Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is to pardon 10,000 prisoners, including political ones, in honor of the Iranian New Year holiday today, state TV reported.
“Those who will be pardoned will not return to jail... Almost half of those security-related prisoners will be pardoned as well,” Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told state TV on Wednesday.
Iran had temporarily freed about 85,000 people from jail, including political prisoners, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Esmaili said on Tuesday.
Photo: AFP / Ho / Iranian Presidency
“A large number of prisoners who have been temporarily freed do not need to return to jail after the leader’s pardon,” Esmaili said. “The unprecedented part is that the pardon also includes the security-related prisoners with less than five-year jail sentences.”
Esmaili did not say whether the pardon would include British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was released on Tuesday for two weeks.
Iran says that it had 189,500 people in prison, a report that UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Javaid Rehman submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in January said.
The prisoners are believed to include hundreds arrested during or after anti-government protests in November last year.
The pandemic has prompted calls from the UN and the US for political prisoners, including dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, to be released from Iran’s overcrowded and disease-ridden jails.
Washington has told Iran that it would hold the Tehran government directly responsible for any American deaths in jail.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners over the past few years, including citizens of Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US.
Tehran denies that it holds people on political grounds, and has mainly accused foreign prisoners of espionage.
In June last year, Iran released Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese businessman with US permanent residency, after four years in prison. Last year, Iran also released Wang Xiyue (王希悅), a US citizen who had been held for three years on spying charges.
Rights advocates have accused Iran of arresting a number of dual nationals to try to win concessions from other countries — a charge the Iranian government has regularly dismissed.
Tehran has called for the release of about several dozen Iranians held in US prisons, mostly for breaching sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.
Tensions have risen between longtime foes Iran and the US since 2018, when Washington quit Iran’s nuclear deal with six world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Tehran’s economy.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not