Iranian dissidents, former hostages of regime launch lawsuit against Raisi

Iranian dissidents, former hostages of regime launch lawsuit against Raisi
Protesters attend a rally calling for the prosecution of the Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi during the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York. (AFP)
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Updated 21 September 2022

Iranian dissidents, former hostages of regime launch lawsuit against Raisi

Iranian dissidents, former hostages of regime launch lawsuit against Raisi
  • Activists call for justice in a US federal civil case against President Ebrahim Raisi, who is in New York this week for the UN General Assembly
  • ‘I have lived in constant trauma,’ said one victim of unjust detention and torture who saw fellow prisoners taken to be hanged and feared he would be next

NEW YORK CITY: As Iran is rocked by furious nationwide protests following the death on Friday of Mahsa Amini — a 22-year-old Iranian woman who died after police beat her for “improperly” wearing the hijab — President Ebrahim Raisi might have hoped to escape the anger swelling in his country while he attends the UN General Assembly in New York this week.
But he faces the threat of being served with a lawsuit in the city by Iranian dissidents and Westerners who were held hostage by the regime in Tehran and accuse him of personal involvement in the torture and mistreatment they endured.
The lawsuit, which is supported by the National Union for Democracy in Iran, is being filed in the Southern District of New York by human rights attorney Shahin Milani on behalf of victims of Raisi’s alleged crimes.
The plaintiffs claim they endured acts of torture that were either directly ordered or substantially assisted by Raisi, which means the Iranian president is liable to face a civil lawsuit under the US Torture Victim Protection Act.
Cameron Khansarinia, NUFDI’s policy director, introduced the plaintiffs during a press conference at a private club in midtown Manhattan.
“We are here today to announce and outline in detail an historic, federal, civil lawsuit against Ebrahim Raisi,” he said.
“The plaintiffs in this case — Iranian dissidents, former Iranian hostages, former Western hostages — are coming together in unprecedented fashion to take a step forward for justice.”
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Khansarinia told Arab News: “Raisi is in New York and it’s important that while the media is covering him, they’re also covering his victims.
“We want to have it recorded in the US judiciary that Ebrahim Raisi’s victims are standing up to him, that he is a criminal, that he is being accused, and in our view is guilty, of torture. This is important for setting a new legal precedent for such cases.
“Secondly, we are giving a voice to the Iranian people and to his victims, and allowing them for the first time to speak up because for so long they have been silenced by the regime and, unfortunately, often even by those in the West, so it’s an important opportunity for them to speak their truth today.”
During the press briefing, which was also supported by the NUFDI, four of those victims shared the details of their experiences at the hands of the Iranian regime: Mehdi Hajati, a city councilor and dissident; Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a British-Australian academic and former hostage of the regime; Hamid Babaei, a Belgian-Iranian academic and former hostage; and Ahmad Batebi, a former political prisoner.
They were joined by Navid Mohebbi, who was once the youngest journalist in the world in detention when he was imprisoned by the regime in Tehran. Milani, the lead attorney in the lawsuit, stressed that the civil case directly targets Raisi personally and not the Islamic Republic of Iran as a whole.
Moore-Gilbert described years of “gross mistreatment” and “psychological and physical torture” while in detention. Raisi was head of Iran’s judiciary when she was convicted, sentenced, denied an appeal, and transferred to prison. She said she holds him “ultimately responsible for the mistreatment and injustice” she endured.
She said that the judge at her trial was “clearly a puppet” of the government and not “capable of making independent decisions.” She was not even aware she had a lawyer until a couple of weeks before her hearings, she added.
Moore-Gilbert, speaking via video link, said she was “unable to present evidence during the trial” and could not understand the proceedings because they were conducted entirely in Farsi. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison on “ludicrous charges” of espionage. She was immediately placed in solitary confinement for seven months, one of the many examples of cruel and unjust punishment she said she endured, which also included exposure to infectious diseases and denial of medical care.
“He is ultimately responsible for my mistreatment,” Moore-Gilbert said of Raisi, adding: “I am taking part in this lawsuit under the TVPA in order to hold Raisi accountable for one injustice: My own.”
Babaei, another academic unjustly imprisoned in Iran, described the repulsive conditions he endured during his time in detention, revealing that inmates were not even provided with cups for drinking water.
“I lived in a constant trauma,” he said as he told how he saw fellow prisoners being taken away to be hanged, which he said kept him in a continuous state of fear that he would be next.
Mohebbi said that Iranians have been “exposed to continuous trauma over the last 43 years.”
Describing his experiences in prison, he said the entire judiciary system, in which “the punishment of a defender is already sealed,” had conspired against him.
He said: “With this lawsuit, the survivors and victims of the regime send a very clear message to the butchers of Tehran that you will never break our soul, our resilience, and our fight for our human dignity is not one that we will lose.”
The lawsuit brings three cases to the court, he added, but they “represent thousands of Iranians whose rights to express justice, their rights to express themselves, and their rights to express their suffering has been taken away.”
Marjam Keypour Greenblatt, a human rights activist and non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, told Arab News: “I am here to support the rights of Iranian people who are having their rights violated by the regime on a regular basis. I am here to echo their voices and to make sure there is justice where justice is rarely seen.”
Justice is the ultimate goal of the civil case against Raisi but success in achieving this justice, which thousands of others have been denied, could be a difficult prospect.
Gissou Nia, director of the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project, told Arab News that the TVPA is “the right act to use here because you can seek remedies for crimes that were committed elsewhere.”
She added: “The legal team wants to serve process but provided that he is served then there would be determinations around immunity. With this particular matter, if the defendant was a head of government from France or Germany (for example), then the court would most likely take judicial notice and say that Raisi is protected by head-of-state immunity.
“But because it’s Iran, and under US law there are some different exceptions to state immunity as it applies to Iran, the court may opt to ask the State Department for their view. This could take a while but there is a chance that the suit moves forward.”
Raisi is not obliged to respond to a civil lawsuit, however, and if he chooses not to engage with the legal proceedings the court could issue a default ruling against him and in favor of the plaintiffs.
The president is not a member of Iran’s permanent mission to the UN and therefore does not qualify for diplomatic immunity. However he is afforded protection from being served with legal papers while he is in the UN headquarters and the surrounding district, and while traveling between there and his accommodation. However, the legal papers could be served against him if his accommodation in New York, or any non-official activities he takes part in, are outside the borders of the UN district.
Nizar Zakka, a former prisoner of the Iranian regime, told Arab News: “The most important part of this lawsuit is that the Iranian regime needs to know that they will be hunted wherever they go (and) they will be sued until they stop these activities, like hostage-taking, that they have been doing since 1979.”
For those dissident Iranians and Western hostages who continue to endure physical and psychological trauma after years of unjust confinement, that hunt continues this week in New York City.


Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province

Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province
Updated 55 min 40 sec ago

Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province

Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province
  • The Iranian-backed Badr Organization, a state-sanctioned militia within the Popular Mobilization Forces with a political wing, wrested control of the province from Daesh in 2015

MUQDADIYAH: Hussein Maytham and his family were driving past the palm tree grove near their home after a quiet evening shopping for toys for his younger cousins when their car hit a bomb planted on the moon-lit road.
“I only remember the explosion,” Maytham, 16, said weakly from his hospital bed, his pale arms speckled brown by shrapnel. The attack took place earlier this month in the Shiite-majority village of Hazanieh. The force of the blast hurled the teenager out of the vehicle, but his family — his parents, an aunt and three cousins — perished in the fiery carnage. Residents say gunmen hidden nearby in irrigation canals opened fire, killing two others.
This is the latest in a series of attacks witnessed over the last month in the central Iraqi province of Diyala, located north and east of Baghdad. Security officials say at least 19 civilians have been killed by unidentified assailants, including in two targeted attacks.
The violence is pitting communities against each other in the ethnically and religiously diverse province. It also raises questions whether the relative calm and stability that has prevailed in much of Iraq in the years since the defeat of Daesh can be sustained.
Iraq as a whole has moved on from the conditions that enabled the rise of Daesh and the large-scale bloody sectarian violence that erupted after the US-led invasion 20 years ago, according to Mohanad Adnan, a political analyst and partner at the Roya Development Group.
But some parts of the country, including Diyala, remain tense, with occasional waves of violence reopening old wounds. “There are a few villages, especially in Diyala, where they have not overcome what happened in the past,” said Adnan.
Officials, residents, and analysts say at least one instance of violence in Diyala appears to be a sectarian reprisal by Shiites against Sunnis over a Daesh-claimed attack. But they say other killings were carried out by Shiites against Shiites, as rival militias and their tribal and political allies that control the province struggle over influence and lucrative racketeering networks. Diyala, bordering both Iran and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, is a prime conduit for smuggling, including drugs.

HIGHLIGHT

The violence is pitting communities against each other in the ethnically and religiously diverse province. It also raises questions whether the relative calm and stability that has prevailed in much of Iraq in the years since the defeat of Daesh can be sustained.

The Iranian-backed Badr Organization, a state-sanctioned militia within the Popular Mobilization Forces with a political wing, wrested control of the province from Daesh in 2015. Since then, it has asserted its dominance over several Shiite political parties and their associated paramilitaries, as well as Sunni groups.
Although most Sunni residents displaced during the war against Daesh have returned to the province, they say they are often viewed with suspicion by authorities and neighbors due to their perceived affiliation with the extremists.
When remnants of the group stage attacks on civilians or security forces, it often prompts a spiral of retaliatory attacks.
In the Sunni village of Jalaylah, nine people, including women and children, were killed in a gruesome attack in late February, two months after they were blamed for allowing a Daesh attack on a neighboring village, according to security officials.
The attackers moved openly through the area, said villager Awadh Al-Azzawi. “They didn’t wear masks. Their faces were clear,” he said.
Residents accuse members of the nearby Shiite village Albu Bali, where Daesh killed nine in December, of carrying out the attack in revenge. They say the perpetrators belong to local militias using weapons given to them by the state. Security officials affiliated with the armed groups declined to comment.

 


5 killed in west Sudan tribal violence

5 killed in west Sudan tribal violence
Updated 26 March 2023

5 killed in west Sudan tribal violence

5 killed in west Sudan tribal violence
  • The violence between African Masalit tribesmen and Arab shepherds in West Darfur erupted on Thursday after two armed assailants fatally shot a merchant in a remote area

CAIRO: Two days of tribal violence in western Sudan’s long-troubled Darfur region killed at least 5 people, tribal leaders and a rights group said on Friday.
The violence between African Masalit tribesmen and Arab shepherds in West Darfur erupted on Thursday after two armed assailants fatally shot a merchant in a remote area, leaders from both groups said.
In a statement, Masalit tribesmen accused Arab militia of being behind the killing. The slaying sparked a series of targeted attacks that killed at least four more people, the tribal leaders and the rights group both said.
Five victims were later identified by the Darfur Bar Association, a Sudanese legal group focusing on human rights in the western province. The group called on both sides to de-escalate tensions.
The violence comes as wrangling cross-party talks continue in Khartoum over how the African country will usher in a civilian government following 17 months of military rule.
Sudan has been steeped in chaos after a military coup, led by the country’s top Gen. Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, removed a Western-backed government in October 2021, upending its short-lived transition to democracy.
But last December the country’s ruling military and various pro-democracy forces signed a preliminary agreement pledging to reinstate the transition.
Last week, signatories to December’s agreement vowed to begin establishing a new civilian-led transitional government April 11. However, many major political forces in the country remain opposed to the deal.
Since the military takeover, Sudan has also seen a spike in inter-tribal violence in the country’s west and south.
Analysts see the violence and growing insecurity in Sudan’s far-flung regions as a product of the power vacuum caused by the military takeover.
The Darfur crisis was sparked in 2003 by armed opposition groups who accused the central government of excluding their regions and people from wealth and power-sharing as well as development processes.
Over 2.7 million people have been displaced and are living in camps across Darfur. About 300,000 Darfuri refuges are now living in neighboring Chad.
The UN estimates that around 4.7 million people are still affected by the situation, denied basic human rights and relying on humanitarian aid.

 


Biden says US will ‘forcefully’ protect its personnel in Syria

Biden says US will ‘forcefully’ protect its personnel in Syria
Updated 26 March 2023

Biden says US will ‘forcefully’ protect its personnel in Syria

Biden says US will ‘forcefully’ protect its personnel in Syria
  • Death toll in airstrikes rises to 19 — three regime soldiers, 16 members of Iran-backed forces
  • The US does not, does not seek conflict with Iran, but Iran and its proxies should be prepared for the US to act forcefully ‘to protect our people.’

BEIRUT, OTTAWA: The death toll from retaliatory US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria following a deadly drone attack has risen to 19, a war monitor said on Saturday.
President Joe Biden said that the US would respond “forcefully” to protect its personnel.
Further rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias took place late on Friday, prompting more strikes by coalition warplanes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Washington carried out the initial strikes after the Pentagon said a US contractor died — and another contractor and five military personnel were wounded — by a drone “of Iranian origin” that struck a US-led coalition base near Hasakah in northeastern Syria on Thursday.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that, at President Joe Biden’s direction, he had ordered the “precision airstrikes ... in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
On Saturday, the Britain-based Observatory, which has a wide network of sources on the ground, said 19 people were killed in the first wave of US strikes — three Syrian regime soldiers and 16 members of Iran-backed forces, including 11 Syrian nationals. Hours after the strikes, 10 rockets were fired at American and coalition forces at the Green Village base in northeast Syria, the US Central Command said.
There were no injuries or damage to facilities at the base, but one rocket struck a home around five km away, causing minor wounds to two women and two children, CENTCOM added.
Iran-backed militias later on Friday targeted a base in the Conoco gas field, prompting retaliatory strikes from coalition warplanes on targets in Deir Ezzor city, the observatory said.
The war monitor said rocket fire then targeted coalition facilities at the Al-Omar oil field base and in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor, “causing material damage.”
A “cautious calm” returned to the Deir Ezzor area in the early hours of Saturday morning, the observatory said.
The Pentagon said two F-15 fighters launched the retaliatory attack — which spokesman Pat Ryder said was to protect US personnel.
The strikes “were intended to send a very clear message that we will take the protection of our personnel seriously and that we will respond quickly and decisively if they are threatened,” he said.
They were “proportionate and deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation to minimize casualties,” he said.
Two of the US service members wounded on Thursday were treated on site, while the three other troops and one US contractor were evacuated to Iraq, the Pentagon said.
“We will always take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” said CENTCOM chief Gen. Michael Kurilla.
In January, the US military said three one-way attack drones were launched against the Al-Tanf garrison in Syria, with one breaching its air defenses and wounding two allied Syrian fighters. Last August, Biden ordered similar retaliatory strikes in Deir Ezzor province after several drones targeted a coalition outpost, without causing any casualties.
“We know that these groups are sponsored by Iran,” Ryder said.
“So Iran certainly plays a role in terms of ensuring that this type of activity doesn’t happen,” he said.
Meanwhile, Biden said: “The United States does not, does not seek conflict with Iran,” Biden said in Ottawa, Canada, where he is on a state visit. But he said Iran and its proxies should be prepared for the US “to act forcefully to protect our people. That’s exactly what happened last night.”
Biden, speaking during a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, expressed his “deepest condolences” to the family of the American killed and well-wishes for the injured.
US Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the top US commander for the Middle East, warned that its forces could carry out additional strikes if needed. “We are postured for scalable options in the face of any additional Iranian attacks,” Kurilla said in a statement.

 


Israel: 2 soldiers wounded in West Bank drive-by shooting

Israel: 2 soldiers wounded in West Bank drive-by shooting
Updated 26 March 2023

Israel: 2 soldiers wounded in West Bank drive-by shooting

Israel: 2 soldiers wounded in West Bank drive-by shooting
  • The attack was the third to take place in the Palestinian town of Huwara in less than a month
  • One soldier was seriously wounded and the second was in moderate condition

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said two soldiers were wounded, one severely, Saturday evening in a drive-by shooting in the occupied West Bank, the latest in months-long violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
The attack was the third to take place in the Palestinian town of Hawara in less than a month. One soldier was seriously wounded and the second was in moderate condition, the military said. A manhunt was launched as forces sealed roads leading to Hawara.
No Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the shooting attack, but Hamas, the militant group ruling the Gaza Strip, praised it.
“The resistance in the West Bank can surprise the occupation every time and the occupation cannot enjoy safety,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said.
Violence has surged in recent months in the West Bank and east Jerusalem amid near-daily Israeli arrest raids in Palestinian-controlled areas and a string of Palestinian attacks.
US-backed regional efforts to defuse tensions have led to the meeting of Israeli and Palestinian officials in Jordan and Egypt respectively, where parties hoped to prevent a further escalation during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
On Feb. 27, when Israeli and Palestinian officials met in Jordan’s Aqaba, a Palestinian gunman shot and killed two Israelis in Hawara. Another shooting attack in Hawara took place as the parties met again in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, wounding two Israelis.
Eighty-six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli or settler fire this year, according to an Associated Press tally. Palestinian attacks have killed 15 Israelis in the same period.
Israel says most of those killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their future independent state.

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Houthi drone attacks Yemen defense minister’s convoy in Taiz

File photo of Yemeni Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Mohsen Al-Daeri. (Screenshot)
File photo of Yemeni Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Mohsen Al-Daeri. (Screenshot)
Updated 26 March 2023

Houthi drone attacks Yemen defense minister’s convoy in Taiz

File photo of Yemeni Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Mohsen Al-Daeri. (Screenshot)
  • Muammar Al-Eryani, Yemen’s information minister, accused the Houthis of attempting to derail peace attempts

AL-MUKALLA: A Yemeni government soldier was killed and two others wounded on Saturday when an explosives-laden drone fired by Iran-backed Houthis attacked a convoy conveying senior military leaders, including Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Mohsen Al-Daeri, in the besieged city of Taiz, Yemeni officials and local media said.

A Yemeni government official told Arab News that the Houthis launched a drone at a convoy carrying the defense minister, the army’s chief of staff, and the governor of Taiz as they traveled from the Red Sea town of Mocha to Taiz. Al-Daeri and all other government officials were unhurt.

Muammar Al-Eryani, Yemen’s information minister, accused the Houthis of attempting to derail peace attempts.  

“This sinful targeting, which comes in the wake of the terrorist Houthi militia’s continuous escalation on multiple fronts, confirms its insistence on sabotaging efforts to restore the ceasefire and calm the situation,” the minister said on Twitter. 

Al-Eryani had earlier warned that large-scale military operations would resume throughout the nation if the Houthis continued their assaults on government soldiers, particularly in the central province of Marib. 

Scores of fighters have been killed or injured since early last week, when the Houthis began a series of intense assaults on government troops in the district of Hareb, south of Marib province, capturing a few villages.

Those attacks, as well as other less intense shelling and ground attacks in Taiz, have dashed hopes of a peaceful solution to the war, which had arisen following the latest successful round of prisoner-swap talks between the Houthis and the Yemeni government, which resulted in an agreement to release more than 800 prisoners during Ramadan.

Al-Eryani said Houthi raids in Hareb had resulted in the displacement of a significant number of people and posed the prospect of all-out conflict, which would put an end to the country’s relative peace since the UN-brokered ceasefire came into force in April last year.

Speaking to a group of military personnel in Taiz’s Al-Bareh on Friday, the minister pledged to defeat the Houthis, retake Sanaa and other areas currently controlled by the Iran-backed militias, and urged soldiers to remain alert.

“To reclaim every square inch of our territory, retake our capital, and restore our legitimate leadership to its proper position, we must all share the same spirit and direct our firearms against these militias,” the minister said. 

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Al-Kumaim, a Yemeni military analyst, said the Houthis have used the UN-brokered truce to regroup, and to target military officials and government-controlled areas. He suggested that the Yemeni government should abandon any agreements with the Houthis and resume military operations.

“Following this attack on the convoy of the highest military authority in the Yemeni army, the government is expected to terminate all accords, including the Stockholm Agreement, and unleash the fronts,” Al-Kumaim said.

Since October, the Yemeni government has labeled the Houthis a terrorist organization. It threatened to withdraw from the Stockholm Agreement and other agreements with the Houthis and resume military offensives when the Houthis shelled oil facilities in Hadramout and Shabwa with drones and missiles, halting Yemen’s oil exports.