Dozens of Iran protesters risk death penalty: Rights group

Dozens of Iran protesters risk death penalty: Rights group
Iranian demonstrators take to the streets of the capital Tehran during a protest for Mahsa Amini, days after she died in police custody. (File/AFP)
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Updated 27 December 2022
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Dozens of Iran protesters risk death penalty: Rights group

Dozens of Iran protesters risk death penalty: Rights group
  • In a report Tuesday, IHR identified 100 detainees who face potential capital punishment
  • The report said many of them have limited access to legal representation

PARIS: At least 100 Iranians arrested in more than 100 days of nationwide protests face charges punishable by death, Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said Tuesday.
Protests have gripped Iran since the September 16 death in custody of Iranian-Kurdish Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress code for women.
Earlier this month, Iran executed two men in connection with the protests, an escalation of the authorities’ crackdown that activists say is meant to instill public fear.
In a report Tuesday, IHR identified 100 detainees who face potential capital punishment, including at least 11 already sentenced to death.
Five detainees on the IHR list are women.
The report said many of them have limited access to legal representation.
“By issuing death sentences and executing some of them, they (the authorities) want to make people go home,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
“It has some effect,” he told AFP, but “what we’ve observed in general is more anger against the authorities.”
“Their strategy of spreading fear through executions has failed.”
In an updated death toll issued Tuesday, IHR said 476 protesters have been killed so far.
Iran’s top security body in early December gave a toll of more than 200 people killed, including security officers.
At least 14,000 people have been arrested since the nationwide unrest began, the United Nations said last month.
Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, was hanged in public from a crane on December 12 after being sentenced by a court in Mashhad for killing two members of the security forces with a knife.
Four days earlier, Mohsen Shekari, also 23, had been executed for wounding a member of the security forces.
The judiciary has said that nine others have been handed death sentences over the protests, of whom two have been allowed retrials.
The father of death row inmate Mohammad Ghodablou has issued a plea on social media calling for his son’s release, saying “he made a big mistake.”
“Mohammad has so far had no criminal record,” the father said in a video circulated this week, claiming he suffers from a mental disorder.
Ghodablou, 22, was charged in Tehran with “corruption on earth” for “attacking police with a car, which resulted in the death of one officer and the injury of five others.”
The judiciary’s Mizan Online news website reported Monday that Ghodablou had undergone psychiatric evaluation that concluded he “was aware of the nature of his crime.”
US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) noted in a report issued Monday a rise of 88 percent in executions in 2022 compared to last year and an eight-percent rise in death sentences, the vast majority of them for murder or drug offenses.
According to London-based rights group Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in its use of the death penalty, with at least 314 people executed in 2021.


More than 100 dead, scores more injured in Iraq wedding inferno

More than 100 dead, scores more injured in Iraq wedding inferno
Updated 15 sec ago
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More than 100 dead, scores more injured in Iraq wedding inferno

More than 100 dead, scores more injured in Iraq wedding inferno
  • The fire ripped through a large event hall after fireworks were lit during the celebration
  • civil defense authorities say prefabricated panels inside hall were 'highly flammable'

QARAQOSH: At least 100 people were killed and more than 150 injured when a fire broke out during a wedding at an event hall in the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, officials said early Wednesday.
At the main hospital in the predominantly Christian town east of Mosul, an AFP photographer saw ambulances arriving with sirens blaring and dozens of people gathering in the courtyard to donate blood.
Others could be seen gathering in front of the open doors of a refrigerated truck loaded with black body bags.
Citing a “preliminary tally,” Iraq’s official INA news agency reported that health authorities in Nineveh province had “counted 100 dead and more than 150 injured in the fire at a marriage hall in Hamdaniyah,” as the town is also known.
The casualty toll was confirmed to AFP by health ministry spokesman Saif Al-Badr.
Badr said most of the injured were being treated for burns or oxygen deprivation, adding that there had also been crowd crushes at the scene.
In a statement, civil defense authorities reported the presence of prefabricated panels inside the event hall that were “highly flammable and contravened safety standards.”
The danger was compounded by the “release of toxic gases linked to the combustion of the panels,” which contained plastic.
“The fire caused some parts of the ceiling to fall due to the use of highly flammable, low-cost construction materials,” the statement said, with “preliminary information” suggesting fireworks were to blame for the blaze.
Wedding guest Rania Waad, who sustained a burn to her hand, said that as the bride and groom “were slow dancing, the fireworks started to climb to the ceiling (and) the whole hall went up in flames.”
“We couldn’t see anything,” the 17-year-old said, choking back sobs. “We were suffocating, we didn’t know how to get out.”
Emergency crews were seen sifting through the charred remains of the event hall early Wednesday, inspecting the scene by flashlight.

In a brief statement, Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani called on the health and interior ministers to “mobilize all rescue efforts” to help the victims of the fire.
The health ministry said “medical aid trucks” had been dispatched to the area from Baghdad and other provinces, adding that its teams in Nineveh had been mobilized to care for the injured.
Safety standards in Iraq’s construction sector are often disregarded, and the country, whose infrastructure is in disrepair after decades of conflict, is often the scene of fatal fires and accidents.
In July 2021, a fire in the Covid unit of a hospital in southern Iraq killed more than 60 people.
And in April of the same year, exploding oxygen tanks triggered a fire at a hospital in Baghdad — also dedicated to Covid patients — that killed more than 80 people.
Like many Christian towns in the Nineveh Plains, northeast of Mosul, Qaraqosh was ransacked by jihadists of the Daesh group after they entered the town in 2014.
Qaraqosh and its churches were slowly rebuilt after the group’s ouster in 2017, and Pope Francis visited the town in March 2021.


US to admit Israel into visa waiver program

US to admit Israel into visa waiver program
Updated 27 September 2023
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US to admit Israel into visa waiver program

US to admit Israel into visa waiver program

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration is set to announce on Wednesday that it will admit Israel into the United States Visa Waiver Program (VWP), allowing visa-free entry by Israeli citizens from Nov. 30, officials said.
The decision, which Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday was expected, is a win for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist government, whose relations with Washington have been strained over its judiciary overhaul plan and its policies toward the Palestinians.
For admission to the program that allows visitors to stay for up to 90 days without a visa, Washington requires countries to meet requirements on issues such as counterterrorism, law enforcement, immigration enforcement, document security, and border management.
Countries must also treat all US travelers equally, regardless of other passports they hold.
In Israel’s case, that means free passage for Palestinian Americans at its airports and on journeys with the occupied Palestinian territories.
Some Palestinians have protested against Israel’s entry into the VWP, citing what they say are decades of discriminatory treatment of Arab Americans and harassment at Israel’s borders.
In a pilot period since July 20, Israel has eased access for Palestinian Americans through its borders and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Between 45,000 and 60,000 Palestinian Americans live in the West Bank, a US official estimated. An Israeli official put the figure lower, saying that of 70,000 to 90,000 Palestinian Americans worldwide, 15,000 to 20,000 are West Bank residents.
There are 40 countries in the VWP, with nations added infrequently, Croatia being the most recent in 2021.
A group of 15 US senators wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sept. 8, voicing serious concerns that Israel was not in compliance with requirements for reciprocal treatment of all US citizens.
On Tuesday, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee on Tuesday filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security, seeking to block Israel's entry to the programme.
A US judge in Detroit denied an emergency motion on procedural grounds, saying the department had not been provided proper notice of the lawsuit.
In Aug. 2021, the White House had said it was working with Israel towards its inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program.


Lebanese army says it exchanged smoke-bomb fire with Israel

Lebanese army says it exchanged smoke-bomb fire with Israel
Updated 27 September 2023
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Lebanese army says it exchanged smoke-bomb fire with Israel

Lebanese army says it exchanged smoke-bomb fire with Israel
  • Tensions have flared along the frontier this summer, with rockets fired at Israel during flare-ups of Israeli-Palestinian violence

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s army said on Wednesday it had exchanged smoke bombs with Israeli troops at the border, the second such incident in a week.
The Lebanese army, in an online statement, said Israeli troops had fired smoke bombs at a Lebanese patrol that was accompanying workers removing “infringements” that the army said had been set up by the Israelis north of the Blue Line.
Tensions have flared along the frontier this summer, with rockets fired at Israel during flare-ups of Israeli-Palestinian violence, and members of the heavily armed Lebanese group Hezbollah or its supporters facing off with Israeli forces.
Neither the Israeli military nor the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon immediately responded to Reuters requests for comment.
The current demarcation line between the two countries is known as the Blue Line, a frontier mapped by the United Nations that marks the line to which Israeli forces withdrew when they left south Lebanon in 2000.
Lebanese army troops “responded by firing smoke bombs toward enemy troops,” the statement said.
It was the second such incident in a week after the troops exchanged tear gas and smoke bombs over a similar dispute at the Blue Line.


Third Bahraini soldier dies after Houthi drone attack close to Saudi border

Third Bahraini soldier dies after Houthi drone attack close to Saudi border
Updated 27 September 2023
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Third Bahraini soldier dies after Houthi drone attack close to Saudi border

Third Bahraini soldier dies after Houthi drone attack close to Saudi border

DUBAI: A third Bahraini serviceman died on Wednesday following a Houthi drone attack on Monday against forces of the Saudi-led coalition in Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen, Bahrain’s state news agency said.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement has battled the Saudi-led coalition since 2015 in a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and left 80 percent of the population dependent on aid.
The drone attack represents a major escalation after more than a year of relative calm in Yemen as peace efforts gain momentum. It could jeopardize talks between Saudi and Houthi officials who have just held another round of negotiations on a potential agreement toward ending the conflict.


Iran says it puts imaging satellite sucessfully into orbit amid tensions with West

Iran says it puts imaging satellite sucessfully into orbit amid tensions with West
Updated 27 September 2023
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Iran says it puts imaging satellite sucessfully into orbit amid tensions with West

Iran says it puts imaging satellite sucessfully into orbit amid tensions with West
  • here was no immediate acknowledgment from Western officials of the launch

DUBAI: Iran claimed on Wednesday that it has successfully put an imaging satellite into space.
The state-run IRNA news agency, quoting the country’s Communication Minister Isa Zarepour, said the Noor-3 satellite had been put in an orbit 450 kilometers (280 miles) above the Earth’s surface.
There was no immediate acknowledgment from Western officials of the launch or of the satellite being put into orbit. Iran has had a series of failed launches in recent years.
Zarepour said the aerospace arm of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched the satellite carrier, which has had success in launching satellites from its previously secret launch program. Authorities did not immediately release images of the launch.
The United States has alleged that Iran’s satellite launches defy a UN Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The US intelligence community’s 2022 threat assessment claims such a satellite launch vehicle “shortens the timeline” to an intercontinental ballistic missile for Iran as it uses “similar technologies.”
Iran, which has long said it does not seek nuclear weapons, previously maintained that its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component. US intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran abandoned an organized military nuclear program in 2003. Iran has maintained its program is for peaceful purposes.