Back to Brief on Iran
TEHRAN—An Iranian court has ordered the fingers of 15 thieves to be severed as part of efforts to cope with rising crime, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The daily Qods said the 15 were to have the four fingers of their right hands amputated, leaving only the thumb, in line with Iran's penal code.
Qods said three thieves in the
northwestern city of Tabriz had their fingers cut off as punishment recently.
Yesterday was one of those days.
The civil engineer --Amir to his friends-- reluctantly recalled yesterday his two, six-month terms in an Iranian jail as a political prisoner who was routinely tortured by guards.
"If you were in your cell whistling a good song ... they would hear you and bring you to the torture place," he said after a short address to media attending a United Way of Greater Toronto news conference.
"Sometimes you would say, 'Just kill me. Just execute me.'"
While a world away from those days, the Canadian immigrant still finds it frightening to speak about his ordeal ...
Away from the cameras, Amir said he still fears talking about what he went through a decade ago.
"I still have family. People know me (in Iran)," he explained.
His three teenage children --along
with his ex-wife-- still live in Iran. He wants them in Canada.
Up The Pressure on Iran, New York Post, June 22
Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)]
When Mohammad Khatami was elected president of Iran two years ago, we began hearing about a kinder, gentler man which would seek greater ties with the West. The arrests last March of 13 Iranian Jews on preposterous espionage charges shows how little Iran has changed since the hostage-taking days of Ayatollah Khomeini, when anti-American and anti-Jewish fervor filled our television screens almost daily.
The spying charges of course are specious. The notion that Iranian Jews, particularly those living hundreds of miles from Tehran, even have the capacity to spy for Israel or the United States is laughable. What access would these individuals have to valuable information? The truth is that since 1979 Iran has habitually used the term "spy" for anyone it arrests for political reasons. Schoolgirls and blind old men have been hanged as "spies" simply because they were religious minorities ...
Iran must know - from the United States
and the world - that should these men be executed as 17 other Jews have
since 1979, Iran will slip back into pariah status for decades. That means
no loans, no trade, and no international respect ....
Iran Court Jails Senior Pro-Khatami Tehran Official for Graft, Reuter, June 23
TEHRAN—An Iranian court on Wednesday sentenced a top aide to Tehran's jailed former mayor to nine years in prison, a hefty fine and 50 lashes of the whip for graft, the official news agency IRNA reported.
Gholamreza Qobeh, who had been on bail, was immediately taken to prison. He was convicted of charges ranging from embezzlement to mismanagement and seizure of public property.
Qobeh, the capital's former top financial officer, was also banned for life from holding public office and fined 200 billion rials, IRNA added.
Qobeh was among officials who accused
police of torture during the investigation of corruption in the city government.
More Journalists Arrested, Associated Press, June 19
DUBAI - Two journalists for a student newspaper in Iran have been arrested, an official Iranian newspaper reported Saturday.
Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, the editor
of Hoviyat'e Kheesh, was arrested for "issuing an anti-establishment
communiqué" and Hossein Kashani, the paper's publisher, for "spreading
propaganda against the Islamic system," the Iran Daily reported.
Bus-Truck Crash Kills 21, Reuter, June 22
TEHRAN—Twenty-one people were killed in a head-on collision between a bus and a truck in central Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday.
Six peoples were seriously injured in the accident which occurred on Monday on a road in Isfahan province, it said.