Iran Charges Iranian-American Scholar

Haleh Esfandiari was prevented from returning to the US in December 2006, arrested on May 8, and recently accused of working to disrupt Iranian sovereignty.  Esfandiari, who holds both Iranian and American citizenship, works as the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, in Washington DC.  Part of her job includes planning conferences for Iranian leaders, civil, academic, and governmental, in the US on issues involving Iran.  Last December, while en route to the Tehran airport, her luggage, which held both passports, was confiscated; effectively preventing her from leaving the country.  Since December 2006 and her arrest in early May 2007, Esfandiari was repeatedly interrogated and denied access to legal counsel.  In addition to Dr. Esfandiari, two other Iranian-Americans (Ali Shakeri and Kian Tajbakhsh) are in currently in Iranian prison and a fourth, Parnaz Azima, had her passport confiscated and as a result she is prevented from leaving Iran.

There are various theories as to why Iran is currently detaining four Iran-American citizens.  First,  that the hard-liners in the Iranian government are hoping to derail US-Iranian talks regarding the war in Iraq.  Second, that the Iranian government hopes to use the detainees as leverage to negotiate a prisoner trade to guarantee the release of the five Iranians arrested in northern Iraq in early January 2007.  Regardless to the reason behind Esfandiari’s and the other Iranian-Americans’ detentions, analysts agree that there is no rational basis and that the detainees should be released.

For more information, please see:

CNN:  “Iranian-American political prisoners” 25 May 2007.

Human Rights Watch:  “Iran: Another Iranian-American Scholar Detained” 24 May 2007.

CNN:  “Iran imprisons 4th Iranian-American” 23 May 2007.

NY Times:  “Iran Accuses American of Revolution Plot” 22 May 2007.

BBC:  “Iran accuses US-Iranian scholar” 22 May 2007.

BBC:  “US-Iranian academic detained in Iran” 9 May 2007.

Press Release: Iran Human Rights Documentation Center Releases Report on Iran’s 1988 Massacre of Thousands of Political Prisoners

29 August 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2009

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT – The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) today released a report documenting and analyzing the Iranian government’s massacre of political prisoners during the summer of 1988. Much of the material presented in the report, Deadly Fatwa: Iran’s 1988 Massacre, is the result of interviews conducted by IHRDC with survivors and family members of victims.

In late July 1988, pursuant to a fatwa issued by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian government began systematically interrogating, torturing and summarily executing thousands of political prisoners. The interrogations of prisoners who supported leftist parties began twenty-one years ago today. Although the exact number of victims is not known, thousands of prisoners were tortured and executed over the course of only a few months.

The victims included prisoners who had served their sentences but had refused to recant their political beliefs, prisoners who were serving sentences of imprisonment, people who had been detained for lengthy periods but had not been convicted, and former prisoners who were rearrested. Many families were never informed about the executions and many of the victims were buried in unmarked mass graves. Families who received the remains of their loved ones were not allowed to hold funeral services and, to this day, are forbidden from mourning their loss. The government recently bulldozed a mass grave site at Khavaran Cemetery in Tehran .

The Iranian government has never identified those who were secretly executed and tortured, and has never issued an explanation for this crime. However, many of the men who were responsible for the massacre continue to hold positions of power in the Iranian government.

Deadly Fatwa: Iran ’s 1988 Massacre, is available in English on IHRDC’s website www.iranhrdc.org. A Persian translation of the report will be available this fall.

IHRDC is a nonprofit organization based in New Haven , Connecticut that was founded in 2004 by a group of human rights scholars, activists, and historians. Its staff of human rights lawyers and researchers produce comprehensive and detailed reports on the human rights situation in Iran since the 1979 revolution. The Center’s goal is to encourage an informed dialogue among scholars and the general public in both Iran and abroad. The human rights reports and a database of documents relating to human rights in Iran are available to the public for research and educational purposes on the Center’s website.

For further information, please contact:

Renee C. Redman, IHRDC Executive Director, (203) 772-2218 Ext. 215 rredman@iranhrdc.org

UN Report Finds Kenya Complicit With Somali Rebels

By Jared Kleinman

Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa Desk

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya serves as “a major base” for Islamist groups battling Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, the United Nations says in a recent report.

The UN report says Kenyans account for about half of all foreigners fighting in Somalia under the banner of al-Shabaab and details Kenya’s training of TFG forces in apparent violation of a UN embargo.

Many of these fighters are recruited through a support network in Nairobi consisting of “wealthy clerics-cum-businessmen, linked to a small number of religious centers notorious for their links to radicalism,” the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia states in its March 10 report.

Leaders of Al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, the other main insurgent group in Somalia, “travel with relative freedom to and from Nairobi, where they raise funds, engage in recruitment and obtain treatment for wounded fighters,” the report says.

Some African and European diplomats based in Nairobi meanwhile engage in visa fraud that enables the smuggling of illegal migrants into Europe and other destinations for fees of about $12,000 for a man and $15,000 for a woman, the UN says. The ambassador of an African country to Kenya reportedly plays a key role in this visa fraud scheme.

The Nairobi embassy of another country in the Horn of Africa is said to funnel cash to insurgents in Somalia monthly. “An estimated $1.6 million may have passed through Kenya.”

The report criticizes Kenya for not cooperating with the UN on breaches of an arms embargo slapped in 1992. “One notable exception,” the report says, “was the Kenya Police Criminal Investigations Division, which provided valuable assistance.”

The report points to Kenya’s training last year for the TFG of 2,500 youths recruited in Somalia and northeastern Kenya, including Dadaab camps. Officials acknowledged training TFG police, but “denied any other type of training.”

The report says training involved “irregularities,” like recruitment of children and Kenyans as well as “false promises of financial remuneration.”

In detailing connections between Somalis in Nairobi and the rebels, the report names several mosques in the Kenyan capital. It describes a 31-year-old cleric “believed by the government of Kenya to have obtained Kenyan nationality under false pretences,” as a key leader of one such mosque.

For more information, please see:

 The East African – UN Shows Kenya Links to Both Sides – 29 March 2010

Somaliweyn – UN Links Kenya to Somali Rebels – 29 March 2010

Daily Nation – UN Links Kenya to Somali Rebels – 28 March 2020

Yemeni Vessel With 24 Crew Hijacked By Somali Pirates

By Ahmad Shihadah
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East Desk

 SA’NA, Yemen – Pirates seized a ship with 24 crew members off the port of Aden on Monday and Mogadishu traders said seven additional vessels headed for the Somali capital had been hijacked over the past two days.

The Kenyan-based Ecoterra maritime monitoring agency said pirates had taken control of a roll-on, roll-off ship called the MV Iceberg 1 on Monday.” The owners reported to NATO that pirates boarded the ro-ro vessel MV Iceberg 1 today just 10 miles outside Aden Port in the Gulf of Aden,” Ecoterra said. “The vessel with her 24 member crew is now commandeered toward the Somali coast.”

The EU Naval Force Spokesman Cmdr. John Harbour says the Monday attack took place 10 miles from Yemen against the Panama-flagged Iceberg I. Harbour says the pirates then sailed the ship across the Gulf of Aden toward Somalia. Harbour says the last communication from the vessel was a mayday call from the captain saying pirates were boarding the vessel. The 24 crew came from Yemen, India, Ghana, Sudan, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Sea gangs have acquired millions of dollars in ransoms and defied a flotilla of foreign warships that are trying to monitor the region’s busy sea lanes.

They have plagued the busy shipping lanes off Somalia for years. As well as holding some ships for ransom, pirates also hijack vessels to use as ‘motherships’ which ferry the gunmen and their speedboats far out to sea.

The seven ships cited by the traders did not include a Seychelles fishing vessel and an Iranian boat that were also taken in the waters off east Africa but later freed, according to the Seychelles coast guard. The Seychelles president’s office said the fishing vessel, called the Galate, was captured 90 miles off the coast of the archipelago’s main island before later being freed. All six crew members were safe.

Seychelles said its coast guard had also rescued 21 crew from the Iranian boat in the same operation. Separately, the U.S. destroyer McFaul rescued 30 Africans stranded in the Gulf of Aden after their vessel developed engine problems, the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet said in a statement.

Last year 50,000 people, many from Somalia, took rickety smugglers’ ships across the Gulf of Aden, seeking jobs in the Middle East or fleeing political turmoil at home. “The 30 men, women and children onboard had been stranded with no food and very little water for nearly four days since departing the Somali coast,” the Navy said.

For more information, please see:

AP – Somali Pirates Hijack Ship, 24 Crew Near Yemen – March 29 2010

VOA News – Somali Pirates Hijack Merchant Ship With 24 Crew – March 29 2010

Reuters – Pirates Seize Somalia-Bound Ships, Others Rescued – March 29 2010

Xinhuanet – Yemeni Fishing Vessel Hijacked By Somali Pirates: Report – March 29 2010

Suicide Bombers Strike Moscow Metro Twice, Leaving Thirty Eight Dead

Photo: The Park Kultury Metro Station, scene of the second bombing. Source: EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV
Photo: The Park Kultury Metro Station, scene of the second bombing. Source: EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia – At least thirty five people were killed and sixty four others injured after two female suicide bombers staged two separate attacks on the Moscow subway system this morning. At least twenty three people were killed in the first attack, which occurred in the Lubyanka metro station at 7:50 a.m. Forty minutes later another blast killed twelve people in a train carriage at the Park Kultury metro station.

Passengers streamed out of the stations, some reportedly panicking, running, and falling, and many in tears. One man exclaimed: “This is how we live!”

Aleksandr Bortnikov, head of  the Russian secret police, indicated that the act was likely carried out by a terrorist group with links to the Northern Caucasus. Valdimir Vasiliev, head of the security committee in the state Duma, said: “There is no doubt who stands behind these explosions. Recently there have been several anti-terrorist operations in the North Caucasus to liquidate ringleaders and terrorists of underground groups.”

These attacks follow a surge of violence in the North Caucasus region which began last summer after a suicide bomber drove an explosive laden car into a police station in Nazran, the capital of the autonomous republic of Ingushetia. Three autonomous republics, Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia, have been torn apart by a low-intensity civil war which has been ongoing in the region since the 1990s.

One militant leader thought to be hiding in the mountains of Chechnya, Doku Umarov, has publicly threatened terrorist attacks in Russia twice in the past four months. In an Internet video from February 14 he said:

“The Russians do not understand that the war today is coming to their streets, the war is coming to their homes, the war is coming to their cities, they do not think that the war is coming, the war does not concern them, but we plan, God willing, to prove to them that the war is coming to their homes.”

Umarov also claimed that his group was responsible for the November bombing of the Nevsky Express passenger train en route from Moscow to St. Petersberg, which killed twenty six people.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared that those responsible would be punished. He said: “A crime that is terrible in its consequences and heinous in its manner has been committed . . . I am confident that law enforcement bodies will spare no effort to track down and punish the criminals. Terrorists will be destroyed.”

The Time Online reported that the boyfriend of a woman seriously injured in this morning’s blast swore vengeance against all Muslims. He reportedly showed off blood on his hands to journalists gathered at Lubyanka Square, claiming it had come from punching a Muslim passer-by in the face.  He said:

“I am going to kill one of them. A Tajik, an Azerbaijani, it does not matter, they are all the same . . . War is going to begin.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that he has ordered senior officials to fight terrorism “without hesitation, to the end.” He said that Russia would act without compromise to root our terrorists, and that security would be boosted across Russia. A Kremlin spokesperson added that human rights would be respected during the police investigations.

Amnesty International released a statement condemning the attack, but stated: “The Russian authorities must also ensure human rights are respected in their response to the attack.”

More than eight million people use the metro system in Moscow each day.

For more information, please see:

Amnesty International – Deadly Moscow Subway Bomb Attacks Condemned – 28 March 2010

Financial Times – At least 38 killed in Moscow metro blasts – 29 March 2010

Moscow Times –  2 Bombs Explode in Moscow Metro – 29 March 2010

Times Online – Screams in the smoke as Moscow rush hour turned to horror – 29 March 2010