Date : Tuesday – June 07, 2005
To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor, Legal Reporter
Contact: Iranian-American Community of Northern California, 510-243-1199 or info@iacnc.com
News Advisory:
The briefing will feature the first Bay Area screening of a video showing footage of three young men hanged in public in western Iran. At least 109 persons have been either publicly hanged or sentenced to death in Iran since January 2005.
The video, first shown in Paris conference last week, was shut secretly and recently smuggled out of Iran by supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), a leading group within the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The NCRI is the major Iranian opposition coalition which was first to reveal Iran’s secret major nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak in August 2002.
A recent report by the New-York-based Human Rights Watch alleged rights violations by the PMOI. The substance, timing, and fact-finding methodology of the report has raised serious questions among American and international policy and human rights circles about the report’s credibility.
IACNC will provide detailed information on the malicious nature and the absence of fact-finding standards in the HRW report in the Friday briefing.
The Human Rights Watch office in San Francisco has been informed of this press conference via e-mail and fax, as per information provided on the official HRW web site at: (http://www.hrw.org/contact.html). IACNC welcomes HRW’s attendance in this press conference.
WHEN: Thursday, June 9, 2005 at 10:30 a.m.
WHERE: Hilton San Francisco; 333 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco, California 94102, Room: Union Square 14
