Lawyer Denies Reports On Commuting Iranian Rapper’s Sentence

Sharq daily quoted an Afghan girl living in Tehran telling the story of being abducted by machete-wielding men in a car while their trunk was "full of hair bags".

She said: “I was coming home from school. Showing a knife, they took me into the car... There was a lady and a gentleman. When I got in, the two other girls were just crying…The man cut the hair of all three of us with scissors and tied it up.”

In recent years, Iranian media reported the increase in buying and selling women's hair due to financial needs, but there have been fewer reports of girls' hair being stolen.

Earlier and separate reports on the Khorasan and ISNA news websites said most of the hair reaches extension production companies in Turkey, Arab countries, China, Europe or even some countries of the Americas.

With the deepening economic crisis in Iran, in recent years, local media have repeatedly reported the "sharp increase" in the sale and purchase of body parts in Iran.

Jahan-e-Sanat daily wrote in May that some middlemen send the prospective donors to neighboring countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Iraq to sell their body parts for $7,000 to $15,000, the result of the country’s economic crisis, which has left many people struggling to survive.

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022 while in the custody of the country's morality police unleashed a wave of mass protests across Iran, marking the biggest challenge to the Islamic regime in decades.

Since then, several people have been hanged for participating in the unrest, and other detainees still face the danger of capital punishment.

"We call on the Iranian authorities to stop the executions of individuals convicted and sentenced to death in connection with the protests and reiterate our requests to make available to us the judicial files, evidence, and judgments regarding each of these persons," Sara Hossain, chair of the Iran Fact-Finding Mission, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The mission also called for the "release all those detained for exercising their legitimate right to peaceful assembly and for reporting on the protests".

Responding to the statement in comments to the Council, Kazem Gharib Abadi, secretary general of Iran's High Council for Human Rights, called the establishment of the fact-finding mission last year "an entirely politically motivated and unacceptable move". He then walked out of the session in protest.

The Iranian representative in the session complained about the use of the word "regime" for the Islamic Republic in several occasions until the chair of the session said he no longer allows such interruptions.

In May, Iran executed three men it said were implicated in the deaths of three members of its security forces during the demonstrations.

With reporting by Reuters

According to an investigative report by Sharq daily citing official sources, 108 women were killed by their husbands, 17 by their brothers, nine by their sons, 13 by their fathers, and 19 by other men in the family.

The findings, which reveal how deeply domestic violence has become embedded in Iranian society, show that on average, a woman was killed by a man in her family every four days.

Out of 165 women who were murdered, 43 were shot, often with hunting rifles, pistols and even Kalashnikovs. Another 40 were stabbed to death and 35 were strangled either by hand, scarves and bedding.

Six women were set on fire, either by pouring gasoline directly on them, or setting fire to the car or the house where the victim was staying. Another 41 victims were killed in other brutal ways such as hammer blows to the head and body and mutilation. Only in 11 cases did the killer commit suicide after the crime.

Family disputes have been quoted as the cause of 87 cases out of 165 murders while 38 cases have been deemed as honor killing, 10 murdered due to financial issues and 30 others where there is no clear cause for the murder.

Perpetrators of honor killings are often not brought to justice in Iran as most families do not demand harsh punishment for them, particularly if the perpetrator is the victim’s father.

His lawyer, Fereshteh Tabanian wrote in a Tweet that her client's death sentence was confirmed but was not communicated to him directly, under charges of moharebeh (enmity against God).

Abbas, 49, and his 29-year-old brother Mohsen, were arrested during the Mahshahr canebrake crackdown in 2019; one of the bloodiest crackdowns in the Islamic Republic. The court acquitted his brother of the moharebeh charges.

Meanwhile, human rights activists warned that Abbas's televised confession had been given under duress. He admitted participating in the protests during the interrogation sessions but denied any role in burning tires and blocking roads.

The unarmed protesters in northern Mahshahr were shot dead by security forces after blocking the street. Security forces fired heavy artillery and set parts of the canebrake on fire when protesters ran towards it to take cover. Eyewitnesses said there were at least 20 deaths on the street and 40 deaths in the canebrake. However, the authorities never provided the exact number of deaths.

Iran's protests in 2019 were ignited by the sudden and sharp increase in fuel prices in the country, and soon turned into an anti-government movement.

“Any kind of presence in the upcoming elections is collaboration with lie and hypocrisy,” the late President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s outspoken daughter has written in another open letter from Tehran’s Evin Prison. The letter is titled “Why We Should Not Participate In Elections”. 

The Islamic Republic will be holding parliamentary elections on March 1. Apart from the 290 members of the parliament, prospective voters must simultaneously choose 88 members of the Experts Assembly in the March elections.

In the 2021 parliamentary elections, the ultra-conservative Guardian Council that screens candidates, rejected hundreds of reformists and centrists, handing the parliament to hardliners in a low-turnout election. Now, after months of anti-regime protests, hardliner loyalists of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are concerned that most voters will stay home in March, and this will further erode the regime’s legitimacy.

Addressing Reformists, Hashemi who once was a lawmaker supporting reforms said ‘dictators’ would have had a hard time maintaining their power if reformists had not fallen into the trap of “protecting the system” at any cost. They should have shown resistance to dictatorship so freedom and justice would not have been “sacrificed in the name of security”, and group and individual interests had not “taken precedence over national interests”. 

In her letter copies of which have been provided to media, Hashemi also pointed out that Iranians no longer care which political party or faction holds power in the country.

Protesters in recent years have said they don’t trust any of the factions making up the regime in the country.

Reformists can force the rulers to change their policies and eventually “take back” the power they gave to those in power now by abstaining from participation in elections that are neither fair nor free. 

Hardline media attacked Hashemi Tuesday morning, equating her to radicals who want to overthrow the regime.

Javan newspaper affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard attacked all Reformists that it said are headed by former President Mohammad Khatami and accused them of conspiring to boycott the elections.

Mashregh News, another hardline publication linked with Iran’s security organs, also harshly criticized Hashemi for her letter.

Many believe that chances of anything other than a very low turnout seem to be quite slim unless the regime radically changes its approach and holds free elections, but this is very unlikely. 

Many factors have contributed to the alienation of the public and even participation of noticeable reformists figures cannot change the circumstances and ensure a high turnout, reformist Shargh daily wrote Monday. 

The state is now dominated by hardliners in all three branches of government, which has driven the economy into the ground, leaving little potential voter support.

Some pundits claim turnout in the 2024 elections may be as low as 15 percent. 

The Reformist Front, an umbrella organization of several parties and groups, neither boycotted the 2020 election nor promoted it. Nearly all reformist candidates nominated by individual parties and groups were disqualified by the ultra-hardliner, Khamenei-appointed election watchdog, the Guardian Council.

The Front recently elected female politician Azar Mansouri as their chair. Some commentators believe that Mansouri is less likely than his predecessor Behzad Nabavi to surrender to pressures to get reformists involved in elections in which, at best, they will only be allowed to encourage people to vote. 

Javan newspaper, however, accused Reformists of electing a woman as leader to ride the wave of recent ‘Women, Life Freedom’ protests.

Mashregh News called Mansouri “a radical” implying that the Guardian Council would not approve the candidacy of Reformists in the March elections.