Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Assassination Plot v. 2 News Presenters in London — Report

Iran’s Security Forces Raped and Tortured Women’s Rights Protesters — Amnesty
Iran Updates: 127+ Executions Since October 7

UPDATE, JAN 1:

Iranian officials say they have released Spanish national Santiago Sanchez Cogedor, who was imprisoned in October 2022 amid the nationwide “Woman. Life. Freedom” protests.

As it tried to suppress the demonstrations, sparked in mid-September 2022 by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was detained for “inappropriate attire”, the Iranian regime seized foreign and dual nationals for political leverage.

Sanchez, 41, had just arrived in Iran when he was detained. His family said that he was planning to walk to the World Cup venue in Qatar, and that he had cycled to the Arabian region previously to raise funds for hospitals and other organizations.

The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency said Sanchez was arrested in Amini’s hometown of Saqqez in northwest Iran after visiting her grave.

Ana Baneira Suarez, 24, who works for a human rights NGO, was arrested and detained alongside Sanchez but was released in February.

UPDATE, DEC 28:

Trying to cover up the killing of a 9-year-old boy by security forces in November 2022, Iran’s judiciary has reaffirmed the death sentence against a young man upon whom it pinned the murder.

Kian Pirfalak was slain and his father critically wounded as they sat in their car amid a “Woman. Life. Freedom” demonstration in Izeh in western Iran. His mother and family members who witnessed the incident said security forces were responsible.

The Iran regime’s news agencies blamed the killing on terrorists, circulating a statement attributed to the Islamic State. BBC Monitoring investigated the statement and concluded that it was fake.

UPDATE, DEC 22:

Iran’s authorities have executed Samira Sabzian, the “child bride” who killed her husband after being systematically abused by him.

Sabzian, 30, was hanged on Thursday in Gezel Khesar Prison, in the Tehran suburbs, after 10 years behind bars.

Sabzian, from Khorramabad in western Iran, was married off at the age of 15. She was arrested four years later and condemned to death.

Sabzian had two children, one born shortly before her arrest. During her 10 years in prison, she was only allowed to see her children once — on the eve of her execution.

UPDATE, DEC 21:

Sara Massoumi, the editor-in-chief of the site Iranian Diplomacy, has been sentenced to six months in prison and banned from working in media for two years.

Massoumi’s “crime” was a social media post criticizing the regime over the death of Armita Geravand, 16, after she was accosted on October 1 by a “hijab enforcer” on the Tehran Metro.

See also Iran Updates: Teenager Armita Geravand, Accosted by “Hijab Enforcer” in Tehran, Is Buried; Security Forces Seize Mourners

Massoumi, formerly a reporter for the reformist news outlet Etemad, was charged in November with publishing lies and propaganda against the regime.

She had tweeted about Geravand’s death, “They say that you ‘passed’. We have known the trail of blood for years. The city smells of the blood of the mistreated. Did they eventually show your mother all the footage?”

Massoumi is one of five journalists being prosecuted over comments on Geravand’s four-week coma and death.

Last month, authorities filed new charges against journalist Zeinab Rahimi over her coverage of the case, having previously summoned her on allegations of “spreading lies and violating public decency”.

UPDATE 1255 GMT:

Iran’s authorities have sentenced Mohammad Maleki, a participant in the “Woman. Life. Freedom” protests, to 10 years and 3 months in prison.

The court in Zanjan in northwest Iran condemend Maleki to six years and one day for “forming and managing the Zanjan neighborhood’s youth [Telegram] channel with the intention of disrupting internal security”; three years and seven months for “gathering and conspiring to act against national security”; and eight months for “propaganda against the system”.

Maleki was arrested on September 18 during the rally marked the first anniversary of the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini — detained and reportedly beaten by “morality police” — in police custody.

He spent 15 days in solitary confinement in a Revolutionary Guards detention center before being transferred to Zanjan prison, where he was denied legal representation and visits from his family.

UPDATE, DEC 20:

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and political prisoner Narges Mohammadi has boycotted her latest hearing in an Iranian court:

The Revolutionary Court is a slaughterhouse for the youth of this land, and I will not set foot in this slaughterhouse. I do not acknowledge the authority or credibility of judges affiliated with security institutions and show trials.

The proceeding came just over a week after the Oslo ceremony awarding Mohammadi the Nobel. Her twin children Kiana and Ali Rahmani accepted the award and read their mother’s statement.

“Iranian People Will Overcome Repression and Authoritarianism” — Narges Mohammadi Accepts Nobel Peace Prize

Mohammadi, repeatedly imprisoned since 2010, began serving her current 10-year sentence in November 2021.

he accusations for which Mohammadi was summoned to court were not immediately known.

UPDATE, DEC 18:

In their latest persecution of members of the Baha’i faith, Iran authorities have condemned teacher Hourieh Mohseni to three years in prison.

A Revolutionary Court in Mashhad in northeast Iran condemned Mohseni as a member of “a social action and development group that aimed to promote Baha’ism with the intention of disrupting national security”. It accused her of “propaganda against the Islamic Republic in favor of the Baha’i faith”.

The hearing took place without the presence of Mohseni or her lawyer.

Mohseni has been teaching mathematics and Persian to children in a disadvantaged village near Mashhad.

The Iranian regime has subjected approximately 300,000 Baha’is to persecution, including executions, detentions, seizure of property, and bans on higher education and employment.

UPDATE, DEC 17:

Mahsa Yazdani, the mother of a protester killed last year by security forces during the nationwide “Woman. Life. Freedom” demonstrations, has been summoned to serve a 13-year prison sentence.

Yazdani was condemned by a Revolutionary Court in northern Iran for “propaganda activities against the system” and “insulting the leadership” over comments she made on social media.

She announced on Instagram on Thursday that she had been given three days to report to prison after an appeals court upheld her sentence last month.

Yazdani’s son Mohammad Javad Zahedi, 20, was shot in Sari in northern Iran in September 2022, days after the start of the protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini — detained and reportedly beaten by “morality police”.

Yazdani wrote on social media, “I am broken. This loss has driven me insane. A curse on the entire regime.”

ORIGINAL ENTRY, DEC 13: Mahsa Amini (pictured), the Iranian woman whose death in police custody in September 2022 sparked nationwide “Woman. Life. Freedom” protests, has been awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament.

Amini, 22, was seized and reportedly beaten by “morality police” in Tehran on September 13. She collapsed in a detention center, fell into a coma, and died three days later.

Iranian authorities prevented Amini’s mother, father, and brother from attending the ceremony in Strasbourg, France, confiscating their passports and barring them from flying.

But in a speech read out by the family’s lawyer, Amini’s mother Mojgan Eftekhari said Mahsa’s name “became a secret code for freedom and spread the dream of liberty from her birthplace, Kurdistan, all over Iran, the Middle East, and the world”.

“Her life was taken unjustly. They believed that by taking her life, they will stop her from being and becoming,” she explained.

“The Sound and The Voices of The Iranian People”

Exiled activists Afsoon Najafi and Mersedeh Shahinkar collected the award in the name of Woman. Life. Freedom.

Najafi’s sister Hadis was killed on September 21, 2022, in the opening days of the nationwide protests. Shahinkar, shot in the eye by security forces, told the ceremony:

We are standing here on behalf of all the women and we are tired of the regime of Iran. The Islamic Republic is not representative of the Iranian people. I and the people who protest are the sound and the voices of Iranian people.

Najafi noted that many Iranians are still “suffering and [being] tortured” by Iran’s authorities.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola summarized:

That treatment is another example of what the people of Iran face every day.

Let me say that the courage and resilience of Iranian women in their fight for justice, liberty and human rights will not be stopped. Their voices cannot be silenced and while they are not here today, their presence will be felt.