Back to Brief on Iran
TEHRAN - Iran's supreme court has upheld a death sentence against an Iranian journalist on adultery and spying charges, a newspaper said on Sunday.
The conservative daily Resalat said a branch of Iran's supreme court rejected the appeal by former Iran News editor Morteza Firoozi, who has been in custody since last May.
The daily Qods newspaper reported earlier this month that Firoozi might face stoning on the adultery charges.
Under Iran's Islamic laws, a man convicted of adultery with a married woman faces a possible sentence of stoning.
"Firoozi was arrested for spying for South Korea, France, and Japan and for several cases of adultery by the courts of first instance. This was upheld by an appeals court and now the supreme court has rejected a re-examination of his case," Resalat said.
Earlier press reports said that Firoozi
had admitted to working as a consultant for unnamed countries but denied
the spying charges.
Iranian Journalist to Be Stoned to Death, Iran Zamin News Agency, May 11
PARIS - The clerical regime's supreme court has upheld a lower court's verdict of "stoning to death" against Morteza Firuzi, the editor of Iran News, according to state-controlled newspapers.
Continuing public executions and barbaric punishments such as stoning show that any notion of reform in the ruling theocracy in Iran is but a mirage.
Speaking at a press conference on April 7, Ataollah Mohajerani, Khatami's Minister of Islamic Guidance and government spokesman said it would be better to carry it out in front of more limited crowds in order to prevent "adverse reactions and negative publicity abroad."
The statement of the Group of Eight
ministerial meeting in London spoke about the Iranian government's commitment
to expand the civil society based on the rule of law, including greater
freedom of expression. The mullah's inhuman practices clearly show how
distant such claims are from the realities of Iran today. Such contentions
are made only in the context of appeasing the ruling mullahs.
Rushdie Slams EU's Iran Policy, Reuter, May 10
BERLIN - British author Salman Rushdie, in hiding to evade a death sentence from Iran for his novel "The Satanic Verses," on Sunday criticized the European Union for failing to take a tougher diplomatic stance against Tehran.
Making a surprise appearance at a conference on persecuted writers in the German capital, Rushdie told a small group of journalists that the EU had been "hypocritical" in its softer policy toward Iran but hard line with neighboring state Iraq.
"There is a hypocrisy involved here which one could connect to economics. Iran is a wealthy state and Iraq is a poor one," the writer said.
Rushdie's comments came on the heels of an announcement by the German Foreign Ministry on Saturday that it had sent two government officials to Iran to work to improve relations between the two countries.
Rushdie was particularly searing in his attack on German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, who he said had been unresponsive to his pleas to help lift the fatwa.
"He said he could not deform German foreign policy for the sake of one person," Rushdie said, appearing relaxed but with security personnel standing watch at the door.
"I would argue that there are other important values at stake here that he and other European governments supposedly hold dear as well," he said.
Rushdie praised Britain's harder line on Iran since Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor government came to power, saying it would set an example for the rest of Europe.
But he said that the EU had it in its
power to bring enough political and economic pressure to bear on Iran to
urge it to lift the death sentence against him but had failed to do so.
Regime's Joy Over Impasse in Mideast Peace Process, Reuter, May 10
TEHRAN - Iran's state radio said on Sunday the cancellation of planned Middle East talks in Washington showed that the peace process was nearly dead.
"The so-called Middle East peace process...has reached such a sorry state that such limited meetings cannot act as a sedative, as they did in the past, to postpone its death for a time," Tehran radio said in a commentary.
"Washington's main aim at this time is to maintain this shaky skeleton in place to calm regional public opinion, because if regional and the Moslem world's public opinion are aroused, there will be no place for make-believe peace shows," it added.