Green Sea Movement Updates

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Iran Update August 18-Sept 18, 2009

x-posted to ontd_p

I blame grad school, family obligation, unexpected road trips, a severe round of bad news in the media and being sick for the delay in this. It takes a toll on a person to dig through the news day after day reading these stories. After the last one and Kennedy's death...my heart just hurt too much to keep up with the bad news constantly coming out and the conflicts with my other commitments. I'm sorry.

Chants from Quds Day protests.

Some of the slogans chanted were:

Palestine, we are just like you
Oh [Imam] Hossein, Mir Hossen [Mousavi]
Karroubi, Mousavi, we support you
Death to Russia
Torture, rape, have no longer any effect
Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I’ll die for Iran
Leave Palestine alone
Long love [Dr. Saeed] Hajjarian [the jailed reformist strategist], long live Mousavi
Long live [Grand Ayatoollah Hossein Ali] Montazeri, Long live Karroubi
The real Basiji, Hemmat and Bakeri [two commanders killed in Iran-Iraq
war, whose families support the Green Movement]
Long live Montazeri, long live [Grand Ayatollah Yousef] Sanei

And to Ahmadinejad:

Shut up liar

Get lost liar

Resign, Resign! Where is your 63% [of the vote], liar

When the Clinton administration enacted U.S. sanctions in 1995 — under pressure from the Israel lobby — the UAE initially ignored them. It was, in effect, like Spain asking Texas to cut ties with Mexico.
~
In the neutral atmosphere of Dubai, Bush and Ahmadinejad looked like angry men who shared philosophies and methods. Both hail from the extreme right wing of their nation’s political sphere, both leaned on support from religious fundamentalists and rural bases; both used simple language with anti-intellectual overtones; both required external enemies – in this case, each other – to legitimize their grip on power. Neither had much use for diplomacy.
~
With Saddam out of the picture, the UAE sees Iran as its chief military threat, especially given Iran’s nuclear program and its arsenal of ballistic missiles. The UAE’s defense strategy means sustaining a first strike and praying for allies — the U.S., France and Britain — to arrive.

In one sense, the United States is both the cure and the sickness. The most plausible reason Iran would assault the UAE would be in retaliation for a U.S. or Israeli strike on its territory. This possibility led UAE president Sheikh Khalifa to publicly forbid the United States from using UAE territory to attack Iran. He also banned the U.S. military from using its Abu Dhabi-based spy planes to conduct intelligence missions over Iran.
~
But everyone knows that only the United States can protect them if there is real trouble. “When the sheikhs dial 911, it doesn’t ring in Paris,” Kestenbaum says.

The Great Tehran Expo Privatization Scandal You’ve Never Heard Of (August 17, 2009 - MOHAMMAD KHIABANI in Tehran)
Nepotism & the Larijani Dynasty (August 20, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
Principlist MP grilled by journalist about jailhouse visit (August 24, 2009 - Tabnak)
Meet Etelaat and its “Nokias” (August 30, 2009 - SAYA OVAISY in Tehran) Etelaat = Iranian version of KGB
Can Majles block Ahmadinejad’s advance? (August 31, 2009 - Reporting from Tehran)
Unstoppable (September 03, 2009 - ) Pictures of Parliament and the List of the Appointments and what their votes were
IRGC’s deeply-rooted animosity for reformists (September 04, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
Mousavi on the “Green Path of Hope” (September 05, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
Another Cultural Revolution? (September 06, 2009 - RASOOL NAFISI)
Difficult Days Ahead (September 10, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
Censoring Reformists Out of Existence (September 13, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
Quds Day Updates (September 18, 2009 - Tehran)
Patriots and Reformists: Behzad Nabavi and Mostafa Tajzadeh (August 11, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
London Calling (August 19, 2009 - D. PARVAZ in London)
Ahmadinejad’s Security Cabinet (August 20, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
Hajji Corleone, Sonny Seyyed and the Rapists who got away (August 21, 2009 - HANA H. in Tehran)
The Bloody Red Summer of 1988 (August 25, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
Isolated, weak and as delusional as ever (August 29, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
Shariati on Religious Government (August 31, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI)
Ahmadinejad & Family Take on ‘New’ Foreign Policy (September 02, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)
IRGC declares open war on the reform movement (September 05, 2009 - Reporting from Tehran)
Coup Leaders Afraid to Face the People (September 06, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI)
Where is Iran headed? (September 08, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)

So, in summary, here is where the author believes the Islamic Republic is headed: A situation in which the fissures at the top become even deeper, as the hardliners’ circle of ‘insiders’ become increasingly smaller, while at the same time, the anger and frustration of the people rapidly grows.

Unless the hardliners somehow decide to retreat and undertake deep and lasting reforms, the nation is moving toward a confrontation between the unarmed, but determined majority of the people, and the highly armed small minority that the hardliners represent.

It is frightening to even imagine what the result of such a confrontation might be. At a minimum, it would mean incredible bloodshed. But the most frightening possibility would be the disintegration of the country, given the composition of Iran’s diverse population.

Iran's Animal Farm: Animal Farm meets 1984 (September 10, 2009 - HANA H. in Tehran)
Co-opting Quds Day (September 17, 2009 - MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles)

Perhaps the strongest call for participation in Quds day came from Hojatolleslam Sayyed Hassan Khomeini, grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini. In a thinly disguised rebuke of the hardliners, he announced that “Quds Day is International; it is not exclusive to Quds. It is a day for the oppressed to resist against the oppressors,” implying that it is also a day of protest against repression and oppression in Iran. In effect, he was responding to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who, during his sermons in last Friday’s prayer, declared that, “Quds Day is only for Quds [Jerusalem].”

Sunday, August 23, 2009

The IRI is in its deaththroes (08/15/2009)

I first posted this on ontd_political on August 15, 2009.

Iran is self-destructing
13-19 August 2009 - Hagop Kevorkian

The point of no return has been passed: Iran's violent theocratic tyranny is now facing the people, and it will lose, writes Hamid Dabashi*

Ma bi-shomarim / We are countless
- Slogan of the Green Movement in Iran

Within minutes of the picture of a frail and fragile Mohammad Ali Abtahi appearing on the Internet, the blogosphere was flooded with split images of him before and after his predicament. Having lost some 20 kilos since his incarceration in late June, his handsome, always smiling and endearing, face thinned beyond recognition, disrobed of his clerical habit, his turban lost, and clad in unseemly prison pajamas, the former vice president under President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), a leading reformist, and particularly popular with bloggers because of his own weblog, Abtahi's case was particularly heart-wrenching to his young admirers.

The belligerent custodians of the Islamic Republic had forced him to confess to crimes that would make a dead chicken laugh, as we say in Persian, and as an oppositional figure quickly pointed out. This is a velvet revolution, he was made to say, plotted by the reformists, supported by the "Enemy," and there was nothing wrong with Ahmadinejad's landslide victory. Instead of sadness and disappointment, the blogosphere was abuzz with love and admiration for Abtahi. He was instantly declared a national hero. "For the first time," said one blogger, "I learned to love a cleric -- and then I looked again; he had no clerical robe anymore." Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the leading Iranian filmmaker now active in support of the Green Movement, delivered the most memorable punch line in support of Abtahi and dismissing his forced confessions. "If Khamenei were to be treated like Abtahi in jail, the Supreme Guide would come to national television belly dancing!"

Every state is founded on force, Max Weber believed early in the 20th century. What Weber termed "legitimate violence," as the defining apparatus of any state, is predicated on what he called "external means" and "inner justification": the more a state has to resort to external means (use of violence), the less its claim on inner justification (constitutional mandates) on its citizens. The massively orchestrated and naked violence that the Islamic Republic has launched against its own citizens (young and old, men and women, rich and poor) has not only delegitimised its claim to the notion of a "republic", it has, ipso facto, discredited any claim to "Islam" that it may have while bordering on discrediting Islam itself, which is the reason why so many prominent, high-ranking, Shia clerics are coming out so forcefully and categorically denouncing the violent crackdown of peaceful demonstrations, in both juridical and rational terms. There were many Iranians who doubted the accuracy of the June presidential election results, and there were those who thought they were perfectly accurate. But the vicious, blatantly criminal, activities of people in positions of power in the Islamic Republic have now assumed a reality sui generis, beyond anything that any critic of this election had ever uttered. The Islamic Republic of Iran is self-destructing.

Over the last two months, scores of innocent young Iranians have been cold-bloodedly murdered, either in the streets or else under torture in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, three different and autonomous human rights organisations, have independently documented and condemned atrocious acts of human rights abuse -- of arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, illegal incarceration, indiscriminate beating and torture, and cold-blooded murder of ordinary citizens. To the haunted names of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Airbase, and even the Gulags now has to be added the dreaded names of Kahrizak and Evin as sites of appalling atrocities perpetrated by the security apparatus of a self-consciously illegitimate tyranny. Never will any official of the Islamic Republic be able to utter a word about the criminal behaviours of the US army in Iraq or the equally atrocious acts of the Israeli army in Palestine with a straight face and without ipso facto implicating their own atrocities against their own innocent citizens. Mehdi Karrubi, a leading oppositional figure, recently said even the Zionists (proverbial for their brutalities against the Palestinians) behave with more self-restraint in Gaza than the Iranian security apparatus does against Iranian citizens. The horrors of the Islamic Republic do not whitewash the terrors that the Jewish state perpetrates against Palestinians in their own homeland. They underline them. Ahmadinejad is no moral voice to point a finger at Israel. The dead bodies of Neda Aqa-Soltan, Sohrab Arabi, and scores of other young Iranians murdered in the prime of their lives are.

The security apparatus of the Islamic Republic behaves like a wild beast, chasing after its own tail, maiming and murdering anyone in its way. Innocent citizens are arbitrarily arrested, or more accurately kidnapped off the streets (like the prominent human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr), incarcerated in their hundreds, at times viciously tortured, or even cold-bloodedly murdered, and their bodies given to their families on the obscene condition that they utter no word of protest and bury their loved ones quietly. Leading public intellectuals, political activists, reformist journalists, university professors, and political analysts are arrested, charged with treason, forced to confess to outlandish charges, and then paraded in front of national television in kangaroo courts to humiliate and break them in the public eye. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence, a caring intellect, a moral fibre in her or his being is suspect.

It took 30 years of an Islamic Republic to cleanse it of its innate banalities and to produce a leading cadre of public intellectuals who deeply care about their people, love their country, abide by the law of their land, and with a perfectly legitimate range of positions and opinions on social and economic matters wish to work for a better future. And it took exactly that many years for yet another generation of opportunist charlatans to gather around Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to kill (like a number of public intellectuals in the late 1990s), paralyze (like the chief reformist strategist Said Hajjarian), force into exile (like Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar, Akbar Ganji, Mohsen Makhmalbaf or Ata Mohajerani), or incarcerate, torture, humiliate, discredit or kill (too numerous to name) anyone who dares to speak truth to power. That intellectual elite is systematically eradicated, murdered, incarcerated, discredited, forced into exile in order to pave the ignominious path of a medieval banality codenamed welayat-e-faqih, a keyword for the rule of fear and fanaticism, structural ignorance and religious fascism. Farhang-e-nokhbeh-koshi, the "culture of eliticide" is what one perceptive Iranian analyst has called this dark age of tyranny.

Meanwhile, whatever has survived of this eliticide and gathered around an innocuous but hopeful green colour to codify an unprecedented civil rights movement is now the target of even harsher attacks by a certain quixotic side of the expatriate "opposition" that discredits anyone who might harbour a glimpse of hope for the future. They do nothing but malign any public figure that this movement has chosen as a leader. They point to shadows in the past of people like Mousavi, Soroush, Ganji or Makhmalbaf, and by discrediting them wish to discredit the entire Green Movement. Much legitimate anger lingers in their prose, degenerating though into an illegitimate malignancy of moral retardation and political impotence. What they offer instead is the mouldy residues of old clichés, arrested in their mind and soul in some Neanderthal age of convictions, without an iota of critical or creative intelligence about them. They are a sorry and sad scene: much coarsened convictions and yet not an iota of hope, of trust, of crossing the psychological barrier of getting muddied with the nuts and bolts of a magnificent civil rights movement that belongs to no one in particular and is in need of every ounce of creative intelligence that comes to its aid.

These parasitical noises notwithstanding, the central volume of the movement is crystal clear and rising. The Green Movement does not belong to anyone, from Mir-Hossein Mousavi inside Iran to Reza Pahlavi and Masoud Rajavi of the Mojahedin-e Khalq outside. But in and of itself it moves like a beautiful river, self- propelling, like the Hudson or Karun, now thunderous and dangerous, now calm and quiet. Fortunately no charismatic rabble-rouser has any legitimate claim to it. The most significant dimension of this movement is its historic transvaluation of values, its categorical denunciation of aggression in face of ungodly violence that seeks to put an end to it. It will not end. The belligerent custodians of the Islamic Republic capture and torture Mohammad Abtahi, and force him to confess to bogus charges on national television, and yet within hours masses of emails and weblogs shower him with love and forgiveness, understanding and tolerance, hope and happiness. The Islamic Republic wants to humiliate Abtahi, but the people turn him into a national hero and publish thousands of "confessions" of a similar sort to make him feel better and to express their love and solidarity with him.

Putting their lives and liberties on the line are not just ordinary citizens in extraordinary courage and imagination. The most learned juridical authorities of the land, and high-ranking Shia clerics from Ayatollah Montazeri to Ayatollah Sanei, to Hojjat Al-Islam Mohsen Kadivar, reminiscent in their courage and conviction of the best that the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911 produced, have gone public denouncing these naked brutalities of the Islamic Republic. One of the most distinguished Shia scholars of the land, Seyyed Mostafa Mohaqqeq Damad, in an open letter to Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, the Head of the Judiciary, denounced the absurd kangaroo courts that have robbed innocent citizens of their rights; he speaks to the highest juridical authority of the land not as a jurist but "as a citizen". These are groundbreaking moments in modern Iranian history, and no stone will be left unturned.

The Islamic Republic may die a quick death or else suffer ignominy through a languorous demise -- that will be determined not by its unending brutalities, but by the grace and pace of a civil rights movement that is changing the moral map of this godforsaken term we inherited from our colonial past, the "Middle East". The rise and demise of the Islamic Republic follows the simple law of diminishing returns: there is only so much abuse that a people can take, or that an outdated idea can exercise. After that, the more abuse you heap on a people the less effective it becomes. For 30 years, the Islamic Republic violently distorted a multifaceted cosmopolitan political culture and crudely cut and shoved its limbs inside a medieval juridical apothecary box, and to suppress and silence its own people assumed a warring posture against regional atrocities of entirely different origin and destination. If Iraq is in shambles, Palestine is brutalised, Afghanistan is marred by highway bandits and supersonic bombers, none of those calamities justifies the banalities of an Islamic Republic that has abused them for far too long to be able to continue to justify its parasitical persistence.

Today, the Islamic Republic has finally outsmarted itself and hit the plateau of decline, where its opportunist warring postures in the region can no longer hide the horrors of its own criminal theocracy. This point of diminishing returns is where all tyrannies ultimately end. It is not just the Islamic Republic that has finally outsmarted itself and is beginning to self-destruct. The same fate awaited George W Bush and the Christian Empire he sought to build, and where the US military and material wherewithal could not afford such imperial largesse and began to unravel in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Islamic Republic is self-destructing because it played its transparent hand for too long, and too clumsily, precisely the same way that the Jewish state has played its victimhood for too long and too clumsily. Nobody could defeat Zionism, so Zionism defeated itself, by being too arrogant, too indulgent, and too brazen in its disregard for basic human decency, thinking it could just wipe Palestine and Palestinians off the face of the world. Well, Palestinians were not wiped off. They are still there, and they are fighting back -- tall, towering, and upstanding. But belligerent Zionism, just like militant Islamism, and just like Christian and Hindu fundamentalism, has run morally aground. The 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the 2008-2009 massacre of Palestinians in Gaza were the ultimate signs of its moral and military meltdown, its naked brutalities exposing the fact that it, too, just like its Islamist counterpart in Iran, has hit the point of diminishing returns, where people no longer buy its outworn commodification of victimhood, as best documented and argued by Norman Finkelstein.

The dawn of a new beginning is brightly upon us, not just in Iran but also in the entire region. The non-violent civil rights movement in Iran is changing the moral map of the region, its normative vocabulary, its visions, vistas, and prospects of itself. It crosses over any Sunni-Shia divide, Arab-Persian racism, Arab-Israeli conflict, religious-secular chasm, and bridges over much troubled and muddied water. To mark my point, here is a passage from a young Iranian blogger that I quote to salute my distinguished Israeli detractor who calls me typically "Persian and emotional":

In the history books of the 21st century, the first chapter will be about us. In the introduction, they might write that important events have happened before us, events like 9/11 and war on Iraq and Afghanistan, but those were the remnants of the previous century, with an outdated language and with 20th century tools: airplanes, bombs and bullets. And then they will write that the first chapter is dedicated to us because we have been the true children of our time ... They will write that we were the first social movement of which all of us were its leader and all of us were its organiser ... They may make a subsection to describe how a movement without a command centre was acting so well-orchestrated. How its ideas, desires and slogans were suggested, criticised, and completed so well, and then one day they were expressed in such a harmony as if all these millions had practiced them together for years ... In the same chapter they will write that we lived the last days of guns and bullets and we showed that where awareness, information and channels of communication for human connection exist, bullets are pointless. They may put a picture of a single bullet somewhere in our Freedom Museum and write for its caption "the last bullet that was ever pulled out of a magazine." _

* The writer is Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University and author of Iran: A People Interrupted .

I kept the format of the original piece but added the bolding...a little too much but this was mainly a have to read piece.

What do you guys think?

Some good news from Iran (08/15/2009)

I first posted this on ontd_political on August 15, 2009.

I dug up some good news from Iran and felt this should be given its own post. A college student who was imprisoned in Iran has been returned to her family in Los Angeles.

Cal State Northridge student imprisoned in Iran returns to L.A.
Esha Momeni, who was in Iran working on her master's thesis on women's rights, was held for 25 days and then forbidden to leave the country for nine months.
August 15, 2009 - Raja Abdulrahim

A Cal State Northridge graduate student who was briefly imprisoned in Iran while working on her master's thesis on women's rights and then prohibited from leaving the country for nine months returned this week to Los Angeles, school officials said Thursday.

Esha Momeni, 29, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday and was greeted by friends and family.

"It is wonderful news," Cal State Northridge President Jolene Koester said in a prepared statement. "All of us in the CSU Northridge community have been looking forward to this day. I have met briefly with Esha, and she appears to be in fine spirits."

Momeni, who has dual citizenship in Iran and the United States, was arrested Oct. 15 for allegedly speeding along a Tehran highway and escorted to her family's home, where police confiscated her computer and video-taped interviews she had conducted for her thesis, her family said at the time.

Los Angeles-born Momeni was in Tehran conducting research on the country's women's rights movement. She is a member of Change for Equality, a nonprofit organization which trains women in nonviolent political activism and civil disobedience.

Momeni was held in the political ward of Iran's infamous Evin Prison for 25 days before she was released on $200,000 bail, paid with the deed to her parent's home, according to a news release on a website dedicated to her release.

After Momeni's release, Iranian officials said she was free to leave the country until her trial. But her father, Reza Momeni, told The Times in November that authorities were holding her travel documents.

On Tuesday, she was finally allowed to board a flight to Frankfurt, Germany, before traveling to Los Angeles.

Words cannot express (08/14/2009)

I first posted this on ontd_political on August 14, 2009.

I'm so far behind in my Iran Updates that I run out of room with big quotes of articles. This is an article that must be read. I'm sorry to have to spread more bad mojo when all the bullshit antics of the far right about death panals and failure still perminates through our conscious minds. But like this article states, some things must be spoken to bring about the full imagining of the horror and to envoke the phrase, "never again."

~

Iran roiled by prison abuse claims
A reformist politician's letter claiming jailed protesters have been abused brings details of such allegations to the fore. The parliamentary speaker has promised to investigate.
August 12, 2009 - Borzou Daragahi

Reporting from Beirut - Nearly a month later, she can't erase images of the dying young man from her mind.

All but two of his upper teeth had been knocked out. His nails had been pulled out. His head had been bashed in. His kidneys had stopped working. But what most disturbed her, she said, were the stitches around his anus -- a sign, the nurses told her, that he had been raped.

Iranian reformist websites and activists in recent days had identified 19-year-old Mohammad K. as one of the protesters arrested during Iran's postelection unrest, locked up in the Kahrizak detention facility and severely beaten.

He died in the late hours of July 16 or the early hours of July 17 at a hospital in Tehran, according to the websites.

But the woman, a secretary at a downtown Tehran company who told her story to The Times on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said he was also a victim of jailhouse sexual torture. Such accusations are making waves in Iran after the release this week of a letter by a prominent reformist politician.

"Since then I am deeply depressed," said the woman, who was at Loghman hospital visiting a relative when she discovered Mohammad K., whose full name is being withheld because of the sensitivity of the allegation. She helped overworked nurses change his bandages.

"I cannot sleep. I take tranquilizers. I have lost 20 pounds. I cannot eat properly. His toothless face is not erasable," she said.

Iran's parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, has promised to investigate allegations of prisoner abuse, including jailhouse rape, which were included in the letter dated July 29 written by the reformist politician, Mehdi Karroubi, to Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and leaked to the media. Karroubi was among opposition presidential candidates whose defeat by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the disputed June 12 elections triggered weeks of protests.

The same week that Karroubi wrote the letter, authorities announced they had closed Kahrizak as a "substandard" facility on the orders of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Prosecutor-General Qorban Ali Dori-Najafabadi and Police Chief Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam have acknowledged there was abuse of prisoners at the detention center and fired the warden and three guards.

Iran has for decades been accused of torturing detainees. But the release of Karroubi's letter -- which has been widely distributed online and described on foreign-based satellite television channels, though its most explosive allegations were censored from newspaper reports -- has placed the issue of treatment of detainees on the front burner.

"Some of the detainees claim incarcerated girls were raped so harshly until their uteruses were torn apart, while young boys were sexually abused so savagely that they are suffering from serious depression as well as physical and mental traumas," Karroubi wrote. "Those who have been subject to these embarrassing tortures have been threatened with death if they disclose details."

Lawmakers wary of Ahmadinejad's confrontational style and hard-line policies have begun to use the issue to turn up the heat on his allies in the Revolutionary Guard and Basiji militia, whom they believe led the brutal crackdown on detainees.

"The punishments meted out to these individuals must be specified so that the public can be assured that these offenders have been punished," Ali Motahari, a conservative member of parliament often critical of Ahmadinejad, told reporters Monday.

On Tuesday, reformists submitted the names of 69 protesters they said were killed in the weeks of demonstrations, more than double the number acknowledged by the government. Western officials in Tehran estimate that more than 100 died in the violence.

Security officials contend that fewer than 30 died. Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's hard-line prosecutor, told news agencies that Mohammad K. and Mohsen Ruholamini, the son of a prominent scientist and political advisor, died of a meningitis outbreak at Kahrizak. Brig. Gen. Ahmad Reza Radan, a security official close to Ahmadinejad, has dismissed the charges as "rumors" and "psychological operations" spread by the West.

A friend of Mohammad K.'s family told The Times that the young man's father is a wealthy real estate broker. Reformist websites say the young man was arrested by security forces near Tehran's Vali Asr Square on July 9, a day of protests coinciding with the 10th anniversary of a student uprising. A friend spotted him being hauled away and told his family, whose members began a fruitless weeklong quest to find him.

After Kahrizak, Mohammad K. was moved to Evin Prison, before he was taken to Loghman hospital, said the family friend, who also requested anonymity for the sake of safety.

At the hospital, the secretary -- a supporter of the protest movement -- felt compelled to help empty the comatose man's urine container and change his bandages.

At 9:30 p.m. on July 16, a man described to her by nurses as the acting head of Kahrizak arrived at the hospital along with a group of soldiers and the young man's parents and uncle, who journalists later told The Times is a ranking official in the government.

The parents identified the young man, and the prison official signed a document declaring Mohammad K. "free," the secretary said. Outside, in the hospital courtyard, soldiers sipped fruit juice, she said.

"He is nearly dead and now you declare my son free," the weeping mother said, before taking him by ambulance to the privately owned Mehr hospital, the secretary recalled.

By 3 a.m., Mohammad K. was dead, hours before he was supposed to sit for his university entrance exam.

His father, Ali, publicly disavowed an interview the family gave to the BBC Persian TV channel describing their son as a martyr to the movement opposed to Ahmadinejad.

The family friend said Mohammad K.'s uncle pulled strings to allow for a memorial service, denied to most of the protesters killed in the unrest. On July 23 in Tehran's a-Qadir mosque, the cleric described him as a committed young man who died for his beliefs.

"Death is our inevitable destiny," the cleric told Mohammad K.'s weeping relatives and friends, according to one witness. "But the only death that is awful is . . . death in a society in which people are not allowed to think and explore the horizons of thought."

~

Quoted from Andrew Sullivan's blog:
Anagnorisis -- a revelation into the true nature of things, usually through tragedy. We could broaden the technical, literary meaning of anagnorisis to include the truth that is revealed, not just to the tragic protagonist, but also to the readers. There is a classic poem by Aeschylus that expresses insight through horror:

"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls, drop by drop, upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."

Did I bold too much?

Iranian blogger tells of how he escaped Tehran with his life (08/06/2009)

I first posted this on ontd_political on August 06, 2009.

I was going to post this up on my Iran Update post that I am working on but in lieu of twitter, facebook, livejournal and youtube being hit with DDoS attacks I think it needed to be on its own page.

We tend to forget as we post stories from the rest of the world and speak of the lulz of what is going on that there are real people being effected by these actions. I was reading on Huffington Post about how Twitter was DDoS'd and these comments were all about how work productivity went up and how people didn't have anything else better to do were left with nothing to do. I have to say it royally pissed me off because these sites that were hit with the DDoS attack are the main lines of communication for the Iranians and other people who are censored by their government.

In Iran today more protests were happening. Video was being streamed on liveleak.com and youtube about these protests.

Now with my rant over I present to you the story of one blogger from Tehran whose work we are all familar with in unfamiliar ways because he was one of the people who sent video and stories to cnn and other media websites and youtube and facebook. He is one of many who is being hunted down by this regime all because he is speaking his mind about what is happening in his country and to his people by its leaders.

Iranian blogger tells of escape from Tehran (August 05, 2009 - Nadeem Sarwar and Sajjad Malik)

When Iran sought to hide its crackdown on people protesting the allegedly rigged presidential election of June 12, young Hamid Raza Khoshnya used his weblog to keep the world enlightened about the regime’s brutality.

But the over-vigilant secret agents of the Islamic republic lost little time in tracing his “internet mischief”. When they came knocking at his door, Khoshnya, 23, had little option but to flee.

Staying in Tehran while there was a complete lack of tolerance for dissent was too dangerous and would certainly have meant prison, or even death. But escaping was not easy for someone who wanted “change” in his country.

“I remained in hiding in the cellar of a friend’s house in a suburb of Tehran for 25 days until arrangements were made for my escape to Pakistan,” Khoshnya said in an interview in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

After paying $3,000 to people smugglers, Khoshnya travelled in a container to the south-eastern Iranian province of Balochistan-Sistan. From there a motorcycle rider took him across muddy, bumpy terrain to the Pakistani border village of Mandelo.

“Sitting on the pillion seat of a Honda 125 motorbike, I was trembling,” said Khoshnya, who is now staying with an Iranian refugee family in Islamabad.

“I hid myself behind the driver, praying to God that I would pass this area safely as quickly as possible. You know Iranian or Pakistani border guards could shoot us had they spotted us.”

Raised in an upper middle class, well-educated family, Khoshnya was early this year expelled from university for organising anti-government activities at the campus, making him even more determined to join dozens of reformist bloggers.

Amid a ban on foreign media from reporting, photographing or taking videos of the opposition’s protests against what they call “fraudulent” elections, he shared the details of the happenings on his Persian-language weblog “The Wretched” — named for the 19th century French novelist Victor Hugo.

He also sent texts, pictures and videos to CNN, BBC Persian Service and VOA through e-mails, including the one on “Bloody Saturday” when Iranian law enforcers shot dead several demonstrators in Tehran.

It happened a day after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei warned the protesters June 19 to stop agitating and condemning the outcome of the poll that saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returned to power.

“We were around 500 people in Amirabad Street when police came from all sides and unleashed terror,” Khoshnya said.

“They first baton-charged and tear-gassed people and then opened fire at the unarmed protesters. Thirty people died there and many more were injured.”

Khoshnya still remembers how Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who later become a symbol of the opposition cause in Iran, was hit by a bullet and slumped to the ground. He immediately snapped a picture of her with face and head smeared in blood, a picture which is posted on his blog http://bekhatereh-iran.persianblog.ir/, which he co-edits with his friend Pisar Ironi, an Iranian refugee living in Denmark.

“Those animals also beat me up with batons and broke my leg when I tried to save my one female relative. But thank God I did not lose my cell-phone where I had the pictures,” said Khoshnya as he pulled up his shirt to show the scars on his back, still fresh after 40 days.

With the bloggers and twitters partly circumventing the restrictions imposed on international media, Iranian authorities have intensified their campaign to trace the oppositional voices back to their computers.

Some of the 34 media workers detained after the election are bloggers, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Many others have gone underground, waiting for an opportunity to flee to a neighbouring country.

Feeling relatively safe with a trusted family in Islamabad, the young reformist still posts reports and pictures shared by his dozens of friends from Iran, with the conviction that change is imminent.

“I have great hope in our resistance,” said Khoshnya. “The Iranian people have tolerated with complete silence the repression, brutality, exploitation in the name of religion for 30 years. But now they say ‘enough is enough’.”

“They have woken up now and you will see, in a maximum of two years, that the present regime will experience the same fate as that of (late Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein.”

Iran Update July 31-August 02, 2009 (08/03/2009)

I first posted this on ontd_political on August 03, 2009.

I'm sorry for this being late. Lots of problems popped up.

By now I'm sure you know that Mousavi tried to make it to Neda's funeral grounds but was deterred by Basij and Police. His wife made it there but I'm not sure a speech was made. Neda's mother couldn't come either. Sohrab's mother did though. Tanreh's (sp?) parents have kept mum. I don't expect them to speak out about the rape and murder of their only child, it's too 'shameful'.

Strange though, Nico is still silent on Huffington Post... Is it the move?

Reza Aslan on Rachel Maddow's show about the 40 day anniversary.

I'm going to update the green briefs tomorrow. I'm still at my brother's and computer use is less than my own.

July 29-30, 2009 post | July 27-28 post | July 25-26, 2009 post | July 24, 2009 post | July 20-23, 2009 Week post | July 18-19, 2009 post | July 17, 2009 post | July 16, 2009 post | July 15, 2009 post | July 14, 2009 post | July 13, 2009 post | July 12, 2009 post | July 11, 2009 post | July 10, 2009 post | July 9, 2009 posts | July 8, 2009 post | July 7, 2009 post | July 6, 2009 post | July 5, 2009 post | July 4, 2009 post

Life Goes on in Tehran (a monthly photoblog)

Important Links

Iranian Justice

Iran Tube <- Vid hosting for Iran vids

Tehran Bureau: Ayatollah Watch <- List of the Ayatollahs and which side they are on

Anonymous Intelligence Collective <- Iran information collective Iran Mapping Project

Iran Human Rights Documentation Center <- Documenting the Human Rights Violations conducted by the Iranian Government (English and Farsi)

Paul Coelho blog <- Interview with the doctor that tried to save Neda's life.

Heritage Org
All a Twitter: How Social Networking Shaped Iran's Election Protests (July 20, 2009 - James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.)

More pictures of the Friday Prayers Protest
Vid of Friday Sermon Tehran Riots
Wikinews on Rafsanjani's speech

Juan Cole <- Guy who interviewed Nico | Rafsanjani's steps to resolve Iran's crisis | Friday's Sermon Fateful for Iran

Khandaniha <- Iranian site that has video of Friday's Sermon in 7 parts

What Bernard Kouchner REALLY said about Iran

More pictures of the Friday Prayers Protest
Tehran Bureau: Vid of Friday Sermon Tehran Riots
Iran.whyweprotest: Vid of Friday Sermon Protests
Wikinews on Rafsanjani's speech
HipHop show in Berlin, in solidarity with the protest movement in Iran
Amnesty International USA: Iranian Petition

Juan Cole <- Guy who interviewed Nico | Rafsanjani's steps to resolve Iran's crisis | Friday's Sermon Fateful for Iran

Khandaniha <- Iranian site that has video of Friday's Sermon in 7 parts

Dynamic Internet Technology <- "Attack the Cyberwalls!: The Internet Is the Pathway to Democracy in Places Like Iran"

Index of 500+ vids of Iranian protests

Rooz online - Eng

Iran protest flickr page

Youtube: peivel17 <- Green Wave channel

Global Day of Action in Stockholm Sweden, pics and vid | Sohrab's mother speaks to Tehran's city council

Youtube user: We Are Neda

Blogs

Revolution in Iran | Feel Good page <- music vid page

Robin Wright

A letter from an Iranian named Fayah

"I love life. I love to laugh and be with my friends. There are so many books I want to read, movies I want to see, people I want to meet. I want to marry, to be a good wife and mother. I want to grow old with the people I love, to feel the sun on my face, to see the ocean, to travel.

My country is in a terrible state. People have no jobs. There is no money. People have no freedom. Women must hide themselves from the world, and we have no choices.

Our people--we are not terrorists. We hate terrorists. And that is what our government has become. They kill our people for no reason. They torture us in their prisons because we want freedom. They make our country look evil, they make our religion look evil.

We are fighting for our freedom, for our religion, for our country. If we do nothing while injustice abounds, we become unjust. We turn into the ones we hate.

I have to fight. I have to go back on the streets. I will make them kill me. I will join Neda, with my friends, and then maybe the world will hear us.

I never thought I would become a martyr, but it is needed. The more of us they kill, the smaller they become, the more strength the people will have. Maybe my death will mean nothing, but maybe it will buy my country freedom.

I am very sad that I will never be a mother, that I will never do the things I love, but I would rather die than do nothing and know that I am to blame for the tortures, the murder, the hatred.

Please tell the world how much we love life. That we are not terrorists. We just want to be free."

Keeping the Change | Flash Mobs: A New Twist on Solidarity With Iran by Maryam

Nite Owl's live translations of the Sermon

Pedestrian | July 17, 2009 Friday Sermon | Pictures & Stories | "I was there" | July 18, 2009 Now it is our turn | Unverified Reports <- Qom wants Khamenei to side with protesters

Tehran Bureau: Friday Prayers Update (July 17, 2009)

Peace With Iran <- Blog

Iranian Leftists Report of a female protester 'possibly' gang raped and murdered

Demotix <- The mighty photojournalism site Iran election page pictures of demostrations outside Iranian embassy in London

Mightier Than

ABC reporter jim sciutto's twitblog

LA Times – Babylon & Beyond First images to emerge of July 9, 2009 protests large crowd gets dispersed by teargass on July 9, 2009 protests | July 17, 2009 -> Iran: Human Rights Lawyer Shadi Sadr Arrested | Iran: In Video, anger boils over at Friday Sermon | IRAN: Full text of Rafsanjani's lengthy speech | July 18, 2009 - IRAN: U.S. addresses Tehran unrest in daily briefing | July 19, 2009 Egypt: Cleric backed by Iran charged in Egypt | IRAN: Iranian cleric sees a long-planned conspiracy in protests

iran.whyweprotest.net 18 Tir / 9 July forum thread <- lots of vids and first hand account by a protester in Iran

goftaniha.org Ex-Basij Founder's Blog being used to ID Basij – in Farsi

Ayatollah Watch <- Information on Ayatollahs

Ahmedi's takeover has been planned since 2004

Out the Basij

ID the Basiji

twit blog about how another Ayatollah has gone against the regime

Lara Setrakian - ABC News reporter's blog TEHRAN UNREST: "IT WAS NOTHING LESS THAN WAR. PRAY FOR US."

National Iranian American Council's Blog July 9, 2009 protest coverage <- vids and pics

NY Times – The Lede Blog July 9, 2009 protest coverage | Young election protester buried in Tehran <- a new Martyr

PERSIA.ORG "Struggle for a Free Iran" <- Has dedicated their front page to information on those who have been killed and detained
Iran Negah "Ezclusive views into Iranian politics & society"

University of Texas - Austin "Power of Protest: University experts condemn violence, but urge diplomacy toward Iran"

Keeping the Change | Keeping the Change FB | Nooroz News: Tehran's Morgues Reportedly Holds the Bodies of Hundreds of Dead Protesters

Ndn.org: July 15: Twitter Iran and more impressions from the front lines of the global media revolution

Mohsen Sazegara | explaining what to do and how to do the protests
1- where to go
2- how to do it
3- things to bring
4- what to do at nights
5- slogens to write
6- which marker to write with (green neon marker in this case)

~*~

Retweeters to watch
@LaraABCNews <- Reporter out of Dubai who's been in contact with Iranians
@Pray4FreeIran <- retweeter who spreads messages about Iran
@AustinHeap <- The genius behind ProxyHeap and Haystack (says that Node 1 is a go?)
@StopAdmedi <- twitter account for Mousavi supporters
@nicopitney <- I didn't know he had a twitter account
@Iran_Translator <- NiteOwl
@iranriggedelect
@tehranbereau
@bistoon <- IRGC already actively hunt him b/c of student revolt in 1999 so I can rec him
@nextrevolution
@IranAnon <- Yes it is the Iranian Anonymous crowd
@niacouncil <- National Iranian-American Council
@votersunion
@iranlaya
@iranhrdc <- Iran Human Rights Documenting Center
@EANewsFeed <- Enduring America news feed
@IranNewsNow

Useful Resources

News: NIAC Insight | Kodoom
Translations: Google Translate | TehranBroadcast.com | Translate4Iran
Helping Iranians use the web: Haystack | Tor Project (English & Farsi) | IranHelp.org (Farsi) Demonstrations: Facebook | sharearchy | WhyWeProtest
Activism: Avaaz.org | National Iranian American Council

Mousavi's main website | Mousavi's backup/English | Mousavi's FB

Haystack's how you can help digg page
Haystack <- The all powerful proxy (still in testing) Want to help? Don't know anything techwise? Then donate some cash and keep this revolution going, you may just save someone(s) life! Haystack is needing donations! Donate Here.
Haystack Network wesbite | Haystack Twitter page | Haystack needs help! |Twitter | FB

Protest Advice
Brainstorm Ideas | Downloading/Uploading Vid programs
Torrent/dl list of videos showing police brutality in Iran
Blog that has links to LA Protest that 35-50,000 people turn out
the pictures

Want to know how the power check system in Iran works? The Wall Street Journal has an excellent graph.
Bearing Witness In Iran Weighs Heavily On Cohen: Roger Cohen on NPR
Voice of the Voiceless
YekIran <- Worldwide Protest Map
Wiki on 18th Tir Protests 1999
Wiki of Iranian Election Protests
Reporters Without Borders <- List of how many reporters are in prison in Iran

Sea of Green Radio <-an 'anon' Iran blog twitter radionomy anonymous Sea of Green radio
Eng Trans of Mousavi FB that has protest instructions and routes
mowjcamp <- Mousavi/Opposition website in Farsi

Nedanet Resource Page | hacktivists software tools
Downforeveryoneorjustme <- check websites to see if it's down | service uptime <- free remote website uptime monitoring designed to help you detect website downtime
Wiki: DNS Cache Poisoning
Paryvan wiki
VANISH: Self-Destructing Digital Data burned messages for spies the digital way
Steganography Solution
EFF.org Surveillance Self-Defense International <- 6 Ideas For Those Needing Defensive Technology to Protect Free Speech from Authoritarian Regimes and 4 Ways the Rest of Us Can Help

Mightier Than Iran: The Rooftop Project <- Site trying to find vids of the roof top shoutings for every single night since the protests began.
Iran News <- One Stop Source
for News/YouTube/Blog/Political Cartoon links about Iran's Election and the aftermath (massive library of information)
The Guardian's list of dead and detained
Voice of America News
Iran 360 <- Photojournalism site
Slate's stash of Iran political cartoons
Green cd hour long video from Iran <- Split up into nine parts on iran.whyweprotest.net

Where is My Vote.org <- List or/way of organizing world wide protests
Iran Human Rights
Human Rights Activists In Iran The Latest Update on the Detainees of July 9 and a List of 90 Confirmed in Prison
fivethirtyeight.com: Iran <- Nate Silver "the guru of statistics" input on the validity of the Iranian election outcome
Google News: Iran Election – 30, 700 articles in the past month

Austin for Iran <- Site for organizing protests in Austin Texas
Map of Tehran
Petition for the release of American-Iranian Kian Tajbakhsh

OnlyMehdi Youtube page <- Lots of vids on Iran
United 4 Iran <- Protest page | @united4iran
iran.whyweprotest best articles and links

Iran Solidarity.org.uk
Amnesty International
Reporters Uncensored | Reporters Uncensored Livestream

Share that vid <- Another vid site
Live Leak <- Another vid site
Massive Video Archive of Iran Protest Footage
USA SWAT Expert Advice - It might save their lives <- on Iran.whyweprotest forum
vid on How to use police tactics against a baton | more vids on youtube <- For Iranian's in self-defense
Vids of Ahmedinejad speech on July 16, 2009 in Mashaad

~*~

Live Blogs on Iran

The Guardian: July 17, 2009 - Iran Crisis Friday Prayers

Revolutionary Road... <- Live from Tehran UPDATES | Revolution Road FB | Twitter <- Has lots of twitpics of the Friday Sermon Protest | List of Killed, Arrested and Released as of July 22, 2009 <- There is an interactive slide that has pictures of some of the dead.

Andrew Sullivan's blog <- Political blog but he has a lot of coverage on iran. Andrew Sullivan's blog "Iran Erupts Again" Counter Targeting the Protesters Abbas Kiarostami's "10" <- Andrew Sullivan has a feature of exhibiting artists and music | Outing Iran: Marg bar <- The real meaning of Marg bar

Enduring America blog | Latest from Iran: July 18 A Victory Followed By....? | Latest from Iran: July 19 Breathing Space

Nico's Pitney's live blog on HuffPo <- The most excellent live blog out there. Has an absolute ton of information dating back the very first day. Filled with pictures and vids.

Week of July 27, 2009

Week of July 20, 2009 | Week of July 13, 2009 | July 10, 2009 | July 9, 2009 | July 8th | July 7th | July 6th | July 5th | July 3rd | July 2nd | July 1st | June 30th | June 29th | June 28th | June 27th | June 26th | June 25th | June 24th | June 22nd | June 21st | June 20th pt 2 | June 20th pt 1 | June 19th | June 18th | June 17th | June 16th | June 15th

NiteOwl's Green Briefs

NiteOwl's Green Briefs are compilations of news reports straight from Iranians.
Nite Owl's live translations of the Sermon |
Who is Who | Green Brief Pronouciation Guide

#48 (August 3-4, 2009 - Mordad 12-13, 1388) | #47 (August 2-3, 2009 - Mordad 11-12, 1388) | #46 (August 1, 2009 - Mordad 10, 1388) | #45 (July 31, 2009) | #44 (July 30, 2009) | #43 (July 29) | #42 (July 28, 2009) | #40-41 (July 26-27) | #39 (July 25) | #38 (July 24) | #37 (July 23) | #38 (July 24) | #39 (July 25)

Green Brief #36 (July 22) | Green Brief #35 (July 21) | Green Brief #34 (July 20) | #33 (July 19) | #30 (July 16) | #29 (July 15) | #28 (July 14) | #27 (July 13) | #26 (July 12) | #25 (July 11) | #24 (July 10) | #23 (July 9) | #22 (July 8) | #21 (July 7) | #20 (July 6) | #18-#19 (July 4-5) | #17 (July 3) | #16 (July 2) | #15 (July 1) | #14 (June 30) | #13 (June29) | #12 (June 28) | #11 (June 27) | #10 (June 26th) | #9 (June 25) | #8 (June 24) | #7 (June 23) | #6 (June 22) | #5 (June 21) | #4 (June 20 | #3 (June 19) | #2 (June 18) | #1 (June 17)

Newspaper Articles

Time
A Brief Euphoria in Tehran: 'We Can Win This' (July 31, 2009)
Crackdown Helps Sustain Iran's Protest Movement (July 30, 2009 - Andrew Lee Butters)
Tehran Dispatch: A Crackdown to Forbid Mourning (July 30, 2009)
U.S. Spurned Iran Offers to Turn Over bin Laden's Son (July 30, 2009 - Bobby Ghosh)
Russia Moves to Boost its Role in Central Asia">Russia Moves to Boost its Role in Central Asia (August 01, 2009 - Ishaan Tharoor)

AP
Iran state TV confirms arrest of 3 Americans (August 1, 2009)

Los Angeles Times
Iran puts 100 reformists, moderate politicians on trial (August 2, 2009 - Borzou Daragahi)
Three American tourists held in Iran (August 2, 2009 - Liz Sly)
Myanmar delays Aung San Suu Kyi verdict (August 1, 2009 - Mark Magnier and Charles McDermid)
Bombs near Shiite Mosques kill 29 In Baghdad (August 1, 2009 - Liz Sly and Caesar Ahmed)
Iranians defy authorities to mourn those slain in the unrest (July 31, 2009 - Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim)
Babylon & Beyond blog: Iran: Conservative Media Accused of Playing Loose With the Truth (August 1, 2009)
Babylon & Beyond blog: Iran: Footage Emerges from Demonstrations Across the Country (July 31, 2009)
Babylon & Beyond blog: Iran: Videos Emerge of Today's Protests (July 30, 2009)
Babylon & Beyond blog: Iran: Crowd of Thousands Overwhelms Security Forces (July 30, 2009)
Babylon & Beyond blog: Iran: T Fresh video shows mourners gathered near Neda's gravesite (July 30, 2009)

The Daily Beast
The Taliban PR Push (July 30, 2009 - Reza Aslan)
The Iran porn video (January 9, 2009 - Telmah Parsa)
his blog (author is an Iranian University Student, I've posted his other works as well...he's been silent since June 22nd)

Huffington Post
Americans Missing In Iran: Iran State TV Confirms Arrest Of 3 Americans (July 31, 2009)
Ahmadinejad: No Rift With Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (July 31, 2009 - NASSER KARIMI and LEE KEATH)
Happy Inauguration Day, Dr. Ahmadinejad: Don't Count on Success (July 31, 2009 - Jamsheed K. Choksy)
Iranian Police Beat Protesters At Neda Graveside Memorial (VIDEO) (July 30, 2009 - NASSER KARIMI)
Iran begins first trial of post-election crisis (August 01, 2009 - )
Iran at the Crossroads of History: Will This Regime Fall Like the Shah's? (July 31, 2009 - Abolhassan Bani-Sadr)

Iranian.com
The Revolution Which At First, Was Not (July 29, 2009 - Steven Goldstein)

PBS
Riot Police Crack Down on Mourners in Iran (July 30, 2009 with Borzou Daragahi pt1 of 2)
In Iran, New Burst of Demonstrations Escalate Political Tensions (July 30, 2009 with Borzou Daragahi pt2 of 2)

The Guardian
Opposition leaders condemn Iranian 'show trials' (August 02, 2009 - Ian Black)
US hikers arrested at Iran border (August 02, 2009 - Daniel Nasaw)

The Americans range in age from 27 to 36, and two are studying Arabic in Damascus. US news reports identified the hikers as Shane Bower, Sara Short and Joshua Fattal. A fourth member of their travelling party, who did not join the hike and was not detained, was debriefed by US embassy officials in Iraq.A Kurdish security spokesman in Sulaymaniyah, in north-eastern Iraq, told CNN that police warned the hikers on Friday to mind the nearby border.

Khatami: Iran's 'show trial' violates constitution (August 02, 2009 - Mark Tran)
Mass trial for Iran protest leaders (August 02, 2009 - Jason Burke and Saeed Kamali Dehghan)
Iran begins trials of opposition activists after election protests (August 01, 2009)
Truth and reconciliation for Iran (July 31, 2009 - Open Letter) <- a must read
Ahmadinejad denies rift with Iran's supreme leader (July 31, 2009 - AP)
An American in Iran:When I was accused of being a western spy, Kian Tajbakhsh befriended me. Now he's been jailed in Iran for the same offence (July 31, 2009 - Ibrahim Al-Marashi)
Pictures of the protests on July 30, 2009
Iranian protesters clash with security forces during Neda Soltan memorial (July 30, 2009 - Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran and Ian Black)
Iraqi forces do Iran's bidding (July 30, 2009 - Robin Corbett)
Were photographers' confessions coerced? (July 30, 2009 - Roy Greenslade)
Iran protests to honour the dead (July 30, 2009 - live blog)
Iran election protests: the dead, jailed and missing
the list

Iran's official figures for the six weeks since the election include 2,500 arrests in Tehran alone, with as many as 150 still in jail and 30 dead. The true figures are believed to be much higher – the death toll could be in the hundreds.Our figures come from human rights groups and campaigners inside and outside Iran, news reports and our users. They are: 80 dead, around 750 still detained, just under 100 released and 10 missing or not heard of since the mid-June protests.~The father of one of the detained, Mohammadreza Jalaeipour, 27, an Oxford PhD student and Mousavi's social media strategist (in this interview with the Wall Street Journal, he says he developed many ideas while obsessively following the Obama campaign), compared the jails to Abu Ghraib. One, however, has been closed: Kahrizak, on the southern edge of Tehran, which Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said "lacked the standards" to hold prisoners. It is thought that many of those arrested on the 9 July protests were held there.