Free Republic

A PUBLIC relations stumble between Tehran and Baghdad has intensified speculation that one of Iran’s most senior clerics is about to extend his power—and Iran’s theocratic system—into Iraq.On his return from a visit to Tehran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office released statements on his meetings with several senior Iranian officials—but it was silent on Mr. Maliki’s encounter with 63-year-old Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi. Despite a Baghdad blackout on what is understood to have been their third meeting in recent months, Iran’s government-run news agency IRNA released a photograph of Mr. Maliki and Ayatollah Shahroudi—who is Iraqi by birth—greeting each...

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has shrugged off unprecedented criticism from the head of the judiciary, telling the high-ranking cleric not to interfere, media reported on Sunday. Judiciary head Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi warned in a speech last week that the government was needlessly changing top officials, in a rare intervention from a cleric who usually stays out of day-to-day politics. "Ayatollah Shahroudi, as head of the judiciary, knows more than anyone about the correct separation of powers," between Iranian institutions, Ahmadinejad's top advisor Ali Akbar Javanfekr told the governmental Iran newspaper. "It is wrong for these...

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It's All About You, Sir! Nooredin Abedian/Intellectual Conservative May 17, 2004 Aytatollah Shahroudi, Iran's Chief Justice, recently ordered a ban on the use of torture, but it remains to be seen whether it will be put into practice. Two weeks ago, Ayatollah Shahroudi, Iran's Chief Justice, ordered a ban on the use of torture which the Islamic Republic's security organizations routinely use to extract confessions. "Any torture to extract confession is banned and the confessions extracted through torture are not legitimate and legal," the Chief Justice said in a 15-point directive to the judiciary. Human rights lawyers and political activists...

DAMASCUS -- Lebanese Hizbollah is an independent body which enjoys the protection of all Muslim states, Iran's Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mohmoud Hashemi Shahroudi told foreign reporters here on Sunday. Shahroudi also called on Muslim and Arab states to back the Lebanese resistant movement, IRNA reported. The U.S has adopted a double-standard policy in its war on terror and is using it as an 'excuse' to crush nations in support of the Israeli regime, Shahroudi said when asked by the Xinhua news agency. The Judiciary official further said that the Islamic Republic is working alongside Muslim and Arab states on a...