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Rajai Shahr Prison (Gohar Dasht) is in the city of Karaj, about 40 km west of Tehran. Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj is considered one of Iran's most notorious prisons. Many political prisoners are held in this prison. In this prison, the most inhumane kinds of physical and psychological tortures are administered. The intent is to demonize the spirit of the prisoners. The political prisoners held captive in this prison are also kept secret from the eyes of media and human rights organizations. Political prisoners from notorious “Evin” who insist on their beliefs are often transferred to Rajai Shahr prison....

Many of us have praised Pope Francis for his humbleness and for his tolerance toward victims of discrimination who had long been neglected by the Vatican, but it’s time to tell him loud and clear: Get out of Venezuela. The Vatican’s mediation effort in Venezuela has been — to use a word much in vogue in Washington these days — a disaster. It has legitimized that country’s authoritarian ruler Nicolás Maduro, throwing him a lifeline when millions of protesters were demanding his resignation on the streets in October 2016. And it has helped him get back on his feet by...

Democrats are gloating over the sentencing of former Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) last week. He was ordered to serve 10 years in prison for the vague charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Whenever prosecutors want to get someone who hasn’t actually committed a crime, they use those vague but scary sounding charges. He was also ordered to pay $1,014,718.51 in restitution, to be divided between him and two other co-defendants.What did Stockman actually do to warrant this? He facilitated four donations from two donors totaling $915,000 to two nonprofits he was associated with. One of the nonprofits...

President Trump’s decision to suddenly announce a major change in U.S. policy toward Venezuela in February began with an unexpected Oval Office meeting with Lilian Tintori, the wife of the country’s most prominent political prisoner. At the White House to meet Vice President Pence and press the administration to do more about human rights in her home country, Tintori was whisked in to see Trump, who seemed unfamiliar with her story but praised her past as a reality television star in Venezuela’s version of “Survivor.” Later, as Tintori made her case during the 40-minute meeting, first lady Melania Trump, who...

On January 13, Robert González Nieves, archbishop of San Juan, revealed Pope Francis’ role in Barack Obama’s pardon of terrorist mastermind Oscar Lopez-Rivera. Speaking from the Cathedral of San Juan, Nieves announced that although the Holy Father made no public statement of his involvement, he had indeed worked behind the curtain on behalf of the unrepentant, bloody-handed Lopez-Rivera. The archbishop was pleased to say: “I know that there have been efforts made through diplomatic channels. The pope is very aware. We are grateful to the Holy Father for his support.” Papal complicity in this politically charged act received little notice...

The case was over the abduction of Dong-Shik, a South Korean who was a permanent resident of the US and had spent seven years providing aid and proselytizing to North Korean defectors. An Israeli NGO announced on Monday that a US federal court in Washington, DC has granted it a historic $330 million default award judgment against North Korea in a civil damages trial for wrongful death, torture and kidnapping. The judgment, only announced Monday, but written on April 9, included $15 million dollars each to the son and brother of Reverend Dong Shik Kim, presumed dead, as well as...

Monday January 12, 2015 01:40 PM Last Friday, dozens of people spent the night in the surroundings of the Andrés Bello square (north Caracas) to buy food in an outdoor market organized by the Venezuelan Ministry of Food. For taking home staples such as rice, pre-cooked corn flour, milk, oil, sugar, beef or chicken, people had to wait in line for at least twelve hours. Buyers had numbers written on their arms. With fear and anger, but with the need to buy food, they were waiting there since the day before. "No matter if I am very fond of this...

The State Department painted it as an elegant way out of a ballooning crisis involving Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng — but by day’s end, it looked like a disgraceful performance by US diplomats. Initial reports had Chen so pleased by the deal that he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “I want to kiss you.” The agreement Clinton negotiated with Beijing yesterday supposedly allowed Cheng to stay in China and get medical attention, with the authorities guaranteeing his future safety. But things started unraveling just hours after the compromise was inked. First, while State claims Chen never wanted to leave...

Via a Freedom of Information Act Request, Judicial Watch obtained several documents. Among those was a DOJ Recap with the following: On October 8, 2010, Lois Lerner, Joe Urban, Judy Kindell, Justin Lowe, and Siri Buller met with the section chief and other attorneys from the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section, and one representative from the FBI, to discuss recent attention to the political activity of exempt organizations.The section's attorneys expressed concern that certain section 501(c) organizations are actually political committees "posing" as if they are not subject to FEC law, and therefore may be subject to...

A Canadian documentary has alleged that the Chinese state is aware and approves of the removal of organs from live political prisoners, often without anesthetic. Some 10,000 political prisoners are reportedly killed each year, and at least one former worker is willing to testify to atrocities. The documentary, produced by Australia’s SBS Dateline, purports to show the gruesome details of the multi-billion dollar “organs-on-demand” transplant program, and how these Chinese hospitals remove organs from live patients, in some cases putting the people in incinerators before they had even died. The filmmaker, Leon Lee, in an interview with Australia’s News.com, described...

n a move that has angered lawmakers and activists in the United States, the Cuban government has rearrested two political prisoners from the list of 53 whose release had been negotiated by the U.S. According to independent media sources in Cuba, Ronaldo Reyes Rabanal and Luís Enrique Labrador – along with other activists – were arrested while attending a meeting of the opposition group, Movement for a New Republic. Lazara María Borrego Guzmán, a member of the Ladies in White opposition movement, was also allegedly arrested during the meeting and Cuban officials allegedly broke her arm.

The Obama administration has confirmed reports that Cuba has released all 53 political prisoners that it promised to free as part of the deal to re-establish diplomatic relations with the United States. “The Cuban Government has notified us that they have completed the release of the 53 political prisoners that they had committed to free. We welcome this very positive development and are pleased that the Cuban government followed through on this commitment,” National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement. “Our Interests Section in Havana was able to verify these releases. These political prisoners were individuals who...

When President Obama announced his plans to "normalize" relations between the United States and Cuba just before Christmas, he did so with few pre-conditions. However, one the conditions of normalizing relations with the communist country was for the Castro regime to release 53 political prisoners. When asked about their release yesterday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest could not say for certain if that release had occurred and said the Cuban government would be working on their own timeline. State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki gave a similar answer during her daily briefing yesterday. "I don’t have any more updates to...

Behold, the superior negotiating powers of President Barack Obama: State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki repeatedly refused to answer questions this afternoon about the 53 political detainees Cuba promised to release as part of a deal with President Obama to normalize relations with the United States.When asked about a lack of transparency in the prisoner exchange process, Psaki said, “Well, we know who’s on there. And the Cuban government knows who’s on there.” …After Psaki stated that she had no updates to provide, a befuddled Matt Lee asked, “Hold on — hold on a second. Can we — I mean,...

The totalitarian impulse is all too familiar: since I represent Progress (and, of course, everyone who acts in the political realm fervently believes that he represents Progress) those who stand in my way are retrograde–evil, really–forces, that belong in the dustbin of history. Therefore, I might have to lock them up or kill them to ensure that Progress prevails. Until recently, the totalitarian impulse has been blessedly absent from American politics. Now, however, the American left has caught the totalitarian bug that infected Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, and so many others. A case in point:...

At a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Global Human Rights on Thursday, five young women testified about their fathers, all of whom have been jailed in Communist China for their activism, religious beliefs or political activities. The women asked for the Obama administration and Congress to intervene on their behalf. … Peng Ming, who was living in the United States on transitional refugee status, traveled to Thailand in 2004 and was kidnapped by Chinese agents and taken to China where he was sentenced to life in prison for “organizing and leading a terrorist organization,” according to information provided by...

We now have a firsthand account that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged the Innocence of Muslims filmmaker (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) would be “arrested and prosecuted” for making the video the administration spent weeks blaming for the Benghazi attack. That means Hillary outwardly expressed a desire to make Nakoula a political prisoner. There is another individual in Hillary’s past who appears to be living the life of a political prisoner right this very second; his name is Peter Paul and his ordeal began in the year 2000. Paul was the individual behind a completely different video trailer. In 2007, a...

“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather.) “Fidel Castro is one hell of a guy! “You people would like him!” (Ted Turner to a capacity crowd at Harvard Law School during a speech in 1997.) “Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly—even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (Andrea Mitchell.) “Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful, his presence is commanding.” (Barbara Walters.) “Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Jesse Jackson while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.) "Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and...

A Vietnamese-American pro-democracy activist has been arrested and accused of terrorism for allegedly trying to sabotage liberation celebrations commemorating the end of the Vietnam War, state media said Sunday. Nguyen Quoc Quan, 58, of California, was detained April 17 after arriving at the airport in southern Ho Chi Minh City, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported. He is accused of planning to hold protests for Viet Tan, a banned U.S. exile group, during this week's May Day festivities and the April 30 anniversary of the fall of the former U.S.-backed South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, to the northern communists in 1975. Authorities also...

While Britons celebrated the royal wedding last Friday, one of Iran’s greatest intellectuals willingly fell to his death from the sixth-floor balcony of his Tehran apartment. Siamak Pourzand, aged 80, had held out long enough against the Islamic Republic..... Pourzand was an already prominent cultural commentator and foreign correspondent long before Ayatollah Khomeini boarded a plane from Paris, full of big ideas, in 1979.... Secular and cosmopolitan to the core, Pourzand had no time for the guardianship of the sadists and made a point of saying so, especially in the late 1990s when he began writing for various opposition newspapers...