Free Republic

Tehran, Feb 2 - The court investigating a controversial opinion poll on Iran-US relations has sentenced two pollsters held in connection with the case Abbas Abdi and Hossein-Ali Ghazian to jail terms, IRNA quoted the press on Sunday. The Persian-language `Seday-e Edalat' (The Voice of Justice) reported that Abdi has been sentenced to seven years and Ghazian to eight years behind the bars. Ghazian and Abdi, both working at the Ayandeh Polling and Research Institute, were apprehended last year following an opinion poll they had directed which claimed that two-thirds of citizens in Tehran favored resumption of talks with the...

Arrest a reforming top directing Monday November 04, 2002 - 10h19 GMT TEHERAN, Nov. 4 (AFP) - One of the high leaders of the principal Iranian reforming party, Abbas Abdi, was stopped Monday, announced official agency IRNA without specifying the reason but by indirectly evoking a judicial enquiry in progress into a survey favorable to the resumption of the dialogue with the United States. IRNA recalls that Abbas Abdi, one of the leaders of the Face of the participation and who are also one of the former heads of the taking students hostages of the embassy of the United...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A former ringleader of the U.S. embassy hostage drama in Tehran said on Saturday that Jimmy Carter, who was U.S. president at the time, did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. "He would have deserved a peace prize today if he had taken serious steps toward peace during his presidency," said Abbas Abdi, one of the leaders of the student militants who seized the U.S. embassy in 1979. The students, who were trying to force Washington to extradite the deposed Shah of Iran for trial, held 52 U.S. hostages at the embassy for 444 days. During that...