More Iranians at imminent risk of execution: rights groups

More Iranians at imminent risk of execution: rights groups
A woman joins protestors as they gather outside of an Iranian diplomat's residence to denounce the Iranian government and the recent execution of a protester on December 10, 2022 in New York City. (AFP)
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Updated 14 December 2022
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More Iranians at imminent risk of execution: rights groups

More Iranians at imminent risk of execution: rights groups

PARIS: Several Iranians were on Sunday at risk of imminent execution over protests that have rocked the country’s clerical regime, rights groups warned, after an international backlash over Iran’s first hanging linked to the movement.
The almost three-month protest movement was sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the Islamic republic’s morality police.
It is posing the biggest challenge to the regime since the shah’s ousting in 1979.
Iran calls the protests “riots” and says they have been encouraged by its foreign foes.
Authorities are responding with a crackdown activists say aims to instill fear in the public.
Iran on Thursday executed Mohsen Shekari, 23, who had been convicted of attacking a member of the security forces. Rights groups said his legal process, which they described as a show trial, was marked by undue haste.
Iran’s judiciary has reported that 11 people received death sentences so far in connection with the protests, but campaigners say around a dozen others are facing charges that could see them also receive the death penalty.
Unless foreign governments “significantly increase” the diplomatic and economic costs to Iran, the world “is sending a green light to this carnage,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
Amnesty International said Iran was now “preparing to execute” Mahan Sadrat, 22, just a month after his “grossly unfair” trial. He was convicted of drawing a knife in the protests, accusations he strongly denied in court.
On Saturday Sadrat was transferred from Greater Tehran Prison to Rajai Shahr prison in the nearby city of Karaj, “sparking concerns that his execution may be carried out imminently,” Amnesty said.
“Like all other death row prisoners, he was denied any access to his lawyer during the interrogations, proceedings and show trial,” said another group, Oslo-based Iran Human Rights.
Amnesty warned the life of another young man arrested over the protests, Sahand Nourmohammadzadeh, was also at risk “after a fast-tracked proceeding which did not resemble a trial.”
He was sentenced to death in November on accusations of “tearing down highway railings and setting fire to rubbish cans and tires,” the group said.
Among others given the same sentence is rapper Saman Seyedi, 24, from Iran’s Kurdish minority. His mother pleaded for his life on social media in a video where she stated “my son is an artist not a rioter.”
Another dissident rapper, Toomaj Salehi, who expressed support for anti-regime protests, is charged with “corruption on earth” and could face a death sentence, Iranian judicial authorities confirmed last month.
“We fear for the life of Iranian artists who have been indicted on charges carrying the death penalty,” United Nations experts said in a statement, referring to the cases of Sayedi and Salehi.
Amnesty and IHR have also raised the case of Hamid Gharehasanlou, a medical doctor sentenced to death. They say he was tortured in custody and his wife was coerced into giving evidence against him which she later sought to retract.
“Protester executions can only be prevented by raising their political cost for the Islamic Republic,” IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said, calling for a “stronger than ever” international response.
The US, European Union members and UK strongly condemned the execution of Shekari. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it showed a “boundless contempt for human life.”
Iran on Saturday and Friday again summoned the British and German ambassadors to protest their countries’ actions, marking the 15th time in less than three months Tehran has called in foreign envoys as the demonstrations continue.
Many activists want the foreign response to go further, extending even to severing diplomatic ties with Iran and expelling Tehran’s envoys from European capitals.
After the widespread international outrage at Shekari’s execution, Iran said it was exercising restraint, both in the response by security forces, and the “proportionality” of the judicial process.
Iran’s use of the death penalty is part of a crackdown that IHR says has left at least 458 people killed by the security forces.
According to the UN, at least 14,000 have been arrested.


Watchdog votes to curb chemical exports to Syria

Watchdog votes to curb chemical exports to Syria
Updated 12 sec ago
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Watchdog votes to curb chemical exports to Syria

Watchdog votes to curb chemical exports to Syria
THE HAGUE: The world’s chemical weapons watchdog voted Thursday to curb chemical exports to Syria, accusing Damascus of violating its toxic arms control treaty.
Syria agreed in 2013 to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, shortly after an alleged chemical gas attack killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus.
But the global watchdog, based in The Hague, has since accused President Bashar Assad’s regime of continuing to attack civilians with chemical weapons in the Middle Eastern country’s brutal civil war.
Syria’s OPCW voting rights were suspended in 2021, an unprecedented rebuke, following poison gas attacks on civilians in 2017.
Damascus has denied the allegations.
On Thursday, a majority of countries at the OPCW’s annual meeting voted for “collective measures” to stop the transfer of certain chemicals and chemical-making technology to Syria.
These measures include beefing up export controls and preventing “the direct or indirect supply, sale, or transfer of chemical precursors and dual-use chemical manufacturing facilities and equipment and related technology,” the resolution said.
Put forward by 48 countries including Britain, France, Germany and the United States, the resolution said Syria had caused “serious damage to the object and purpose of the Chemical Weapons Convention.”
It cited Syria’s “continued possession and use of chemical weapons” and “its failures to submit an accurate and complete declaration and to destroy all its undeclared chemical weapons and production facilities.”
Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 after the government’s repression of peaceful demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed more than half a million people and forced around half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

Lebanese rush to plant crops as calm prevails in south

Lebanese rush to plant crops as calm prevails in south
Updated 30 November 2023
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Lebanese rush to plant crops as calm prevails in south

Lebanese rush to plant crops as calm prevails in south
  • “I work from this, I produce from this, I live from this,” Zaynab Suweidan said as she sowed wheat in the village of Yater
  • The crops should have been planted at the start of November

YATER, Lebanon: Villagers who live off the land in south Lebanon are rushing to sow their crops, making up for lost time after weeks of hostilities with Israel forced them to miss out on the start of the planting season.
“I work from this, I produce from this, I live from this,” Zaynab Suweidan said as she sowed wheat in the village of Yater, in an area hit by Israeli strikes during heavy exchanges of fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
After enduring its worst violence since a 2006 war, the area has been largely calm since Friday, when Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas agreed a temporary truce to the conflict they have been waging some 200km (120 miles) away in and around Gaza.
That war, which erupted on Oct. 7, quickly spilled into Lebanon, with the Iran-backed Hezbollah rocketing Israeli positions at the border and Israel launching air and artillery strikes in response.
Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the truce by one day on Thursday, bringing a seventh day of respite.
As a drone buzzed in the sky above her, Suweidan said she had stayed in her home throughout the hostilities even after it sustained some damage.
“Shelling has happened around us and planes launched two strikes near us, and we stayed in our house and we didn’t leave. We want to stay steadfast,” she said.
The crops should have been planted at the start of November, but she hoped the delay would not affect the yield: “Through God’s power, everything will be fine.”
Farming their land has become even more important for many in Lebanon since the economy there collapsed in a devastating financial meltdown more than four years ago.
Mousa Kawrani, a 55-year-old father of four who was planting wheat, beans and peas, said people needed to farm because they could not afford to buy everything they needed.
“We must farm. We cannot remain without farming.”


Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi arrested again

Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi arrested again
Updated 30 November 2023
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Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi arrested again

Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi arrested again
  • "Salehi has been arrested for publishing false information and disturbing public opinion", the judiciary news agency said
  • Salehi was initially sentenced to six years in prison on multiple charges

DUBAI: Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, who had been previously detained for showing support to anti-government protests and was released on bail earlier this month, was arrested again, Iran's state media reported on Thursday.
"Salehi has been arrested for publishing false information and disturbing public opinion, after being released upon an order by Iran's supreme court to revise his case", the judiciary news agency said.
Following the death in custody of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September 2022, Iran has seen months of nationwide protests that represented one of the fiercest challenges to the Islamic Republic since its establishment in 1979.
Salehi, who wrote songs about the protests, was initially sentenced to six years in prison on multiple charges, including "corruption on earth", a ruling that was then rejected by Iran's supreme court.
The 33-year-old rapper spent one year and 21 days in prison, including 252 days in solitary confinement, during which he sustained physical injuries, according to his official page on the social media website X, formerly known as Twitter.


UN peacekeepers try to stay safe amid Lebanon-Israel border flare-ups

UN peacekeepers try to stay safe amid Lebanon-Israel border flare-ups
Updated 30 November 2023
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UN peacekeepers try to stay safe amid Lebanon-Israel border flare-ups

UN peacekeepers try to stay safe amid Lebanon-Israel border flare-ups
  • Troops from the UNIFIL have repeatedly sheltered in bunkers during “intense shelling and rocket launches,” said Lt. Col. Stephen MacEoin
  • He hoped the truce in Gaza between Hamas and Israel would be extended, as it was civilians “who suffer most”

MAROUN AL-RAS, Lebanon: While trying to fulfil their mandate to keep the peace, UN soldiers deployed along Lebanon’s border with Israel during the worst hostilities there in nearly 20 years have another urgent concern: keeping their own forces safe.
Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza seven weeks ago, troops from the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have repeatedly sheltered in bunkers during “intense shelling and rocket launches,” a senior commander said during a Reuters visit to a UNIFIL base in southern Lebanon.
“I’ve got to maintain force protection as a priority while also carrying out the mission,” said Lt. Col. Stephen MacEoin, battalion commander of the Irish and Polish soldiers stationed at Camp Shamrock in the village of Tiri, near Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.
The conflict in Gaza, some 200 km (124 miles) away to the south, has seen Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, trading fire daily along the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Israeli attacks have killed about 100 people in Lebanon — 80 of them Hezbollah fighters — since Oct. 7.
MacEoin said he hoped the truce in Gaza between Hamas and Israel would be extended, as it was civilians “who suffer most” from conflict, be it in Lebanon or Gaza, and the violence in Gaza was linked to the situation in southern Lebanon.
“The concerns of the mission are that, after so many weeks of exchanges of fire, now we have a truce, a moment of calm, but that intensive changes of fire can really trigger a much wider cycle of conflict,” said UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti.
“This is the real warning and danger that everyone is facing not only in the south but in the region.”
He said UNIFIL communicated with both sides in the flare-ups on the Lebanon-Israel border to try to “de-escalate tensions.”
No peacekeepers have been killed since the escalation of hostilities. But two peacekeepers have been injured in two separate incidents and UNIFIL compounds and bases have been hit and damaged by mortar shells several times, Tenenti told Reuters.
“We’ve had a lot of firing north and south of the Blue Line...a lot of close incidents,” MacEoin said, referring to a 120-km (74 mile) demarcation drawn by the United Nations that marks the line to which Israeli forces withdrew when they left south Lebanon in 2000.
In the latest incident, a UNIFIL patrol was hit by Israeli gunfire in the vicinity of Aytaroun of southern Lebanon, although there were no casualties. The UN force called the attack on “deeply troubling.”
UNIFIL was established by the Security Council in 1978 after Israel invaded Lebanon. Its scope and size were expanded after a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah that killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 158 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
The force is deployed in southern Lebanon with the primary role of helping maintain international peace and security.
The mission says it currently has about 10,000 troops drawn from 47 countries, and about 800 civilian staff, stationed in 45 positions throughout a 1,060 square km (409 square mile) area between the Litani River and the Blue Line.
Last December, an Irish soldier serving in UNIFIL was killed after the UNIFIL vehicle he was traveling in was fired on as it traveled in southern Lebanon. Seven people were charged by a Lebanese military tribunal in January for his death, the first fatal attack on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon since 2015.
Calm had prevailed on the border since Hamas and Israel agreed a temporary truce that began on Nov. 24. But on Thursday morning the Israeli military said it intercepted an “aerial target” that crossed from Lebanon. Earlier on Thursday the two sides struck a last-minute agreement to extend the truce.


Blinken tells Netanyahu ‘imperative’ to protect Gaza civilians

Blinken tells Netanyahu ‘imperative’ to protect Gaza civilians
Updated 30 November 2023
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Blinken tells Netanyahu ‘imperative’ to protect Gaza civilians

Blinken tells Netanyahu ‘imperative’ to protect Gaza civilians
  • Stresses imperative of accounting for humanitarian and civilian protection needs in southern Gaza

JERUSALEM: Visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday, emphasized the need to protect civilians in southern Gaza, where many have fled, the State Department said.
Blinken “stressed the imperative of accounting for humanitarian and civilian protection needs in southern Gaza before any military operations there,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement, adding he “urged Israel to take every possible measure to avoid civilian harm.”