Roxana Saberi

Iran court sentences Christian pastor convert to death
Feb. 22, 2012
By Lisa  Daftari
FoxNews.com

A trial court in Iran has issued its final verdict, ordering a Christian pastor to be put to death for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity, according to sources close to the pastor and his legal team.

Supporters fear Youcef Nadarkhani, a 34-year-old father of two who was arrested over two years ago on charges of apostasy, may now be executed at any time without prior warning, as death sentences in Iran may be carried out immediately or dragged out for years.

It is unclear whether Nadarkhani can appeal the execution order.

“The world needs to stand up and say that a man cannot be put to death because of his faith,” said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

“This one case is not just about one execution. We have been able to expose the system instead of just letting one man disappear, like so many other Christians have in the past.”

It is also feared that Nadarkhani will be executed in retaliation as Iran endures crippling sanctions and international pressure in response to its nuclear agenda and rogue rhetoric. The number of executions in Iran has increased significantly in the last month.

“This is defiance,” Sekulow said. “They want to say they will carry out what they say they will do.”

The order to execute Nadarkhani came only days after lawmakers in Congress supported a resolution sponsored by Pennsylvania Rep. Joseph Pitts denouncing the apostasy charge and calling for his immediate release.

“Iran has become more isolated because of their drive for nuclear weapons, and the fundamentalist government has stepped up persecution of religious minorities to deflect criticism,” Pitts, a Republican, told FoxNews.com. “The persecuted are their own citizens, whose only crime is practicing their faith.”

The ACLJ has been a major driving force in keeping Nadarkhani’s case in the international spotlight. Many other advocacy groups and human rights organizations also have mounted global campaigns and petitions against the Iranian government, and experts credit Nadarkhani’s international support for keeping him alive.

The ACLJ recently launched a Twitter campaign to publicize Nadarkhani’s case, asking participants to dedicate a daily tweet to “Tweet for Youcef,” stating the number of days he has been imprisoned (currently 863) and ending the tweet with “ViaOfficialACLJ,” sending readers back to the organization’s website where they could learn more about his case.

Tweets have reached 157 countries and over 400,000 people.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 89 members of Congress, along with the European Union, France, Great Britain, Mexico and Germany, have condemned Iran for arresting Nadarkhani and have called for his quick release.

Nadarkhani was arrested in October 2009 and was tried and found guilty of apostasy by a lower court in Gilan, a province in Rasht. He was then given verbal notification of an impending death-by-hanging sentence.

His lawyers appealed the decision under the premise that Nadarkhani was never a Muslim at the age of majority, and the case was sent to Iran’s Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision of execution, provided it could be proven that he had been a practicing Muslim from the age of adulthood, 15 in Islamic law, to age 19, which was when he converted.

The lower court then ruled that Nadarkhani had not practiced Islam during his adult life but still upheld the apostasy charge because he was born into a Muslim family.

The court then gave Nadarkhani the opportunity to recant, as the law requires a man to be given three chances to recant his beliefs and return to Islam.

His first option was to convert back to Islam. When he refused, he was asked to declare Muhammad a prophet, and still he declined.

Iran’s judiciary had delayed in issuing a final verdict, fearing the decision would have far-reaching political implications.

Sources say Nadarkhani has been advised by family members, lawyers and members of his church to remain silent throughout his ordeal, out of fear that authorities may use his statements against him, a strategy commonly employed by the regime.

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran
Feb. 22, 2012
Rights Groups Prompt Tougher International Laws Regarding Jamming

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran today welcomed a new International Telecommunication Union (ITU) regulation requiring governments take “necessary action” to stop jamming of satellite broadcasts from within their jurisdiction.

The ITU and its member states should immediately start monitoring Iran’s compliance with the new regulation and take any additional steps needed to ensure Iranian authorities stop interfering with satellite broadcasts, the Campaign added.

“This is the first meaningful action taken by the ITU and the UN to make legal provisions to counter censorship of satellite programs within various countries,” said Aliakbar Mousavi, former Iranian MP who served as deputy head of the Parliamentary Telecommunications Committee.

At the ITU’s 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-12) last week, 153 of the 165 member states in attendance voted to amend their telecommunication regulations. The new amendment regarding jamming reads, “If an administration has information of an infringement [of the governing telecommunications regulations] committed by a station under its jurisdiction the administration shall ascertain the facts and take the necessary actions.”

WRC regulations constitute a legally binding international treaty on radio-frequency and satellite broadcasts. The amendment, approved on 17 February 2012 in Geneva, makes particular reference to infringements of Article 45 of the ITU’s Constitution, which prohibits “harmful interference” with broadcasts.

“The Iranian regime will have no more excuses to breach these regulations. I hope similar steps will be taken by the ITU regarding Internet censorship in countries like Iran as well,” said Mousavi, a longtime advocate of freedom of information and expression.

The WRC-12’s decision came after the Campaign, other human rights organizations, and broadcasters called on governments, corporations, and international telecommunication bodies to take action to stop satellite jamming. Just last month, the Campaign urged the WRC-12 to take decisive steps to end the Iranian government’s illegal and widespread jamming of satellite signals.

Satellite jamming and Internet censorship in Iran has increased dramatically since 2009. Targeted satellite stations such as BBC Persian, VOA, and other Persian-language news outlets operating outside Iran have become an important source of information for millions of Iranians inside the country, where independent media outlets are severely censored and repeatedly shutdown.

The ITU, the telecommunications arm of the United Nations, has received numerous complaints about the jamming of Persian and Arabic broadcasts in Iran and Syria on satellites carried by Eutelsat and Arabsat.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and the Campaign’s spokesperson Hadi Ghaemi expressed concern that Eutelsat, whose satellites host Iran’s state media network the IRIB, and other telecommunications companies have done little or nothing to hold Iran accountable for its censorship. Eutelsat’s failure comes despite the fact that much of the Islamic Republic’s jamming is aimed at other Eutelsat clients, BBC Persian and Voice of America (VOA), and the IRIB has itself been implicated in gross human rights violations for producing televised forced confessions of prisoners of conscience.

“The ITU has now made Iran’s legal obligations perfectly clear. But the international community, including telecommunications corporations like Eutelsat, needs to sustain its efforts to make sure Iran stops jamming satellite broadcasts,” said Ghaemi.

The latest in a series of videos about human rights violations in Iran. From the creators of Education Under Fire:

Education Under Fire has just released the latest in a series of videos about Iranian citizens who are persecuted by the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is the story of Soheila Afnani, speaking about her father Nusratullah Subhani, who was imprisoned and killed in the mid-1980s in Iran. Please help us share this beautiful and moving story with others. Kindly tweet, post, blog and email this story to your contacts and networks as you can.

Reporters Without Borders
Feb. 21, 2012

Reporters Without Borders is extremely concerned about the way that six journalists and netizens who were arrested in January – Said Madani, Ehssan Hoshmand, Mohammad Solimaninya, Parastoo Dokoohaki, Marzieh Rasouli and Sahamoldin Borghani – are being treated in detention.

According to the information obtained by Reporters Without Borders, they have been denied their most basic rights and have been placed in solitary confinement in Section 209 or Section 2A of Tehran’s Evin prison to get them to make televised confessions implicating foreign-based media and opposition groups. The intelligence ministry runs Section 209, while the Revolutionary Guards run Section 2A.

The family of Saeed Malekpour, a netizen who has been sentenced to death, has meanwhile reported that his sentence order has been sent to the office responsible for carrying out sentences, which means that he could executed at any time during the coming hours or days. Two other netizens, Vahid Asghari and Ahmadreza Hashempour, recently had their death sentences confirmed by the supreme court.

“As tension between Iran and the international community mounts, the regime is increasingly targeting independent journalists,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The level of violence towards imprisoned journalists has become intolerable. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay and the special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, must intervene as quickly as possible to protect endangered journalists and netizens.”

The journalist Mahssa Amrabadi has just been sentenced by a Tehran revolutionary court to five years in prison (one definite and four conditional) for giving interviews and writing articles in support of her imprisoned husband, fellow journalist Masoud Bastani. She was previously sentenced by another Tehran revolutionary court on 14 October 2010 to a year in prison for various activities including “being in contact with the families of other prisoners.”

Her husband, who used to work for the daily Farhikhteghan, is in Rajaishahr prison. Arrested on 4 July 2009, he was tried along many other journalists in the Stalinist-style mass trials that the government began organizing in Tehran in August 2009. A revolutionary court sentenced him to six years in prison on 1 November 2009.

Background on six arrested in January

Said Madani and Ehssan Hoshmand are both journalists. They were arrested by plainclothes men at their Tehran homes on 7 January. Confirming their arrest the next day, intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi said they had “envisaged carrying out American plans to disrupt the parliamentary elections by using cyber-space and social networks.” This was a clearly trumped-up charge by a regime which, without any evidence, systematically accuses dissidents of being spies working for the United States or Israel.

Mohammad Solimaninya is the head of u24, a social networking website for Iranian professionals that has been rendered inaccessible. He has also created and hosts the websites of many civil society organizations, NGOs and Iranian intellectuals. He was arrested on 10 January after being summoned before a revolutionary tribunal in Karaj, a town 20 km north of Tehran. Plainclothes intelligence ministry officials searched his home the same day, confiscating his computer, hard disks and CDs. His family still does not know why he was arrested.

Parastoo Dokoohaki is a blogger and women’s rights activist. Marzieh Rasouli is a journalist who writes for the arts and culture sections of several newspapers. The two women were arrested separately by intelligence ministry officials at their Tehran homes on 15 January on charges of anti-government propaganda.

Sahamoldin Borghani is a journalist who writes for the news website Irdiplomacy. He was arrested at his Tehran home on 18 January. Members of his family, who were absent at the time of his arrest, found a note attached to the door saying: “We have taken Shama and his equipment.” They do not know why he was arrested. Irdiplomacy is headed by Mohammad Sadegh Kharazi, a former Iranian ambassador in France who is close to reformist former president Mohammad Khatami.

The New York Times
By J. David Goodman
Feb. 21, 2012

The mother of an American man sentenced to death in Iran for espionage visited her gaunt and frightened son on death row in a Tehran prison this month, as his lawyers in Iran began an appeal of his conviction, an American lawyer representing the family said on Tuesday.

Benhaz Hekmati traveled alone to Tehran on Jan. 28 to visit her son, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a former Marine who, according to rights activists, is the first American citizen sentenced to death in Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Mrs. Hekmati stayed with close relatives, and visited her son at Evin Prison three times, spending roughly an hour with him each time, before returning to the United States last week.

“She had no restrictions on her movement — she was able to meet her son, to see her son and to hug and hold him,” said the lawyer, Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former diplomat who negotiated the release of another American of Iranian descent in 2010. “Her purpose for being there was to be the mother.”

According to his mother, Mr. Hekmati, 28, appeared to have lost weight and remained in a state of shock about his situation.

“While he is disappointed by the circumstances he finds himself in, he is hopeful that the truth will be known and he will be able to come home very soon,” Mrs. Hekmati said in a prepared statement. She described the Iranian officials she met as “hospitable” and “respectful.”

Shortly before her trip to Tehran, a court-appointed lawyer in Iran filed an appeal of Mr. Hekmati’s sentence, which under Iranian law can be done only within 20 days of sentencing. The family has since hired a private lawyer in Tehran to represent him.

Mr. Prosper and a public relations company representing Mr. Hekmati’s interests have largely remained tight-lipped about their efforts, rather than mount the kind of public campaign that has often followed the imprisonment of other Americans.

A Web site calling for Mr. Hekmati’s release, FreeAmir.org, has not been updated since January, shortly after the death sentence from the Islamic Revolution Court Branch 15 in Tehran.

“By remaining discreet,” Mr. Prosper said, “you are not ruling out the option to be more public later. A more visible campaign has not been ruled out.”

The arc of Mr. Hekmati’s case has closely tracked the international war of words over Iran’s nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at developing weapons but which Tehran insists is peaceful.

Mr. Prosper, a Los Angeles-based partner in the firm Arent Fox, said the Hekmati family wanted to avoid having Mr. Hekmati’s situation get caught up in the broader back-and-forth between Iran and the United States or in the speculation over a pre-emptive military strike by Israel.

“We’re interested in making this about Amir, and not about geopolitical issues,” he said.

The next step for the family and its lawyers would be to gain access to the case file to learn exactly which facts underpin the Iranian conviction.

The details have remained murky since Mr. Hekmati was detained in August, when, according to his family, he had been visiting his grandparents in Iran.

Iran did not even confirm that he was in custody until December, when he was put in front of Iranian state television cameras for a national broadcast. In the interview, shown on Dec. 18, Mr. Hekmati was heard to say that he had enlisted in the military out of high school in 2001, had received language and espionage training and had been sent to Iran by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The C.I.A. has declined to comment on the case. The White House and the State Department have denied that Mr. Hekmati, who was born in Flagstaff, Ariz., was a spy and have called for his immediate release.

Iran has a history of arresting Americans and convicting them of spying, and then freeing them once bail money is paid.

“Experience shows that the Iranian officials are very concerned about public relations and how they are reflected in global media,” said Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University. “The more public this becomes, the more political it becomes.”

Haleh Esfandiari, who was jailed in Iran for more than three months in 2007, said that public attention helped secure her freedom. “Everywhere the Iranian diplomats went, they were asked about me,” she said.

But Ms. Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said that though Mr. Hekmati’s sentence might never be carried out, negotiations over his fate were unlikely to be swift.

“I don’t want to sound pessimistic,” she said, “but this might stretch on for years.”

Feb. 19, 2012
(Reuters) – Iran has stopped selling crude to British and French companies, the oil ministry said on Sunday, in a retaliatory measure against fresh EU sanctions on the Islamic state’s lifeblood, oil.

“Exporting crude to British and French companies has been stopped … we will sell our oil to new customers,” spokesman Alireza Nikzad was quoted as saying by the ministry of petroleum website.

The European Union in January decided to stop importing crude from Iran from July 1 over its disputed nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at building bombs. Iran denies this.

Iran’s oil minister said on February 4 that the Islamic state would cut its oil exports to “some” European countries.

The European Commission said last week that the bloc would not be short of oil if Iran stopped crude exports, as they have enough in stock to meet their needs for around 120 days.

Industry sources told Reuters on February 16 that Iran’s top oil buyers in Europe were making substantial cuts in supply months in advance of European Union sanctions, reducing flows to the continent in March by more than a third – or over 300,000 barrels daily.

France’s Total has already stopped buying Iran’s crude, which is subject to fresh EU embargoes. Market sources said Royal Dutch Shell has scaled back sharply.

Among European nations, debt-ridden Greece is most exposed to Iranian oil disruption.

Motor Oil Hellas of Greece was thought to have cut out Iranian crude altogether and compatriot Hellenic Petroleum along with Spain’s Cepsa and Repsol were curbing imports from Iran.

Iran was supplying more than 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) to the EU plus Turkey in 2011, industry sources said.

By the start of this year imports had sunk to about 650,000 bpd as some customers cut back in anticipation of an EU ban.

Saudi Arabia says it is prepared to supply extra oil either by topping up existing term contracts or by making rare spot market sales. Iran has criticized Riyadh for the offer.

Iran said the cut will have no impact on its crude sales, warning that any sanctions on its oil will raise international crude prices.

Brent crude oil prices were up $1 a barrel to $118.35 shortly after Iran’s state media announced last week that Tehran had cut oil exports to six European states. The report was denied shortly afterwards by Iranian officials.

“We have our own customers … The replacements for these companies have been considered by Iran,” Nikzad said.

EU’s new sanctions includes a range of extra restrictions on Iran that went well beyond U.N. sanctions agreed last month and included a ban on dealing with Iranian banks and insurance companies and steps to prevent investment in Tehran’s lucrative oil and gas sector, including refining.

The mounting sanctions are aimed at putting financial pressure on the world’s fifth largest crude oil exporter, which has little refining capacity and has to import about 40 percent of its gasoline needs for its domestic consumption.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by David Cowell)

My dad’s new book is out. It’s available here.

An Invitation to Persian Poetry
(2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded)
(Los Angeles, Ketab Corp. 2012)
Paperback, 320 pages
Text in English
Selections from 124 classical and modern Persian poets
Translated from Persian by Reza Saberi
See excerpt below

Khosravâni
(4th cen. HQ/10th cen. CE)

The night of your union, like the wind, is unattainable,
While your separation’s grief seems a thousand years long.

Long nights, long sufferings, and long struggles—
How do you think I fare in these three ordeals?

Many a night I tolerate your separation,
Hoping that one day I might be united with you.

Every night the thought of you comes to me.
How strange that all night my soul is at your thought’s service!

You had promised me three kisses from your beauty spot,
Make sure you pay lest you remain indebted to me.

O my dark-eyed, moon-like beauty, I never knew that
A fortnight moon could have the glance of a gazelle.