Prison Term Extended for Writing Letter to UN Rapporteur

Iranian Kurdish farmer Yousef Kakehmami, already serving nine years in an Iranian prison after two unfair trials, has been sentenced to a further five years in prison after writing a letter to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran.
Yousef Kakehmami, 38, is a farmer from Iran’s Kurdish minority serving a nine-year sentence in Oroumieh Central Prison, West Azerbaijan Province.
The prison’s branch of the Office for the Implementation of Sentences told him on January 18 that he had been sentenced to a further five years in prison for “acting against national security' through collaboration with a Kurdish opposition group.
'He had received an unfair trial on 12 January, where he had no legal representation and there was only one hearing, before Branch One of the Revolutionary Court of Mahabad. The court did not provide him with a state-appointed lawyer, though it had said it would do so before the trial began. He has not received the written verdict. Yousef Kakemami had been convicted of the same charge after two unfair trials in 2006 and 2008, in which he received three- and six-year sentences, respectively,' Amnesty International said in an Urgent Action appeal on Tuesday.

Iran: political prisoner’s dire conditions is troubling

The condition of a Kurdish political prisoner is considered critical after his need of medical care and medical supplies have been ignored by prison guards in the Minab Prison, southern Iran. During the past week Afsheen Sohrabzadeh has fainted many times for his low blood pressure and each time prison authorities have prevented his transfer to a medical center under the pretext of lack of adequate supplies. The medical care he received was on March 23 when a clinic nurse gave him a syringe from behind bars.
Sohrabzadeh, 25 years old, was arrested on June 8, 2010 by agents of Kamiaran Intelligence Department and tortured to obtain coerced confession.
On charges of “moharebe” (enmity against God) he was sentenced to 25 years behind bars and exiled to Minab Prison. 

(Freedom Messenger – March 29, 2016)

IRAN: Mullahs’ pitiful lies against the PMOI in Baluchistan

NCRI – The terrorist Quds Force of the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in a ludicrous report about the death of a smuggler and four of his companions in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan Province (south-east Iran), claimed that this individual was a former member of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) who was involved in armed robbery, rape, and murder.

This person has had no ties to the PMOI (MEK), which is why the terrorist Quds Force was forced to introduce him as a “former member.”

This is a pitiful reaction by the regime to the support of the youths and other people of Baluchistan for the PMOI and the Iranian Resistance in their struggle for freedom and the rights of all Iranian people from all ethnicities.

Air France crew refuse to wear headscarves in Iran

A number of female Air France cabin crew are resisting an airline ruling that they should wear a headscarf while in Tehran when flights to the Iranian capital resume on April 17, according to their union representatives.

"Every day we have calls from worried female cabin crew who tell us that they do not want to wear the headscarf," said Christophe Pillet of the SNPNC (Syndicat National du Personnel Navigant Commercial) union, which is asking Air France management to make it a voluntary measure.

Company chiefs had sent staff a memo informing that female staff would be required "to wear trousers during the flight with a loose fitting jacket and a scarf covering their hair on leaving he plane", Mr. Pillet told AFP on Saturday.

According to Mr. Pillet, Air France management has raised the possibility of "penalties" against anyone not observing the dress code.

SNPNC also denounced the provisions in a statement, calling them "an attack on freedom of conscience and individual freedoms, and invasion of privacy."

Air France told AFP that all air crew were "obliged like other foreign visitors to respect the laws of the countries to which they travelled."

"Iranian law requires that a veil covering the hair be worn in public places by all women on its territory."

The headscarf requirement and clothing limitations are "true threats to their dignity," the Union des Navigants de l'Aviation Civile (UNAC) wrote in a letter to Laurence Rossignol, France's minister for women’s rights and families, on Friday.

Under the Iranian regime's fundamentalist laws, all women in Iran have been forced to cover their hair since the 1979 revolution.

Political prisoner pays tribute to Iran’s heroes in Camp Ashraf

NCRI - Prominent Iranian political prisoner Ali Moezzi has sent out a message from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the April 8, 2011 attack by the Iraqi army against members of the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) in Camp Ashraf, Iraq.

The unprovoked attack on the unarmed and defenseless PMOI (MEK) members in Camp Ashraf, which was carried out at the behest of the mullahs’ regime in Iran, left 36 camp residents killed and hundreds of others injured. The attack was condemned by the international community

Political prisoner Ali Moezzi, father of two PMOI members, wrote in his tribute:

On the fifth anniversary of April 8, 2011, we commemorate the epic valor and sacrifice of PMOI members. We bow our heads in recognition of the sacrifice of PMOI members that destroyed the fundamentalists’ conspiracies. Their blood, mixed with the blood spilt on the asphalt streets of our country and that of the executed political prisoners, will ensure a glorious future for Persia. From Saba Haftbaradaran who bled to death in front of her father’s eyes and lived true to her statement that we will stand resolute to our last breath; to Marzieh who valiantly rushed to her slaughter place and instantly died; to the Madadzadehs and other courageous heroes who were overrun by the [Iraqi] HUMVEEs. What a valiant stand they took at the scene.

What price were these women and men, members of the PMOI, so generously and valiantly paying? Was it anything other than the price of freedom and emancipation of mankind? Who raised them but the Iranian nation? So they shall rise again from every part of this earth to defeat the despicables who find their survival in passing over the bodies and wounds of those who are unarmed and defenseless. Shame and infamy to those who ordered and paved the way and those who closed their eyes to these crimes; and the most exalted praise to the dear martyrs who raised the flames of faith and perseverance for the most distanced to see.

Ali Moezzi, Evin Prison - April 2016

Iran : Rohani annule sa visite, après que Vienne refuse d'annuler la manifestation de l'OMPI ( oposition iranniene )

Après nombre de propos contradictoires, Ali Larijani a annoncé :
L’annulation de la visite de Rohani en Autriche est due au refus du gouvernement autrichien d’interdire une manifestation de l’OMPI

Suite à plusieurs propos contradictoire des dirigeants du régime iranien et des médias gouvernementaux sur la raison de l’annulation de la visite de Rohani en Autriche, le porte-parole du parlement du régime, Ali Larijani, a annoncé le 2 avril que la visite avait été annulée à cause d’une manifestation de l’Organisation des Moudjahidines du Peuple d’Iran (OMPI).

Il a exprimé son soutien à la décision de Rohani d’annuler le voyage et a déclaré : « Le gouvernement autrichien a « ignoré » les demandes de l’équipe de sécurité du Président iranien de retirer à l’OMPI le permis de manifester pendant la visite. »

La Résistance Iranienne avait appelé à manifester pour protester contre la venue de Rohani en Autriche les 30 et 31 mars.

Ces derniers jours, l’annulation du voyage de Rohani s’est transformée en scandale politique pour le régime et son président. Les officiels du régime ont d’abord cherché à cacher la principale raison derrière l’annulation du voyage, déclarant qu’il s’agissait de « motifs de sécurité », mais le Président autrichien et d’autres officiels ont déclaré qu’il n’existait aucun problème de sécurité ou aucune menace. À ce sujet, le journal autrichien Die Presse a cité le 30 mars des sources diplomatiques affirmant que le gouvernement iranien avait demandé à l’Autriche d’empêcher une manifestation durant la visite de Rohani à Vienne.

Syrian regime airstrikes endangers a fragile ceasefire

Beirut- Qatar warned Saturday that Syrian regime airstrikes that killed more than 30 people including children in a rebel-held town near Damascus could “torpedo” a fragile ceasefire in the country.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, reported that 33 people, including 12 children, died in airstrikes Thursday on Deir al-Assafir, a town in the opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta.
“Qatar expresses its strong condemnation and concern over the massacre by Syrian regime forces targeting civilians in Deir al-Assafir... in a violation of the cessation of hostilities agreement and related UN Security Council resolutions,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Eastern Ghouta is among the areas in Syria where a fragile ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia has been in place since Feb. 27.
“This criminal shelling... reflects the regime’s policy in killing civilians... and threatens to torpedo” the ceasefire and “international efforts to reach a political solution” to end the country’s five-year war, said the statement, carried by the official Qatar News Agency.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia support Syrian rebels fighting the Russian- and Iranian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad.