A Kurd political prisoner who was suffering from a heart problem passed away in Khoy Prison.

On the morning of Thursday January 6, Mosa Hossein Zadeh who was from a village in Khoy died from a heart problem.

This 21 year old Kurd political prisoner had been detained for eight months.

Mr. Hossein Zadeh had been sentenced to one year of prison by the Khoy Revolutionary Court on charges of cooperating with a dissident party.

According to reports, on Saturday January 7, at least four prisoners in Qezel Hesar Prison from Halls 1 and 7 in Unit 2 were transferred to solitary cells for their death sentences to be carried out. The names of some of these prisoners are:

1- Amir Bakhshi- He is 35 years old and is married with two children. He has been detained in this prison for close to two and a half years. He was transferred from Hall 1 Unit 2.

2- Ali Geravand- He is 25 years old and has been detained for close to 8 months. He was transferred from Hall 1, Unit 2.

3- Hossein Tajik, son of Gholam- He is 22 year old and has been detained for close to 3 years. He is an Afghan national. Afghan prisoners are secretly executed with almost no official announcement.

4- Another prisoner who was responsible for the praying center in Hall 7 in Unit 2.

On Thursday January 5, 15 Qezel Hesar prisoners who are awaiting their execution were summoned and asked to speak against themselves in front of cameras. They were told to say that they were narcotics traffickers and that the Islamic Republic is doing them a favor by executing them because they deserve to be stoned to death. All 15 prisoners refused to make such confessions…

According to reports, in the past two nights, five women suspiciously died in the Qarchak Prison in Varamin. This prison is used to detain female prisoners in Tehran.During the nights of January 5 and 6, five prisoners suspiciously died in cellblock 4 and 5 in Qarchak Prison. These women’s physical condition deteriorated during the night and despite their cellmates’ efforts in transferring them to the prison infirmary, the infirmary refused to accept and treat them which resulted in their deaths.The prison infirmary refuses to treat female prisoners who commit suicide, due to pressure from the intolerable prison conditions, which usually leads to their deaths.The women who passed away in the past two nights are:

1- Fatemeh Mohammadnia, 28, detained in Hall 4

2- Shadi Nikkho, 22, Hall 5

3- Fataneh Abdali, 40, Hall 5

4- Sahar Soleimani, 21, Hall 5

5- Maryam Qods, 30, Hall 5

(Reuters) – An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran on Wednesday, and a city official blamed Israel for the attack, similar to attacks on nuclear scientists just over a year ago.Fars news agency identified the victim as Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a 32-year-old graduate of an oil industry university. It said he had supervised a department at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility. Iran’s atomic energy organization said it would issue a statement shortly.“The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and the work of the Zionists (Israelis),” Fars quoted Deputy Tehran Governor Safarali Baratloo as saying.Witnesses told Reuters they had seen two people on the motorbike fix the bomb to the car. As well as the person killed in the car, a pedestrian was also killed. Another person in the car was gravely injured, they said.Two daylight bomb attacks on the same day in Tehran in November 2010 killed one nuclear scientist and wounded another.

(Reuters) – From Los Angeles to Paris to Tehran, disparate opposition groups with little in common but an aversion to Iran‘s clerical leaders are struggling to extract political gains from an escalation in Western sanctions.Numerous dissidents have hailed Western agreement on tougher measures to compel the Islamic Republic to rein in its nuclear programme, but translating the upbeat mood into renewed opposition activity will not be easy, Iran experts say.Internally, opposition forces are at a low ebb following the bloody suppression of a loose reformist street protest movement they mounted in 2009.Iran’s factionalised clerical authorities may be driven by their own disputes, but the security apparatus has a tight grip on domestic dissent and its leaders are under house arrest.Overseas, the complexity of the dissidents’ task has roots in the opposition’s very diversity: The communities of monarchists, communists and liberals and others can agree on little beyond ending the three-decade rule of Islamist clerics.Discord extends to the utility of sanctions as an instrument of leverage: Exiled groups tend to favour them. But dissidents at home are less enthusiastic, arguing that the measures will hit the middle class from which the 2009 protests sprang.

TEHRAN (AFP) — A former US Marine, who also holds Iranian citizenship, has been sentenced to death by an Iranian judge for spying for the CIA, the Fars news agency reported on Monday.Amir Mirzai Hekmati, 28, was “sentenced to death for cooperating with a hostile nation, membership of the CIA and trying to implicate Iran in terrorism,” the verdict said, according to Fars.Hekmati, who was born in the United States to an Iranian immigrant family, was shown on Iranian state television in mid-December saying in fluent Farsi and English that he was a Central Intelligence Agency operative sent to infiltrate the Iranian intelligence ministry.He had been arrested months earlier.Iranian officials said his cover was blown by agents for Iran who spotted him at the US-run Bagram military air base in neighbouring Afghanistan.

But Hekmati’s family in the United States told US media he had travelled to Iran to visit his Iranian grandmothers and he was not a spy.

In his sole trial hearing, on December 27, prosecutors relied on Hekmati’s “confession” to say he tried to penetrate the intelligence ministry by posing as a disaffected former US soldier with classified information to give.

The United States has demanded Hekmati’s release.

The State Department said Iran has not permitted diplomats from the Swiss embassy — which handles US interests in the absence of US-Iran ties — to see Hekmati before or during his trial.

HRANA News Agency – One month after his trial held at the 15th branch of the Revolutionary Court, the authorities have notified Vahid Asghri that a death sentence has been issued for him.According to a report by Human Rights Watch in Kurdistan, Vahid Asghri, 25, was arrested on October 4, 2008 by plain clothes agents working for IRGC (the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution).  Judge Abolqasem Salvati presiding over the 15th branch of the Revolutionary Court has sentenced Vahid Asghri to death.In February 2009, IRGC Cyber Police announced that Vahid Asghri and a few other web masters of Internet sites opposing Islam had been arrested.Vahid Asghri and other accused individuals were physically and psychologically tortured while in custody and were forced to appear in televised confessions.  These sessions were broadcast in Iran prior to their trials.

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) – Yesterday morning, branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced political activist Asal Esmaeilzadeh to four months in prison and eight months *suspended imprisonment. Her charges are: “Propaganda against the regime” and “Gathering and Colluding…”. She is currently not imprisoned.

Esmaeilzadeh was recently arrested in Behesht Zahra cemetery along with activists Peyman Aref and Sharar Konoor Tabrizi under the charge of praying at Neda Agha Soltan’s grave site.  Esmaeilzadeh and Konoor Tabrizi were released after a few days on bail. Peyman Aref remained jailed until last month.

Esmaeilzadeh was also arrested by plainclothes agents in her home back in May 2011. She endured 31 days in solitary confinement in ward 209 of Evin prison. She was released on June 1, 2011 on a $100 thousand [USD] bail.

* A suspended imprisonment sentence means that the sentence will not be implemented, unless the person is found guilty on another charge. There is usually a time limit associated with the suspension.

– – Alieh Eghdamdoost , a women’s rights activist arrested for her peaceful activism, was released from prison on Sunday morning. Eghdamdoost, who is in her sixties, was forced to endure three consecutive years in Evin prison without one day of furlough. 

ARRESTED

Alieh Eghdamdoost’s second arrest occurred on June 12, 2006, the same day that she had participated in a peaceful gathering led by an Iranian women’s rights group at Haft-Tir Square in Tehran. She was released one week following her arrest, after she had refused to post bail. Once her three-year prison sentence was issued and confirmed [by the Appeals Court], two Iranian regime agents arrested Eghdamdoost at her home in Fouman, Gilan on January 29, 2008. She was transferred to Evin prison.CHARGED & SENTENCEDBranch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court had initially sentenced Alieh Eghdamdoost to three years and four months in prison and 20 lashes. The Appeals Court reduced the sentence to three years in prison.  For participating in a peaceful women’s rights gathering, the Iranian judiciary had charged her with: “Disturbing public order” and “Acting against national security”.

In the ongoing fight of the Judiciary against death traffickers [narcotics traffickers], a drug smuggler was hanged in the town of Varamin.

Nazar-Ali Moradi, 53 years old and son of Karamali was hanged in the Khorin Prison in Varamin at 6:30 am on Thursday January 5 on charges of carrying 215 grams of heroin and 1.10 kilograms opium…

After the sentence was upheld and after confirmations by the head of the Judiciary, the sentence was carried out with the presence of the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Varamin, the judge presiding over the prison court, the head of the Khorin Prison, representatives from the State Security Forces and the medical examiner. (Asre Iran state-run website, Mehr State-run News Agency – Jan. 5, 2011)