Iran Focus
28 Jul – The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has reported that Ms. Maryam Olangi has been arrested and sent to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. On July 24, 2016, agents of the Intelligence Ministry summoned Ms. Olangi and her son to the Prosecutor’s Office. Ms. Olangi was arrested there. Information is not yet available on the fate of her son.
Iran Focus
28 Jul – At the Free Iran rally on July 9 in Paris, Ambassador Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr. gave an interview to the ‘Alliance for Public Awareness – Iranian Communities in Europe’.
Ambassador Bloomfield was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs from 2001-2005, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs (1992-1993), Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs (1991-1992), and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1988-1989).
Iran Focus
London, 27 Jul – The husband of a framed British-Iranian political prisoner has slammed the UK government for their failure to ensure the safe release of his wife and child.
Richard Ratcliffe, who took to the petition site Change.org to demand the release of Nazanin, released a statement decrying the UK government for not even raising Nazanin’s case in the past three and a half months, despite national news attention and nearly 800,000 signatures on the petition. His parents tried to get the attention of their local MP; it took over 100 days.
Iran Focus
Tehran, 27 Jul – A group of women and girls was arrested for riding bicycles in Marivan, in Iran’s Kurdistan Province on July 26.
The women were stopped from participating in the sporting event by police who told them that a new national law made cycling in public “unlawful” for their gender.
Iran Focus
Tehran, 27 Jul – Thousands of Iranian Azeris took to the streets on July 26 to protest insulting comments made about their community in the state-run daily Tarhe-No.
Iran’s largest ethnic minority protested across Iran’s Eastern and Western Azerbaijan provinces. In Tabriz, thousands gathered in Darayi Street and chanted slogans.
Iran Focus
London, 26 Jul – On the anniversary of the massacre of some 30,000 political prisoners in Iran, July 26, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) looks back on the events that led to tens of thousands of political prisoners held in jails across Iran being summarily and extra-judicially executed in 1988.
“There are strong indications that Khomeini’s fatwa, which led to the massacre of some 30,000 political prisoners in Iran, was issued on July 26, 1988”, according to the NCRI.
Iran Focus
London, 26 Jul – An Iranian Christian woman held in the infamous Evin Prison since July 15, 2013, has now spent over three weeks on a hunger strike.
Maryam Zargaran, who has been denied release despite her developing Multiple Sclerosis and long-term heart condition began her second hunger strike on July 5 protesting the treatment she has received in prison. Reports say that she has become very weak. After their recent visit, Zargaran’s family said that she refuses to receive treatment at the prison clinic because staff mistreat her there.
Iran Focus
Paris, 26 Jul – Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, condemned the terrorist attack on a church in northern France and the murder of its elderly priest.
In a statement on July 26, she called this atrocity, “barbaric” and “cowardly”, and described it as being “in diametric contrast to the teachings of all major religions and humane values.”
Iran Focus
London, 25 Jul – The UK released a Human Rights Priority Country update report in which the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that in the last six months the human rights situation in Iran has only gotten worse.
The report based on the period January to June 2016 was published on July 21.
It states: “In many respects, the situation has worsened, despite President Rouhani pledging to improve the rights and freedoms of the citizens of Iran when he was elected.”
Iran Focus
Tehran, 25 Jul – Iranian officials arrested 150 young people for attending a mixed-gender birthday party in Islamshahr, near Tehran.
In a statement given to the regime-affiliated news agency, Tasnim, on July 25, Colonel Mohsen Khancherli, the regime’s police commander for the west of Tehran Province, said: “After we obtained a report about a mixed-gender party in a garden in the vicinity of Islamshahr in the west of Tehran Province, an operation was carried out by the police and another organization, leading to the arrest of dozens of boys and girls.”
