Iran Focus: London, Jul. 30 – An officer in Iran’s armed forces and an Iranian soldier were arrested together close to the southern Iraq city of Basra early Thursday morning, a London-based Arabic daily wrote in its Friday edition. “Border guards detained on Thursday an Iranian officer and a soldier on Iraqi soil 30 kilometres northeast of Basra, one of the biggest southern cities of this country”, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat wrote, quoting a commander in Iraq’s border patrol.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 30 – A human rights lawyer representing the family of slain Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi turned up unexpectedly at the Tehran Bar Association on Saturday and began an indefinite sit-in, after police raided his home and tried to arrest him. Abdolfattah Soltani’s troubles began when he publicly accused Tehran’s Revolutionary Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi on Monday of involvement in the July 2003 murder of Zahra Kazemi, …

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 30 – Iran will put two employees of its nuclear establishment on trial behind closed doors on espionage charges on August 2 and August 20 in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, state-run newspapers reported on Saturday. Judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimi-Rad announced in late June that the trial of the “nuclear spies” was postponed, “because one of the accused was ill and had to undergo surgery”.

Iran Focus: Baghdad, Jul. 30 – Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he had complained to Iranian leaders in a recent visit to Tehran that Iran continued to meddle in the affairs of its neighbour. Speaking on Al-Iraqiya television on Thursday night, Zebari said, “I recently visited Iran with Prime Minister [Ibrahim al-Jaafari”>, where we discussed these issues with Iranian officials.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 30 – Some 300 Kurdish activists gathered on Saturday at a sit-in outside the governor’s office in Iran’s western province of Kurdistan following two weeks of unrest that had brought several Kurdish towns and cities to a complete stand-still. The activists gathered to protest against a government crackdown on demonstrations which were sparked by the brutal torture and killing of a young Kurd in the town of Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province, at the hands of Iran’s State Security Forces.