July
21, 2010: FDI Advisory Board member slams Washington Post blogger. FDI
Advisory Board member Reza Kahlili, author of "ATime to Betray," slammed
Washington Post blogger Jeff Stein for "dishonest" reporting on his
recent appearance at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Kahlili notes that Stein didn't even appear at the event, and yet Stein
"quotes unnamed guests who claimed they rolled their eyes during my
speech." (FDI saw the rolling eyes, and they belonged to a pro-regime
agent and to a pro-regime journalist, either one of whom could have
been Stein's source). Kahlili expanded on comments
made last week at the International Spy Museum. Kahlili's Pajamas
Media post includes links to audio of the Washington Institute
event, where he called on the U.S. administration to stop negotiating
with Tehran and described in some detail his career as a CIA spy inside
the IRGC.
July
20, 2010: "Rescue Committee" may have helped Shahram Amiri. A
shadowy "Komiteh Nejat" (Salvation Committee) that provides assistance
to potential defectors from the Iranian regime helped alleged nuclear
researcher Shahram Amiri escape from Iran and
find refuge in the United States, according to former IRGC officer Amir
Farshad Ebrahimi, now a well-known human rights activist based in
Europe. The Nejat Committee is an informal association of former
Iranian intelligence officers, private NGOs (including FDI), and U.S.
government officials.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Persian language
Radio Farda, Ebrahimi said he had been contacted by Amiri while the
Iranian nuclear researcher was still in Medina, Saudi Arabia last year,
but initially didn't think much of it. Amiri reached out to Ebrahimi
because Amiri had "heard that I had helped Ali Reza Asgari. He wanted
me to help him too," Ebrahimi said.
Ebrahimi was arrested in Turkey and on the verge of deportation to Iran
because of his involvement in General Ashgari's defection, when FDI and
other elements of the Nejat Committee helped win his release and
repatriation to Germany. (See our entry
for April 1, 2008 and earlier, as well as the
link to the interview with Ebrahimi that appeared at Newsmax.com,
where he first revealed the existence of the Salvation committee). In his latest interview, Ebrahimi told
Radio Farda that he reached out to U.S. government officials at
Amiri's request and arranged for Amiri to meet with someone at the U.S.
embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who eventually arranged for his travel
out of Saudi Arabia to the United States. In similar cases in the past,
the U.S. will expedite a potential defectors application for political
asylum so they can travel on a temporary refugee travel document. This
would explain why Amiri's Iranian passport has no exit stamp from Saudi
Arabia or entry visa into the United States, and why Saudi Arabia has
stated officially that it has no record of him leaving Saudi Arabia.
Separately, Debka is
reporting wildly contradictory rumors that 1) Amiri started
provided U.S. intelligence with information on Iran's nuclear program
in 2004, and 2) that he was an Iranian double-agent. This could explain
the highly-unusual public comments by U.S. intelligence officials to
the Washington Post in recent days claiming that the United States put
$5 million in various accounts for Amiri as a reward for providing the
U.S. with information on Iran's nuclear program, but that by returning
to Iran he would no longer be able to access the money.
FDI has learned from our own sources that Amiri got into trouble when
he made an unauthorized telephone call to his 7 year old son in Tehran
earlier this year that was intercepted by Iranian intelligence, who
then began to apply pressure on the son and on Amiri's estranged wife
in Tehran. Amiri eventually cracked under the pressure and tried to
find a ruse for returning home. "He would have been better to just keep
quiet and keep the Iranians guessing as to what had happened to him," a
member of the Nejat Committee tells FDI. "It's unlikely that they would
have harmed his family if they couldn't prove that he was actually in
the United States."
General Ashgari has not surfaced publicly since he disappeared in
Turkey with help of the Nejat Committe in February 2007, and while the
regime has interviewed his third wife and is likely still monitoring
her communications, she has not been jailed.
July
8, 2010: Tehran merchants in third day of strike. With the
Tehran bazaar shuttered for
the third day in a row, the regime authorities are worried by reports
that the protest is spreading to other cities. Even more worrisome:
what began as a protest against a new government tax, which was rescinded
after just the first day of the strike, is taking
on an anti-regime tone. According
to one report, hundreds of protesters gathered din the Tehran
bazaar on Thursday and chanted anti-regime slogans, after a shopkeeper
was stabbed to death by regime security agents. "The death spiral of
the Islamic Republic seems to be gathering momentum," writes
Michael Ledeen, Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies.The protests by the normally pro-regime bazaaris are "a
very big deal, and everyone knows it.
• Former CIA Agent in Iran Calls for
Regime Change. Appearing with Ledeen and with Banafsheh
Zand-Bonazzi of Planet-Iran yesterday, a former CIA agent who worked
for the United States inside the IRGC for more than a decade urged the
Obama administration to support the Iranian people in their quest for
freedom. “The last choice we have right now is to come out of our
shells and vocally support the Iranians and their aspirations for
freedom," said
Reza Kahlili, author of a new memoir, Time
to Betray. He urged the European Union to cut diplomatic,
shipping, and air travel ties with Iran."Regime change is the only
solution for the stability of the Middle East, for the future of the
world, a better future. To think that we can contain these people and
deter them once they obtain a nuclear bomb is another fantasy that is
going to blow up in our face.”
Such moves will create “cracks” within the ruling elite and prompt top
level officials to flee the country, paving the way for a popular
uprising, Kahlili believes.
June
23, 2010: Who are the Terrorists? While some in the U.S.
Congress continue to support the MEK, few have raised their voices in
support of PJAK, the one group on the ground inside Iran that poses a
daily challenge to the regime. Read the comparison in today's
Washington Times.
June 22, 2010: BP's Iran ties
could haunt the oil giant.Even FDD was cheering
BP's announcement in November 2008 to stop shipping refined petroleum
goods to Iran. Now it turns out, BP continued extensive business ties
to Iranian government oil company Naftiran and its subsidiaries all
along. Read
the full story here.
June
21, 2010: Iran hangs Jundollah leader. The Iranian regime on
Sunday executed Balouchi resistance leader Abdol Malek Rigi inside Evin
prison, after capturing him, apparently with assistance from Pakistan's
ISI, in February. (Read our entry, below). Some
commentators had speculated that the regime had made a deal with Rigi
to spare his life and that of his brothers, also prisoners of the
regime, in regime for his televised confession. Al Jazeera is
reporting from Tehran that Rigi's execution of Rigi was “a severe blow”
to Jundallah. “Iranian authorities [say] that an order has been issued,
a kind of a pardon, to all the members of Jundallah who put down their
weapons and come ask for forgiveness,” the Qatar-based jihadi network
claimed. “We hear that more than 200 members of Jundallah have already
done that after Abdolmalek was arrested. View al-Jazeera's
English-language clip on Rigi's execution here.
June
20, 2010: Martial law atmosphere in Tehran on anniversary of Neda
murder. Video
footage shot in Tehran on Sunday shows a heavy security clamp-down
on Tehran streets, to prevent an outbreak of protests to commemorate
the first anniversary of the murder of Neda Agha-sultan. A documentary
on Neda's life and death, produced by TehranBureau in conjunction with
PBS Frontline,
is here. TehranBureau has compiled a list of more than 110
Green movement activists murdered by the regime. In Toronto, Iranian
exiles commemorated Neda' murder.
- Iran tops world for exodus of journalists in 2010. Iran
tops the world for pushing the most journalists into exile over the
past year. According to an annual report from the
Committee to Protect Journalists, 29 Iranian reporters have been
forced into exile in the year since June 1, 2009. 16 reporters have
left Somalia, and 15 have left Ethiopia, the report said. Worldwide, at
least 85 journalists fled their home countries over the past 12 months,
CPJ found in its annual survey, which marks World Refugee Day, June 20,
That is more than double the number forced to flee in the previous year.
June
11, 2010: Iranian opposition meets with French lawmakers. Iranian
film maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Abdallah Motadi, secretary general of
the Kurdish communist party, Komala, today address the French
parliament on the status of the Green movement and the human rights
situation in Iran. Meanwhile, a prominent Iranian dissident in Canada, Sayeh Hassan, explains
why she won't be taking part in demonstrations to commemorate last
year's presidential [s]election.
June 10, 2010: Sen. McCain calls for
regime change in Iran. Speaking at the National Endownment for
Democracy on Thursday, Sen. McCain said that the U.S. should give
greater support to the people of Iran in their request to get rid of
the Islamic regime. “My friends: I believe that when we consider the
many threats and crimes of Iran’s government, we are led to one
inescapable conclusion: It is
the character of this Iranian regime – not just its behavior – that is
the deeper threat to peace and freedom in our world, and in
Iran," McCain said. "Furthermore, I believe that it will only be
a change in the Iranian regime itself – a peaceful change, chosen by
and led by the people of Iran – that could finally produce the changes
we seek in Iran’s policies."
While McCain called on the Obama administration to allow Congress to
complete sanctions legislation, he suggested the administration be
better "to mobilize our friends and allies in like-minded countries,
both in the public sphere and the private sector, to challenge the legitimacy of this Iranian
regime, and to support Iran’s people in changing the character of their
government – peacefully, politically, on their own terms, and in
their own ways." Read
the full text here.
June 9, 2010: Security Council fails to get unanimous vote in 4th round
of Iran sanctions. In an interview with Newsmax, Rep. Mike
Pence, the third ranking Republican in Congress, said the
administration demonstrated a "failure
of leadership" at the United Nations.He also blasted the administration
for holding up Iran sanctions legislation in Congress for over a year,
and for continuing to seek to impose "waiver" authority that would gut
any sanctions bill that emerges from the conference committee.
Paragraph 7 of UNSC Resolution 1929 bans Iran from taking a commercial
interest in uranium mining activities,
an apparent bid to thrwart Iran's ongoing prospection in the
uranium-rich Orinco basin of Venezuela and to cut off reported
purchases of uranium from Zimbabwe and Burma. In several annexes, the
resolution names another 40 Iranian entities involved in nuclear or
ballistic missile work, or associated with the Revolutionary Guards,
and requests that member nations cease any commercial ties with them. The full
text of the resolution, as well as statements by UN ambassadors, is
here.
May 26, 2010: Changes at VOA. VOA director Danforth Austin announced sweeping
changes at the Persian News Network today, in response to intense
criticism from FDI, the media, Congress, and from VOA whistleblowers.
He removed PNN director Alex Belida,
who had been roundly criticized by his colleagues for an authoratarian
management style and for his lack of knowledge of Iran. He also
accepted the "resignation" of Hida
Fouladvand, PNN executive editor, criticized for incompetence by
fellow workers. Temporarily replacing Belida is Maja Drucker, whom Austin described
in an email to employees as "a 25 year VOA veteran who most recently
has been South Asia program manager. Remaining, however, was Seyed Ali Sajadi, who arrogantly
swept aside criticism that he is biased in favor of the regime in an
April 30 interview
with the PNN show, Parazit. Sajadi has been accused
of transforming VOA into "a propaganda tool for Tehran" by former
Iranian IRGC officer (and CIA agent) Reza Kahlili.
May 25, 2010: Makhmalbaf calls for changes at Voice of America. A
prominent spokesman for the Green Movement, film-maker Mohsen
Makhmalbaf, called for changes in the VOA's Persian News Network. In
an interview with Newsmax in Paris, Makhmalbaf said that VOA's
coverage of Iranian political events has been heavily skewed in favor
of the regime, because of the bias of managing editor, Ali Sajadi. “The
Voice of America could play a very important role in helping to
introduce political prisoners to the people of Iran," Makhmalbaf said.
"Many of these individuals, whose names are unknown to most people, are
potential leaders of the Green Movement. We need help in getting their
voices heard." Makhmalbaf personally criticized Seyed Ali Sajadi for
censoring his appearances on air, because "he didn't agree with my
views."
May 24, 2010: PJAK resumes military action. The secretary
general of PJAK tells
Newsmax in an exclusive interview in Europe that his group has
resumed military action against the regime, in hopes of deterring
ongoing attacks against Kurdish political activists by the
Revolutionary Guard and the bassij. Rahman Haj Ahmadi said that PJAK
had suspended military action since last June and had focused on
working with the Green Movement to expand non-violent protests against
the regime, but was compelled to resume military action because of the
regime's execution of PJAK activists.
After PJAK called for a general strike throughout Iranian Kurdistan to
protest the executions, the IRGC responded by launching artillery and
air strikes against PJAK camps in the Qandil mountains in northern
Iraq. In clashes inside Iran on May 14, PJAK claimed to have killed 16
IRGC troops.
May
9, 2010: Execution of Five Kurdish Prisons in Evin. This morning
the regime executed
five Kurdish activists in Evin prison in Tehran, including a woman,
Shirin Alam Houli. Four of the
five were members of
PJAK, the outlawed Free Life Party of Iranian Kurdish. The
executions come as part of an intensifying regime effort to crack down
on PJAK, for fear that the movement, which played a prominent role in
last year's post-election protests in Tehran and in other cities, will
spark a wider uprising
among Iran's ten million + Kurds and beyond.
Just days before her execution, Ms. Alam Houli smuggled out a letter,
describing the physical and psychological torture she was subjected to
in prison. She also revealed that when she was interrogated three years
ago after her arrest, she spoke no Farsi and could not understand the
questions she was being asked.
"Why have I been imprisoned and why am I going to be executed? For what
crime? Is it because I am Kurdish? If that’s the case than I must say I
was born a Kurd," she wrote.
"My language is Kurdish, the language that I use to communicate with my
family, friends and community, and the language that I grew up with.
But I am not allowed to speak my language or read it, I am not allowed
to go to school in my own language and I am not allowed to write it.
They are telling me to deny my Kurdishness, but if I do, that means I
have to deny who I am."
May 5,
2010: Is VOA editor pro-Tehran? That's
a question many Iranians are asking themselves. Watch this video
of VOA PNN editor Ali Sajadi and make up your mind.
Iran's ties to al Qaeda:
In a commentary piece in today’s
Washington Times, FDI President Kenneth R. Timmerman provides new
details of what the U.S. Government knows about Iran’s on-going and
historic ties to al Qaeda. For reasons that are hard to comprehend,
many in our government continue to deny such ties. But a recent
Pentagon report to Congress on Iran has helped to dispel some of the
myths.
"Tehran's support
to the Taliban is inconsistent with their historic enmity, but fits
with Iran's strategy of backing many groups to ensure that it will have
a positive relationship with the eventual leaders," the report
continues.
Referring to the Quds Force specifically, the
report makes this comment: "Although its operations sometimes appear at
odds with the public voice of the Iranian regime, it is not a rogue
outfit; it receives direction from the highest levels of government,
and its leaders report directly, albeit informally, to Supreme Leader
Ali Khamenei, employing complementary diplomatic and paramilitary
strategies."
Also note that George Stephanpoulous of ABC News asked Ahmadinejad
yesterday (in an interview broadcast on Good Morning America today) if Bin
Laden was in Iran. Take a careful
look at the transcript: Ajad repeatedly ducks the question,
tries to change the subject, and Stephanapoulos comes back again and
again without ever getting a straight answer.
In Islam, this is called “taqqiyah” - a practise of authorized lying to
the infidel to protect Islam. In other words, Ahmadinejad has just
confirmed in his initimitable way that bin Laden is in Iran. (Note: the
exchange on Bin Laden appears at the end of the
transcript).
May 3, 2010: Ahmadinejad at UN today. The
U.S., France, and the UK delegates all
walked out on Ahmadinejad today, as he blasted the United States
and possessing nuclear weapons. He added that Western nations had"not a single
credible proof" that his regime is developing nuclear weapons.
- Iranian-Americans protest VOA's "pro-Tehran" tilt. Iranian-Americans
have become increasingly vocal about the perceived "pro-Tehran" tilt of
Voice of America's Persian language service and of Radio Farda. An on-line
petition to the State Department to fire pro-Tehran broadcasters
comes on the heels of efforts by Sen. Coburn and others to hold VOA
accountable for editorial decisions to "spike" stories embarrassing to
the Tehran regime and to ban anti-regime activists from appearing on
VOA shows. VOA's problems have just begun. A long-simering sex scandal
has now gone public, with damages claims of $150 million. VOA
broadcaster Elham Sataki is alleging in U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia (Case number 1:2010cv00466) that colleague
Mehdi Falahati left lewd messages on her voice mail and otherwise
attempted to elicit sexual favors in exchange for work-related favors.
Sataki is represented
by attorney Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch.
May 2, 2010:May Day protests across Iran. At
least five people
were arrested in the predominantly Kurdish city of Sanadaj on
Saturday, as May Day protests erupted all across the country. At Tehran
University, students greeted Ahmadinejad with Patrick
Henry chants of "Give me Liberty or Give me Death." Other
anti-regime protests erupted in Saqez,
Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashad, and Qazvin,showing that the pro-freedom movement is
capable of staging protests in multiple cities at once, stretching the
capabilities of the regime's repressive apparatus.
April 28, 2010: State Department to approve
Ahmadinejad visa for next week. The State Department has
confirmed reports that the Islamic Republic has applied for visa so
that Ahmadinejad and a delegation can travel to New York next week to
attend the Nonproliferation Treaty review conference on May 3. According to
press reports, Tehran initially intended to send foreign minister
Mottaki to lead the Iranian delegation, but at the last minute
Ahmadinejad decided to upstage him. Iran is a signatory of the NPT but
has been in violation of its NPT commitments since February 2003, when
the IAEA confirmed reports that it had conducted secret nuclear
weapons-related research for 18 years. In signing the NPT, non-nuclear
states pledge that they will forego nuclear weapons and/or any research
that could be used for weapons purposes, in exchange for access to
civilian nuclear technology. Because
it remains in violation of the Treaty, Iran has no "right" to enrich
uranium or import civilian nuclear technology, contrary to what
both Tehran and Washington repeat on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, conferees from the U.S. Senate and the House of
Representatives began negotiations today aimed at finalizing the
Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of
2009 (H.R. 2194). The Obama administration has "kept this legislation
bottled up in Congress" for over a year," a senior Republican leader
told FDI today. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R, Fla), the original
Republican sponsor of the bill, warned against producing a bill "that
is so full of holes, carve-outs, exemptions, or waivers that no one
takes it seriously." Instead, she
urged he colleagues "to fill the vacuum created by Executive Branch
inaction and enact crippling, mandatory sanctions that address the
rapidly growing threat posed by Iran."
April 21, 2010: More protesters given death
sentences. The Iran
Human Rights campaign is warning that three more political
prisoners have been given death sentences by the regime, this time on
allegations that they transmitted forbidden videos to the MEK outside
of Iran.
- In Washington, DC, the Pentagon has
released its first-ever unclassified report to Congress on the Iranian
military and regime's support for terrorism. Highlights
include: a public recognition by the U.S. government that Iran is providing military support and
weapons to the Taliban, even though they have doctrinal
differences. "Tehran's support to the
Taliban is inconsistent with their historic enmity, but fits with
Iran's strategy of backing many groups to ensure that it will have a
positive relationship with the eventual leaders," the report
says. In addition, they dispel the manufactured doubts (expressed
by the pro-Tehran lobby in Washington) that the IRGC's Quds force is
somehow out of control. "Although [Quds Force] operations sometimes
appear at odds with the public voice of the Iranian regime, it is not a
rogue outfit; it receives direction from the highest levels of
goverment, and its leaders report directly, albeit informally, to
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, employing complementary diplomatic and
paramilitary strategies." Read the full report here;
read a more detailed description of it here.
- FDI President Ken Timmerman writes
at Newsmax.com that American Jewish leaders and Congress are
locking horns with President Obama over his efforts to pick a fight
with Israel while failing to take action on Iran.
April 19, 2010: George W. Bush Institute hosts conference on
cyber-dissidents. Invited to the forum were Iranian blogger Arash Kamangir, and Mohsen Sazegara, now a
fellow at the Bush Institute. Read more about the conference here.
April 6, 2010: Who are the Greens and Where are they headed? The
Foreign Policy Initiative sponsored a conference in Washington, DC with
Mohsen Sazegara, Mehdi Khalaji, and Rueul-Marc Gerecht to discuss the
current state of the Greens. Says Khalaji: the Greens will succeed in
overthrowing the regime, even though they appear scattered now. It's
worth reading the
entire transcript of this event.
March 22, 2010: Iranians celebrate Nowrouz
with protests. View
video footage of protests during the Persian New Year celebrations
last Saturday.
March 8, 2010: FDI lodges official protest
with German Chancellor Merkel for PJAK leader arrest. The Foundation for Democracy in Iran sent a letter
protesting the arrest of Rahman Haj Ahmadi to the German Chancellor
this morning, and demanded his immediate release. "From the facts and
indications available to us thus far, it appears that this arrest and
detention took place on an unlawful basis, in violation of German law
and German Constitutional protections, and also in violation of a
number of human rights standards that the German Government has
endorsed and is bound to follow under the European Convention on Human
Rights," the FDI letter states.
While noting Germany's positive role in the P5+1 talks with the Islamic
Republic of Iran, FDI called on Chancellor Merkel to show equal zeal
"as a defender of the rights of political dissidents residing on German
soil, whose sole crime is to seek to bring about a respect for human
rights and secular democracy in their land of origin, Iran."
"Our biggest fear, Madame Chancellor, is that these actions on the part
of your government will encourage the Iranian regime to resume its
assassination campaign against Iranian dissidents living in Europe,"
the FDI letter states. Noting that Iran's assassination campaign, which
claimed the lives of more than 200 dissidents living overseas, was only
stopped by intense legal and public and diplomatic pressure, FDI
concluded: "It would be a tragedy if the actions of your government
served to turn back the clock and mark the resumption of Iranian
government terror operations on European soil." Download
a PDF copy of the letter here.
Update 3 PM
Washington time: a few hours after
we sent our letter to Chancellor Merkel, the German authorities
released Mr. Ahmadi. However, given the outstanding Interpol "red
notice" against him, and Iran's open threats to extradite him, threats
to his security remain high.
March 6, 2010: Interpol issues
"red notice" against Iranian broadcaster in Los Angeles. Spurred
on by the inaction of the international community as it cracks down on
internal protest, the Iranian regime is now expanding its efforts to
muzzle voices of protest on the outside. Not only has it influenced the
government of Belgium to issue an arrest warrant against
PJAK leader Rahman Haj Ahmadi that the German
government enforced (see below), but today Interpol issued an
international arrest warrant or "red notice" against Shahram Homayoun,
an Iranian broadcaster in Los Angeles. Interpol
stated that it was issuing the arrest warrant at the request of a
court in Shiraz, which had convicted Mr. Homayoun on terrorism charges.
So let's get this straight: a terrorist regime is now claiming that
opposition broadcasters are "terrorists" because they oppose the
terrorism of the regime... Mr. Homayoun owns and operates Channel One television. He
tells FDI he was never aware of any court proceedings against him in
Shiraz, and has never been contacted by Iranian legal authorities. "But
of course, the punishment for terrorism is execution," he said. "So
this arrest warrant is an execution order." Mr.
Homayoun is a legal U.S. resident.
American taxpayers fund a good
chunk of Interpol's operating budget. Congress should withhold
funds from Interpol until this outrageous manipulation of international
police cooperation is rescinded. You can sign an online protest to Interpol here.
- German court releases its "arrest warrant" against Rahman Haj Ahmadi.
The Germans claim they are acting at the request of the Belgian
government, which is accusing Ahmadi and PJAK of being a part of the
PKK. The German document states that PJAK camps in northern Iraq are
co-located with PKK camps. FDI president Kenneth R. Timmerman visited
the PJAK camps in October 2007, and they were nowhere near the PKK
camps. Read his
report here. (We will post our letter to German Chancellor Merkel,
demanding that she release Ahmadi, on Monday). You can download the
German arrest warrant as a pdf file
here. Our favor excerpt: Mr Ahmadi
"went to the PJAK guerilla camp in the Qandil mountains dressed as a
PJAK guerilla fighter, dress that is similar to the PKK. These guerilla
fighters are fighting the Iranian armed forces.� Arrested
for
dressing while Kurd?
March 5, 2010: URGENT ACTION
ALERT: FDI PROTESTS
ARREST OF IRANIAN KURDISH LEADER IN GERMANY. FDI
has learned that German plainclothes police stormed the apartment of
PJAK leader Rahman Haj Ahmadi at around 3 PM on Friday, arresting him
without charges. Ahmadi has lived in Germany for 45 years, and
has been a German citizen since 1984. His arrest comes just one day
after Belgian authorities ransacked the studio in Brussels of ROJ TV, a
Kurdish network affiliated with the Turkish PKK, and less than
two weeks after the regime negotiated the surrender of Jundollah leader
Abdolmalek Rigi. See Newsmax.com
for more details on this breaking news story.
"This is an outrageous
violation of the fundamental human rights of a European citizen,"said FDI president Kenneth Timmerman. "The
German government has a sorry history of collaborating with the Iranian
regime and in exerting pressure on Iranian political refugees living in
Germany. FDI demands that the German authorities release Mr. Ahmadi
immediately."
FDI will post a copy of its letter of protest to the German federal
authorities shortly, and urges other human rights groups to lodge
protests with German embassies and the German government in Berlin.
March 2, 2010: Regime closes Evangelical
church, arrests pastor. Reverend Wilson Issavi, an Evangelical
pastor in Isfahan, was jailed on Friday along with eight other
believers, according to reports from International
Christian Concern. Pastor Issavi was arrested by state security
agents during a raid while visiting a friend's house. Ahmadinejad has
vowed to "crush" Christianity in Iran, and fears the rapid expansion of
house churches throughout the country, including inside the regime's
security apparatus. According to Elam Ministries, a group that
distributes Bibles and helps churches inside Iran, there were just 500
Muslim background believers in Iran at the time of the 1979 Revolution.
"Today the most conservative estimate is that there are at least
100,000 believers in the nation," Elam says.
March 1, 2010: Kyrgyzstan denies arrests. The
plot thickened over the weekend as the the Pakistani ambassador in
Tehran stated that his government helped their "brothers" in Iran in
arresting Rigi; the UAE
government said that Rigi never actually entered Dubai, but
transitted at the airport for two hours while changing planes between
Afghanitan and Kyrgyzstan. And then this morning, the Kyrgyz
foreign minister contradicted the earlier statement from the head
of the national airlines, and said that no passengers were detained by
the Iranian authorities when a Kyrgyz civilian airliner was forced to
land in Bandar Abbas. This has given rise to speculations that the
whole Kyrgyz airliner incident was a smoke screen to cover-up Pakistani
assistance in Rigi's rendition.
Feb. 26, 2010: Rigi "confesses." The
Iranian regime frequently stages "confessions" of captured opposition leaders, and today released
heavily-edited footage of Abdolmalek Rigi. During the first part of the
segments shown on Press TV,
Rigi appears to be reading from papers held in his lap, just out of
view of the camera. In the second half, he becomes more animated,
gesturing with his hands and looking at the camera. In his script, he
claims he had been meeting with the CIA and was traveling from Dubai to
Bishkek to meet with a high-ranking U.S. official who had offered
money, weapons, and training to Jondollah. A U.S. government official
following the Rigi saga called the confession "garbage." Such
declarations, "clearly designed to serve as propaganda, deserve zero
credibility," the official told Newsmax.com.
Here's the same
footage with a rough
English voice-over.
Feb.
25, 2010: New details emerge on Rigi rendition. Video
footage of Abdolmalek Rigi's rendition to Iran was shown to be fake on
Wednesday, when Kyrgyzstan national airlines confirmed that Rigi and a
top aide were arrested on board a Kyrgyz commercial flight from Dubai
to Bishkek that was forced to land in Bandar Abbas by two Iranian Air
Force F-14s on Feb. 23. Taalaibek Turumbekov, deputy chief of
Kyrgyzstan Aba Joldoru, the national airline.
told RFE/RL that Iranian security officers arrested two of the 119
passengers on board, then allowed the plane to continue on to Bishkek.
The video sequence from which the photo below was extracted was clearly
staged by the Iranian regime to disguise exactly how they apprehended
Rigi.
But these new revelations may just be the beginning of the real story.
Numerous sources believe that Pakistan played an instrumental role in
Rigi's arrest, and point to the official visit to Islamabad last
October by Iranian interior minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar who demanded
that Pakistan arrest and extradite Rigi to Iran, just as they did
in 2008 with his brother, whom Iran executed last year. Baluchi
activist Nasser Boladai tells Newsmax.com that he believes that the
Pakistan government arrested Rigi and handed him over to Iran, and
played along with the farce of the airplane takedown because " the
Pakistani government doesn't want to be seen as handing Rigi over to
Iran."
Meanwhile, Jondollah continues to accuse the United States of having
played a role in Rigi's capture, as rumors fly that Iran may soon
release the three U.S. citizens captured while hiking in the Iraqi
mountains near the border with Iran, and possibly even retired FBI
agent Robert Levinson.
Feb. 23,
2010: Regime nabs
Jundollah leader. The Iranian regime has captured Jundollah
leader Abdolmalek
Rigi and taken him to Iran. Several versions of the arrest story
are circulating, and the regime's own claims are
confusing and contradictory. One version says he was arrested in "one
of Iran's southern ports" when his jet was forced to land while takimng
him from Kyrgyzstan to Dubai. another says he was "caught abroad and
brought to the country." Video
footage released by the regime shows masked agents boarding a
Falcon 900 business jet of unclear markings.
Extensive rumors have been circulating that the U.S. may have provided
intelligence to Iran on Rigi's flight that allowed the Iranian agents
to capture him. If this turns out to be true, U.S.-based opposition
activist Roozbeh Farahanipour warns that "all of the opposition is in
danger." Read
more at Newsmax.
Many contradictions are beginning to emerge in the regime's account of
the arrest. For one thing, they have shown a Pakistani identity
document they claim Rigi was carrying. Real Pakistani IDs don't have
the bearer's photograph on the back side, only on the front; but the
one released by the Iranian regime had the photo on both sides. The
regime also claimed he was carrying a forged Afghan birth certificate,
surely an imprudent move if he was posing as a Pakistani...And then a
photo released by MOIS in Tehran purported to show Rigi visiting a
U.S. base in Afghanistan. Only problem: the many in the
photograph bears no ressemblance to Rigi!
Feb.
12, 2010: Massive show of security forces shows fear of protests. The
regime bused in tens of thousands of government workers to Tehran to
listen to Ahmadinejad's speech yesterday on the 31th anniersary of the
22nd Bahman revolution, but video footage of the crowd showed mostly
disinterested strollers and picnickers. Planet-Iran's
live-blogging page reported that former president Khatami's car was
smashed by bassiji's; Karrubi himself was assaulted and beaten in the
head when he attempted to lead a protest march; and thousands were
arrested in the days leading up to yesterday's anniversary. The regime
clearly feared another popular outpouring of rage such as happened on
Montazeri's funeral or on Ashoura. Once again, a
Green movement "trailor" for the 22nd Bahman anti-regime protest
had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood production.
• FDI has received another exclusive photo of Imad
Mugniyeh, this time
wearing IRGC uniform and speaking to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -
stunning direct proof that Mugniyeh was a key accomplice of the Iranian
regime in its terrorist plots.View the photos here.
Feb.
6, 2010: Exclusive new photos of Imad Mugniyeh.Iranian defectors
have provided dramatic new pictures from Iranian intelligence archives
of Imad Fayez Mugniyeh, the star overseas terror operative
of the IRGC Qods Forces. One of the photos shows Mugniyeh in Saudi
Arabia in 1985 some 45 days before he hijacked TWA Flight 847 to
Beirut. View the photos here.
Jan.
29, 2010: Iran sanctions bill passes Senate. Long-stalled
legislation to sanction suppliers of refined petroleum goods, and their
shippers and insurers, passed the U.S. Senate last night, after Sen.
John F. Kerry lifted a hold placed at the prompting of the Obama White
House. Read
the story here from Newsmax. Also look at the
role played behind the scenes by Sen. John McCain, who is seeking
even tougher sanctions against IRGC members, and by Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Download
here a 3-page pdf summary of the bill from the Senate Banking
Committee. AIPAC's summary of the bill is here.
Jan. 28, 2010: Regime executes
two protestors. In its desperate efforts to head-off mass
demonstrations on February 12, the anniversary of the "Islamic"
revolution in 1979, the regime executed this morning two activists,
Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Ali Zaman, who took part in recent
peaceful street protests. Another 11 protestors have be sentenced to
death,
according to Canadian human rights activist Sayeh Hassan.
Jan.
27, 2010: Pro-regime supporters cancel event in Canada. Iranian-regime
supporters had been planning to host an
event tonight at McMaster College in Toronto to "expose" so-called
"media myths" on Iran. The pro-regime supporters would have us believe
that Iranians really don't support the "riots" and that the Green
Movement does not represent the people of Iran. But apparently, strong
opposition to the event from supporters of the Green Movement such as
Sayeh Hassan have forced them to back down. "The Iranian people are no
longer satisfied with reforming [Iran’s] existing Islamic
regime, but
want regime change entirely," says
Ms. Hassan, a 29-year old lawyer and pro-democracy activist,
Jan.
25, 2010: Green Cyber Army? A shadowy Iranian Green Cyber Army has been set
up to oppose the equally shadowy pro-regime Iranian Cyber Army that
brought down a major Chinese web portal earlier this month. But Pujan
Ziaie, a top IT specialist for Karrubi says the regime doesn't have
many IT specialists to defeat opposition bloggers and websites, since
"[m]ost of the country's elite support the opposition."
• KDPI leader calls for Greens to embrace Iran's
nationalities. KDPI
leader Mostafa Hijri criticizes Mousavi and Khatami for their calls
earlier this month to respect and reform the Islamic Republic. He also
notes that the Green Movement has not yet called on Iran's minorities
for their support.
"Therefore, the way forward at this point is twofold: (1) to combine
the forces and massive waves of support behind this movement across the
country and (2) to garner the support of those segments of society that
have thus far remained on the sideline," he wrote in an editorial
today. Hijri also called for the opposition to establish a
"leadership council."
In
an interview with Newsmax in November, PJAK leader Rahman Haj
Ahmadi also called on Iranian opposition groups to unite. PJAK has
called on its activists to throw their support behind the Green
Movement, and many of them have been arrested during recent sweeps by
the security forces.
Jan.
15, 2010: Ten Kurdish activists arrested at gravesite. IRGC
troops stormed a gravesite in Sanandaj yesterday and rounded up
activists who had come to commemorate the second anniversary of the
murder of Ebrahim Kotfollahi. Read the details and names of those
arrested here.
Jan.
12, 2010: Former South Carolina Governor Joins FDI Board. Former
South Carolina Governor David M. Beasley
has been elected to the Board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran,
FDI chairman Nader Afshar announced today. “Governor Beasley
brings a
wealth of political experience and international contacts to FDI. We
are especially pleased that Gov. Beasley has agreed to make room for
the people of Iran and their aspirations toward freedom in his busy
schedule,� Afshar said. As Governor of South Carolina
from
1995-1999, David Beasley was best known for combining Christian ethics
with conservative economics. “I look forward to working with
FDI on
their important mission of empowering the Iranian people to achieve
freedom and democracy,� Beasley said. Read more about Gov. Beasley
in the full press release.
- The Progressive
American-Iranian Committee is calling on Iranian-Americans to send
letters of encouragement and thanks to Sen. Jon Kyl, for his efforts to
get the Department of Justice to investigate the activities of Trita Parsi and NIAC in supporting the policies of
the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Mothers holding
a weekly protest to find out information on arrested family
members were themselves arrested last Friday in Laleh park. Some of the
women were beaten by security forces; others were transferred to Evin
prison.
Jan. 11, 2010: More Iranian diplomats seek political asylum. Ali
Akbar Omidmehr, former Islamic Republic ambassador in India, Pakistan,
and Afghanistan, tells Voice of America (VOA) that 29 Iranian diplomats
have sought political asylum in the countries where they are serving
since the stole presidential elections in June. Over the past two
weeks, two Iranian diplomats in Germany, one in France, and one in the
UK have sought asylum with their families, in addition to Mohammad Reza
Heydari, Iran’s Councilor in Norway whose resignation was
announced in
the media. (Translation
from Planet-Iran)
Jan. 8,
2010: NIAC - a False Friend of the Green Movement. Hassan
Daioleslam reveals the "sea change" Trita Parsi and his pro-Tehran
lobbying group have undergone since the green movement came on the
scene this year. In Jan. 2008, when an Iranian-American asked him why
NIAC didn't stand up against human rights abuses in Iran, Parsi
demurred, saying 'we
do not have the expertise' in the area... Now, of course, NIAC is
trying to make people believe that they are in the forefront of the
Green movement. Their agenda? Same as before: no U.S. sanctions on
Iran, and no credible military option - just what Tehran wants.
Jan. 7, 2010:
More arrests announced. The American Enterprise Institute's
IranTracker project has identified more arrests of political activists:
Jan. 6,
2010: Another Kurd executed for PJAK affiliation. Early this
morning the regime executed another alleged PJAK activist, Fasih
Yasamani, warning his family they would not be informed of his burial
place for six months. He was arrested along with his father in 2007,
and was the second Kurdish political prisoner executed in the past two
months. 17
more Kurdish political prisoners have been sentenced to death for
anti-regime activities.
- FDI President Kenneth R. Timmerman was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this
morning to discuss Iran. Watch
the Video
Jan. 5,
2010: Regime bans FDI and other "seditious" Western groups. Iran’s
Intelligence Ministry has banned contact with 60 U.S. and international
organizations it accuses of inciting a “soft war�
against the regime.
Banned groups included the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open
Society Institute, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Yale University,
the Carnegie Endowment, the New America Foundation, and FDI. Most
foreign-based Farsi-language radios were also banned. (Read the
RFE/RL report in English; read the original
Farsi, where FDI appears at number 29 in the list.)
Some organizations, such as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC),
are conspicuous for their absence from the Iranian regime's black list.
Indeed, why would the regime want to ban a group that continues
to lobby the Obama administration against imposing "crippling"
economic sanctions - the one policy that would appear to strike fear
into the heart of key regime leaders since it will cut into their
profits and their ability to buy allegiance?
Jan. 2, 2010:
Washington Times warns that MOIS has "infiltrated agents" into
opposition. In a front page story featuring a photo of activist
Amir Abbas Fakhravar, the Washington
Times warns that the regime has "infiltrated agents into the Office
to Consolidate Unity, a student body that led the last widespread
student protests" in July 1999. Fakhravar told the Times he hoped to
create a "revolutionary council" of people inside and outside Iran to
lead the "Iranian Green Revolution." The strength of the Green movement
to date has been the lack of any
identifiable leadership, so any council of this sort that identified
leaders inside Iran would be a free gift to the regime. Fakhravar
claims he left Iran in 2006 while facing a death sentence, but in fact
left the country on a regular flight to Dubai with a freshly-issued
passport in his own name.
Jan. 1, 2010:
New photos show plainclothes security police firing into crowds of
protestors on Ashoura.
This news came as Compass
Direct News reported today that three Christians were arrested in
Tehran on January 21 as part of a larger operation in which as many as
50 people were rounded up. "The arrests come as part of a tsunami of
arrests in the past several months," the news service reported. Whereas
past waves of harassment and arrests of Christians eventually have
subsided, recent pressure has been “continuously high,�
with reports of
arrests in almost every month of 2008, the news service added. Compass Direct News focuses on endangered Christian
communities being persecuted around the world.
FDI needs your support! To continue to bring you the type of
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rights reporting you have come to expect, we need your help.
Click here for information
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Don't forget to consult our extensive archive of Books & Articles.
July
21, 2010: FDI Advisory Board member slams Washington Post blogger. FDI
Advisory Board member Reza Kahlili, author of "ATime to Betray," slammed
Washington Post blogger Jeff Stein for "dishonest" reporting on his
recent appearance at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Kahlili notes that Stein didn't even appear at the event, and yet Stein
"quotes unnamed guests who claimed they rolled their eyes during my
speech." (FDI saw the rolling eyes, and they belonged to a pro-regime
agent and to a pro-regime journalist, either one of whom could have
been Stein's source). Kahlili expanded on comments
made last week at the International Spy Museum. Kahlili's Pajamas
Media post includes links to audio of the Washington Institute
event, where he called on the U.S. administration to stop negotiating
with Tehran and described in some detail his career as a CIA spy inside
the IRGC.
Shahram Amiri escape from Iran and
find refuge in the United States, according to former IRGC officer Amir
Farshad Ebrahimi, now a well-known human rights activist based in
Europe. The Nejat Committee is an informal association of former
Iranian intelligence officers, private NGOs (including FDI), and U.S.
government officials. 
bazaar shuttered for
the third day in a row, the regime authorities are worried by reports
that the protest is spreading to other cities. Even more worrisome:
what began as a protest against a new government tax, which was rescinded
after just the first day of the strike, is taking
on an anti-regime tone. According
to one report, hundreds of protesters gathered din the Tehran
bazaar on Thursday and chanted anti-regime slogans, after a shopkeeper
was stabbed to death by regime security agents. "The death spiral of
the Islamic Republic seems to be gathering momentum," writes
Michael Ledeen, Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies.The protests by the normally pro-regime bazaaris are "a
very big deal, and everyone knows it. 
Four of the
five were members of
PJAK, the outlawed Free Life Party of Iranian Kurdish. The
executions come as part of an intensifying regime effort to crack down
on PJAK, for fear that the movement, which played a prominent role in
last year's post-election protests in Tehran and in other cities, will
spark a wider uprising
among Iran's ten million + Kurds and beyond.
FDI
has learned that German plainclothes police stormed the apartment of
PJAK leader Rahman Haj Ahmadi at around 3 PM on Friday, arresting him
without charges. Ahmadi has lived in Germany for 45 years, and
has been a German citizen since 1984. His arrest comes just one day
after Belgian authorities ransacked the studio in Brussels of ROJ TV, a
Kurdish network affiliated with the Turkish PKK, and less than
two weeks after the regime negotiated the surrender of Jundollah leader
Abdolmalek Rigi. See Newsmax.com
for more details on this breaking news story.
The
Iranian regime frequently stages "confessions" of captured opposition leaders, and today released
heavily-edited footage of Abdolmalek Rigi. During the first part of the
segments shown on Press TV,
Rigi appears to be reading from papers held in his lap, just out of
view of the camera. In the second half, he becomes more animated,
gesturing with his hands and looking at the camera. In his script, he
claims he had been meeting with the CIA and was traveling from Dubai to
Bishkek to meet with a high-ranking U.S. official who had offered
money, weapons, and training to Jondollah. A U.S. government official
following the Rigi saga called the confession "garbage." Such
declarations, "clearly designed to serve as propaganda, deserve zero
credibility," the official told Newsmax.com.
Here's the same
footage with a rough
English voice-over.
regime's own claims are
confusing and contradictory. One version says he was arrested in "one
of Iran's southern ports" when his jet was forced to land while takimng
him from Kyrgyzstan to Dubai. another says he was "caught abroad and
brought to the country." Video
footage released by the regime shows masked agents boarding a
Falcon 900 business jet of unclear markings. 
Iranian defectors
have provided dramatic new pictures from Iranian intelligence archives
of Imad Fayez Mugniyeh, the star overseas terror operative
of the IRGC Qods Forces. One of the photos shows Mugniyeh in Saudi
Arabia in 1985 some 45 days before he hijacked TWA Flight 847 to
Beirut. View the photos here.
