle East stifling democracy and fueling the sectarian conflict throughout the region and that of course is Islamic Republic of Iran.
Today there are at least 900 political prisoners in jails in Iran. People who are there for no other reason than they expressed their political opinion. The UN reports that at least 753 individuals were executed by the current Iranian government in 2014, last year, that's the highest total in a dozen years and as many of you know executions have occurred at a far more rapid pace since the self-proclaimed moderate Hassan Rouhani became President than they did under his predecessor Ahmadinejad.
What about gender equality? Well, Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei has called gender equality and I quote, "One of the biggest mistakes of western thought," I guess he's not too happy about the National Council of Resistance and the MEK because it happens to be led by a great woman, Mrs. Rajavi.
So Iran treats women as second class citizens they can't enter public stadiums, they must adhere to dress codes, they face restricted access to employment, they can be forced into marriage as children this is an extraordinarily gifted group of people who are pushed out of the mainstream of society and one reason high profile case of just extreme abuse the Tehran government executed a 26 year old woman for killing a man who was attempting to rape her this is primeval.
What about the internet? The internet is just plain blocked. Google is blocked, Wikipedia is blocked, the Amazon is blocked, we can go on and on, YouTube, a group called Reporters without Borders that monitors this kind of behavior called Iran an enemy of the internet and in 2013 said that they were the worst country in the world in freedom of the internet.
Why do they do this? These are not acts of strength or security by the government these are acts of weakness and insecurity by the regime that currently governs a great country, Iran. They're afraid of the people, their people, they're afraid of their people talking to each other, they're afraid of their people going out on the internet and finding out what's happening in the rest of the world.
Iran's fingerprints can be found on terror plots across the world as you know even in Washington, DC, where it sought to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in 2011 at the Cafe Milano here which we had thought until that time was a sanctuary but apparently not so.
We've seen perhaps one of the greatest atrocities, genocide, go on with the rest of the world essentially standing by passively in Syria since March of 2011 fueled primarily by the Iranian government. We know what's happening with the Islamic state in Iraq now provides Iran with the opportunity to pursue its own agenda there and there and elsewhere in the region lately. Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian revolutionary guard core is publicly on the battlefield directing those troops in Syria, in Iraq; don't be surprised if he turns up in Yemen or Afghanistan soon. Already these militias have committed atrocities and fighting against Sunni majority areas once held by ISIS.
That's why retired General David Petraeus has said that the foremost threat to Iraq's long term stability is not the Islamic state rather it is Shia militias many backed by and some directly guided by Iran. I know that you agree with me that this is an abysmal record of human rights violations and terrorist killing sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
To me one of the most perverse arguments being made now is that if there is an agreement on nuclear weapons with Iran that will pave the way to a broader strategic re-orientation by Tehran which ideally would include an abandonment of its hegemonic ambitions in the region, an abandonment of its terrorist proxies and an end to its human rights abuses. Does anyone really believe that? I have a trouble asking the question.
I want to just take a moment to talk about Camp Liberty starting in 1986 this organization was headquartered at Camp Ashraf in Iraq until 2012 when it was relocated to a small section of Camp Liberty which is directly east of the Baghdad International Airport.
Camp Liberty had been built and maintained by the US Army until the departure of most of our forces in 2011. Shortly after the coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003 all the residents of Ashraf again Iranian dissidents, I would say freedom fighters were provided written assurances of protected person status under the 4th Geneva Convention if certain actions were taken on the part of the residence and all of them were taken. They met every expectation that we, the United States government, placed on them unfortunately in 2009 the protected person status was revoked summarily arbitrarily without a clause, and the residence, their security, was turned over to the Iraqi government at the time which was heavily influenced by Tehran which would like nothing better than to take violent action against these enemies of theirs because they're fighters for freedom in Ashraf.
There's a lot more I could say about that but let me just say as we work hard here in Capitol Hill and elsewhere to liberate the people who are trapped in Camp Liberty. We owe them and I promise you that I will do everything I can to make sure that the United States does everything it can to keep its word.
So, let me say in summary and speak to you directly, those of you who fight and work so hard in this movement you may occasionally ask yourselves how can the movement of events going in such a terrible direction in a country that means so much to you and should mean so much to everybody who fight for freedom and cares about it be stopped? And the answer I think is that it can be stopped by good and courageous people who are prepared to fight to stop it. The people of Iran typified and represented in many ways by the National Council of Resistance in Iran are really the answer.
As much as I know you believe in your cause even you must sometimes ask yourself is it possible? Can the regime in Iran with all its weapons, all its money and the control it has over its people internally really be stopped and overthrown? And I say to you today based just not on faith but on history, yes, the regime in Iran can be overthrown and I believe it will be soon.
I say to you today that the evil empire of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be vanquished in our time and the world will begin anew. And part of why that will happen is because of the principle, the devotion, the steadfastness, the courage, the intellectual energy, the remarkable intelligence work done in Iran by the National Council of Resistance, led as I mention briefly earlier by Mrs. Rajavi who is a remarkable figure in her own right and a powerful figure, strong, gifted, modern, religious and clearly tolerant and what a message to the Ayatollah and the other Mullahs that she happens to be a woman and what a change that would be.
Dear friends, I wish you a Happy Nowruz, I know Nowruz means new day, with you I pray that this is the year in which and I pray with faith that this is the year when we will see not just a new day in Iran but a new government that will reflect and represent and protect the people of this great country.