Iran has freed a close aide to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and a prominent lawyer who belongs to Nobel prize winner Shirin Ebadi’s rights group, the ILNA news agency reported on Sunday.
Alireza Beheshti, the aide, was freed on Saturday night, ILNA said.
He was arrested last Tuesday following a raid on his office, which was set up to probe alleged post-vote prisoners’ abuse.
RIGHTS GROUP
ILNA also said that lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, was freed on Sunday after posting bail of 5 billion rials (US$500,000).
Dadkhah, who is a founder of the Human Rights Defenders Centre headed by Ebadi, was arrested in early July amid a crackdown on critics and opposition supporters.
Iran has jailed scores of reformists, journalists and rights activists in the wake of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed June 12 re-election.
The opposition charged that the poll was massively rigged, sparking week-long street protests during which thousands were arrested and dozens of other people killed.
Defeated reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi has also charged that several protesters were raped in custody, but Iranian judiciary on Saturday rejected the allegations as baseless and called for action against Karroubi.
TRIALS RESUME
A student leader and five other protesters who opposed the re-election of Ahmadinejad were in the dock yesterday as the mass trials of anti-vote demonstrators resumed.
The official IRNA news agency said six protesters went on trial, including Abdollah Momeni, a student leader.
Iran has already put about 140 protesters on trial for contesting the re-election.
Those on trial include leading reformist politicians, activists and employees of the British and French embassies.
The opposition has denounced what it has called a “show trial.”
The post-election unrest killed 36 people, Iranian officials say, but opposition groups say 72 people died — some of them in police custody.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS