Free Republic

Top News Story Iran Focus Tehran, Iran, Aug. 03 – Heavy clashes which broke out between protesters and State Security Forces on Wednesday in the Kurdish town of Saqqez, northwest Iran, have claimed 11 lives, according to Kurdish sources. Witnesses reported that agents of the SSF fired lethal rounds on protestors from helicopters in the air. Iran’s state-run media and officials have confirmed extensive clashes in the western regions of the country. The state-run news agency ILNA reported on Wednesday that provincial governors of Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan, deputy chiefs of security in the Interior and Intelligence Ministries, deputy...

Top News Story Ganji's Wife Appeals to the World BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun August 2, 2005 WASHINGTON - Defying warnings from the Iranian regime ordering her not to talk to foreign reporters, the wife of dissident journalist Akbar Ganji yesterday told The New York Sun that she has had no choice but to appeal to the international community to save the life of her husband, who today enters Day 53 of a hunger strike. Meanwhile in New York, a spokesman for Secretary-General Annan says his boss has personally intervened with the mullahs on Mr....

Top News Story CBC News Iran pledged to restart part of its nuclear program on Monday after the European Union missed a deadline to deliver proposals for economic and political incentives. The EU asked for an extension of an Aug. 1 deadline to submit proposals, saying they would be ready by Aug. 7. The EU is offering the incentives so Iran will limit its nuclear program. A senior official with Iran's nuclear program told Reuters news agency on Sunday that plans to enrich uranium would definitely proceed. "As we did not receive the EU proposal, naturally we will definitely...

Top News Story Iran: Europe Proposes Nonaggression Pact Sunday July 31, 2005 12:01 PMTEHRAN, Iran (AP)- Iran's top nuclear negotiator said his European counterparts have proposed a guarantee that Iran won't be invaded if Tehran agrees to a permanent halt on uranium enrichment, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said on Sunday. Hasan Rowhani said the proposal is under discussion by Europeans and includes several important points such as ``guarantees about Iran's integrity, independence, national sovereignty'' and ``nonaggression toward Iran,'' the agency reported. ``If Europe enjoys a serious political will about Iran's nuclear fuel cycle, there will be the...

Top News Story Iran demands EU make nuclear offer by August 1 TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran demanded on Saturday that the European Union submit proposals in a dispute over its nuclear programme by August 1 rather than take a week longer.The European Union -- represented by Britain, France and Germany -- is due to offer Iran a limited package of economic and political incentives to give up work that the United States suspects is a veil for efforts to build a nuclear bomb.In return, the EU wants Iran to agree to maintain indefinitely its suspension of uranium enrichment, nuclear...

Top News Story Ganji DyingGooya News: They are reporting Tehran's Prosecutor, Mortezavi, said that Ganji may not survive the night.BBC Persian News: Quoted Ganji's wife as saying her husband may be living his last days. A Daily Briefing of Major News Stories on Iran: Muslim Wakeup reported that the International Committee in Support of Akbar Ganji, placed a full-page ad in the New York Times, appealing to the United Nations Secretary General to work for his immediate release.BBC News reported that the wife of journalist Akbar Ganji, says officials will not let her visit her husband, 49 days into...

Top News Story Iran's Students Find Inspiration in Ganji's Protest BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun July 28, 2005 WASHINGTON - A spokesman for Iran's union of student organizations, Tahkim Vahdat, says a hunger strike by jailed dissident journalist, Akbar Ganji, has inspired the country's democracy movement.Separately, the regime, which is preparing for its new hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to take office on August 6, said yesterday that Iran plans to restart some nuclear activities as soon as next month, according to the Associated Press. Iran also has developed solid-fuel technology that will improve the accuracy...

Top News Story A Tipping Point for TehranAn ExcerptNir Boms and Reza Bulorchi, The Wall Street Journal: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's "elected" president, will officially assume his post next month. The elections, no doubt, were a sham and the controversy about voting irregularities is far from settled. Iran's opposition sources revealed that the national ID cards of about five million dead people were provided to regime supporters, enabling them to vote multiple times at multiple locations. So Mr. Ahmadinejad's victory had little to do with the fact that he campaigned as the "populist" son of a blacksmith and hoisted the...

Top News Story Iran press reports Kurdish riots By Frances Harrison BBC News, Tehran The Iranian media has reported more disturbances in Kurdish areas of the country after several days of riots. Two people were wounded on Monday when "hooligans" caused disorder in the town of Oshnavieh, the hardline newspaper Jumhuri Islami said. But Kurdish journalists report that three people were killed on Monday and seven died in previous days. Kurds are saying the unrest is a sign of frustration over the denial of minority rights in Iran. Chief among these is frustration over the denial of the right...

Top News Story Havel Joins Bush, Sharansky in Plea for Ganji's Life BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun July 25, 2005 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/17463 WASHINGTON - A new letter from Iranian dissident journalist Akbar Ganji, authenticated yesterday by his wife, predicts that if he dies, his death will "water the harvest of freedom."Also, a former Czech president, Vaclav Havel, has joined President Bush; a former Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, and European Union leaders in calling for Mr. Ganji's unconditional release from prison by the Islamic Republic. This newspaper has called Mr. Ganji, who has become a symbol...

Top News Story Alliance of Iranian Students For the past eight days, the city of Mahabad, dominated by Kurdish ethnic groups, was the scene of bloody clashes between defiant freedom-demanding demonstrators and the Islamic Security Forces. Martial Law has been virtually declared in this city. Hundreds of young residents have been arrested and many have been tortured. Today, 23 July two severely wounded youth have been transferred to the public hospital where they are under intense care. Much of the public have closed businesses and gathered in protest in front of the city's prison. Last week in the city...

Top News Story The Washington Post ignores Al Qaeda Leaders Iran connection An Excerpt: Craig Whitlock, Washington Post: Experts Say Radicals In London, Egypt May Have Followed OrdersThe back-to-back nature of the deadly attacks in Egypt and London, as well as similarities in the methods used, suggests that the al Qaeda leadership may have given the orders for both operations and is a clear sign that Osama bin Laden and his deputies remain in control of the network, according to interviews with counterterrorism analysts and government officials in Europe and the Middle East. READ MORE DoctorZin:The Washington Post fails...

Top News Story Martial law declared in Mahabad, tension is striking high KURDISTAN, July 22 (DozaMe.org) - 13 days after the killing of Shivane Qadri, demonstrations are raging on in the city of Mahabad in eastern Kurdistan (northwestern Iran). Two more Iranian soldiers have been reported killed by demonstrators. The Iranian government has now declared martial law and curfew in the Kurdish city. Demonstrators who defy the curfew are still protesting on the streets. A clash on July 18 between Kurdish demonstrators and Iranian soldiers has left two soldiers killed. For the first time after 10 years, the Iranian...

Top News Story Iran Is Considering Pardon for Ganji BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun July 21, 2005 WASHINGTON - Dissident Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji may be pardoned for the remaining six months of his jail sentence, Iran's judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, said.A pardon for Mr. Ganji would prove the efficacy of an international campaign in recent weeks demanding his unconditional release from prison. President Bush, E.U. leaders, and an Israeli politician and a former Russian political prisoner, Natan Sharansky, have called for the hunger-striker's unconditional release, as have human rights organizations and Western...

Top News Story Family visits jailed Iranian Ganji in hospitalIranMania: A member of the committee following up the condition of Akbar Ganji said Ganji’s family visited him at Milad Hospital. Issa Saharkhiz also told IRNA: “After the original ban was lifted, Ganji’s family managed to visit him at the hospital at 22:30 on Monday.“ ... Saharkhiz noted that on Sunday night Ganji was in critical condition and he was transferred to Milad Hospital from Evin Prison. “When Ganji’s family visited him, he was being fed intravenously,“ he said. READ MOREPlus two other important updates: Releaseganji.net published an interview with...

Top News Story Iranian opposition tracking, killing senior military officers Tuesday, July 19, 2005 Iran's opposition is targeting senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Iranian opposition sources said several senior officers of the IRGC have been tracked in major cities, including Teheran. The sources reported the killing of several officers of the IRGC and the Basij militia.On July 14, an IRGC colonel was stabbed to death in Teheran, Iran's media said, according to Middle East Newsline. The sources said Col. Morteza Moinfar, commander of the Quds Force, was killed by several unidentified assailants. The Quds Force has been...

Top News Story Ganji Is Near Death in Iranian Prison, a Dissident Reports BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun July 18, 2005 WASHINGTON - Akbar Ganji's 36-day hunger strike has nearly cost the Iranian dissident his life, according to a writer recently released from the Tehran prison that holds Mr. Ganji, whom President Bush and European Union leaders have demanded the mullahs set free.In a telephone interview from Tehran, a former political prisoner who was released temporarily from Evin prison at the end of June, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, told The New York Sun that Mr. Ganji's...

Top News Story Iran police chief authorises use of bullets Sat. 17 Jul 2005Iran Focus Tehran, Iran, Jul. 16 – Iran’s new police chief today called on the forces under his command to deal “decisively with criminals” and use live bullets if necessary. “When a policeman is sent on a mission, his mind must be focused entirely on getting the job done”, Brigadier General Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam said in the first flag-raising ceremony he attended after moving to his new command last week. “Using bullets is not the first way of dealing with criminals, but sometimes it is inevitable....

Top News Story Iran-Shahr The Strange Death of Iranian Islamism Political Islam, at least in its contemporary form and content, was born in Iran, under the auspices of Khomeini, Ali Shariati, and a 1960s-intelligentsia (1). "To make communist rule secure in the USSR for the indefinite future", Soviet leadership under Gorbachev made "a strategic decision". However, operating in a world of increasing openness, glasnost and perestroika, from within a system designed to be closed, "set the ball rolling toward the system's collapse" (2). Pursuing the same objective of lasting rule and learning maybe from their defunct Soviet predecessors, the...

Top News Story Free Ganji Ganji's Second Letter to the Free People of the World Akbar Ganji, FreeGanji.blogspot.com: [Disclaimer: there are many quotations of other thinkers in the following letter. Unfortunately references are missing from the Farsi text of the letter published on the internet. We have translated the quotes back into English from Farsi, so they might not match word for word with their original. We will try to amend this in future revisions.] This candle is dying out, but its voice will not Today, Sunday July 10, 2005 exactly 30 days have passed since I started my...