More crackdown on Iran

 

Iran has arrested 20 people including some foreigners near the border with Iraq and accused them of belonging to a spy network, the state-run news agency reported Monday. The IRNA news agency did not provide the nationalities of the foreigners. Iran last month claimed to have uncovered spy rings organized by the United States and its Western allies. IRNA, quoting the head of the intelligence department in the Kerman Shah province, said the 20 were trained by intelligence services “of the enemy” for economic, military, political, cultural and social purposes. It did not elaborate.

Iranian authorities have charged four Iranian-Americans with endangering national security. Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was jailed in early May. The other four are Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with George Soros’ Open Society Institute; Parnaz Azima, a journalist for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda; and Ali Shakeri, a founding board member of the University of California, Irvine, Center for Citizen Peacebuilding.

Iran arrests 20 people accused of being spies – USATODAY.com

And more:

Iranian police and plainclothes security agents broke up a sit-in marking Monday’s anniversary of a bloody raid on a Tehran university dormitory, then stormed the offices of the country’s main pro-democracy student group, student leaders said.

Fifteen students and a mother were beaten and detained, they said. There was no confirmation by the government, which rarely comments on such arrests.

Iran had banned street protests to mark the anniversary of July 9, 1999 raid by police and hard-line vigilantes on a Tehran University dormitory that killed one person and injured at least 20.

Those attacks triggered six days of nationwide protests, the worst since the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-U.S. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and brought hard-line clerics to power.

Pouya Ifaei, a student leader, said the students organized their sit-in at Amir Kabir University Monday to protest the continued detention of eight students been in custody since May on vague charges and to mark the anniversary of the 1999 attack.

“Six students were attacked, beaten up and then detained by police and plainclothes security agents as they staged a sit-in at the main entrance to Amir Kabir University,” Nariman Mostafavi, another student leader, told The Associated Press.

But there are more bad news from Teheran. My friend Aquiles had sent me a tip (in Spanish) but I have managed to found nearly everything in English. You can read it in the following posts:

Stoning was carried in Iran:

Jafar Kiani, the man who was sentenced to stoning, along with his partner, Makroumeh Ebrahimi, was stoned. The stoning was arranged for two weeks ago, causing huge disgust in the blogosphere which helped aware the public, something which only paused the verdict, he was stoned on Thursday. There is still no news about Makroumeh, who is still held in prison in Qazvin. One of her lawyers has stated his worries about her, “They are going to carry the verdict on her, too”. The couple have married together thirteen years ago, and have an eleven-year-old child. The judge has not accepted their marriage and has called it adultery. The news is both approved by activists (also, also, also) and by the news sources close to the reformists. Reportedly, the public hesitated from attending the stoning and thus the Police stoned the man. The stoning carried out in Aghche-kand village, in Takistan, Qazvin Province. The Judiciary is still not commenting on the news, but local sources have undoubtedly verified it (source: Roozna).

Jafar Kiani was killed yesterday.Kamangir also reports that a blogger has visited the place where the stoning took place: his blood can still be seen.

The woman’s sentence is still pending.

Just read everything in the links posted before.Another 20 members of different gangs will be also executed on charges of rape, acting against God’s rule, and homosexuality. Asked if the execution will be in public, Jamshidi, the Judiciary’s spokesman, said “that depends on the Judiciary’s decision”. “There are other cases in other cities as well”, he added.

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Lebanon and Yemen’s attacks: the wounded and the culprits

Apparently the Lebanon ambush which killed 6 UN Spanish peacekeepers and wounded another two, was a work of Syria, according to diplomatic sources. The Lebanese journalist Jeanine el Jalakh published in the newspaper l’Orient-Le Jour, an article about the geopolitical and strategic implications of the attack. The analysis was made by a diplomatic civil servant considered by Ms. el Halakh as “ver well informed” and “with great access to the key points of what it’s happening in the area“. The diplomatic argues that the attack could well answer to an Syrian agressive strategy to show everyone that Al-Assad’s regime is not frail, and that it is determined to respond heavily.

In fact, the source considers that there will be more attacks on a near future as a way to consolidate Syrian power in the are.

But there are some things which must be considered by all the countries involved in Lebanon. The first is that, after a year, deployed in Lebanon, those forces have been unable to enforce UNSC Resolution 1701, because they don’t have an express order to do that. The second is that no one has worried about neutralising the Jihadi propaganda that announces that those forces are there to defend Israel.

The most probable responsible of the attack is a Salafist Jihadi group with Syrian Government’s links or, at least, with links to some Syrian elements. Syria would follow two objectives: the first one is make themselves essential to the solutions in the region; and the second is to prevent anything which could stain Syrian image, beginning with the assasination of the Lebanese Minister Rafik Hariri.

Less probable is the hypothetical participation of Hizibollah. The terrorist organization has had the oportunity of seeing the Spanish troops in action. Spanish troops have controlled the Syrian frontier, and has shown the real intentions of Hizbullah against Israel, after unconvering two important deposit of weapons belonging to them. The first deposit was discovered on Nov, 27th 2006 (more than 300 mortar grenades and 27 trap bombs) and the snd of them on April 7th.

There are also rumours about a Hezbullah coup this summer:

Al Mustaqbal, the pro-Hariri daily is publishing reports about a potential coup d’etat by Hezbollah as a “preemptive strike.” The information about Iran-Hezbollah plans for a coup, were made available as early as 2006 by the Lebanese international lobby (also known as the World Council of the Cedars Revolution). The March 14 coalition chose to release this information now, as the other side is also leaking it in an attempt to intimidate the Seniora cabinet. Hence, as both sides are leaking it simultaneously, it has been picked up by international monitors of the various media, including MEMRI. In short, the plan of a coup d’etat by Hezbollah, and backed by Iran and Syria is two years old, but it is surfacing now as the crush moment draws dramatically closer. “

And what is Zapatero doing? Negotiating with Hezbullah. There are doubts about the possibility of the terrorist organization being involved in the killing of Spanish soldiers and … there have been, at least, 3 meetings between Hezbullah representatives and civil and military Spanish representatives.

Nothing has been said about the object of the negotiations. [As ever with this fuck**g Government: no information to the people… why on earth?? There is no need ].

About Yemen. The last tourist who still is in Yemen, is in a very bad state. She cannot even been returned to Spain as she has not responded well to the treatment after the operation., made by the doctors in an attempt to save her life.

But Moratinos has received all the wounded tourists, while neither he -nor any other representative of the Spanish Government that I know of- cared to receive the two wounded soldiers returning from Lebanon. Does this mean that the tourists, who went to Yemen to just have fun, are more important than the soldiers who have been sent to war oops, no, to the Srta.Pepis nurse training course by this Government?

[Most of this post is a translation of several articles appeared on Spanish press. The links to them are in the Spanish blog posts’ links that appear here. But don’t worry they are not in El País or in any other huge and important media outlets.].

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