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Top News Story Iran Is Considering Pardon for Ganji BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun July 21, 2005 WASHINGTON - Dissident Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji may be pardoned for the remaining six months of his jail sentence, Iran's judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, said.A pardon for Mr. Ganji would prove the efficacy of an international campaign in recent weeks demanding his unconditional release from prison. President Bush, E.U. leaders, and an Israeli politician and a former Russian political prisoner, Natan Sharansky, have called for the hunger-striker's unconditional release, as have human rights organizations and Western...

Top News Story Family visits jailed Iranian Ganji in hospitalIranMania: A member of the committee following up the condition of Akbar Ganji said Ganji’s family visited him at Milad Hospital. Issa Saharkhiz also told IRNA: “After the original ban was lifted, Ganji’s family managed to visit him at the hospital at 22:30 on Monday.“ ... Saharkhiz noted that on Sunday night Ganji was in critical condition and he was transferred to Milad Hospital from Evin Prison. “When Ganji’s family visited him, he was being fed intravenously,“ he said. READ MOREPlus two other important updates: Releaseganji.net published an interview with...

Top News Story Iranian opposition tracking, killing senior military officers Tuesday, July 19, 2005 Iran's opposition is targeting senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Iranian opposition sources said several senior officers of the IRGC have been tracked in major cities, including Teheran. The sources reported the killing of several officers of the IRGC and the Basij militia.On July 14, an IRGC colonel was stabbed to death in Teheran, Iran's media said, according to Middle East Newsline. The sources said Col. Morteza Moinfar, commander of the Quds Force, was killed by several unidentified assailants. The Quds Force has been...

Top News Story Ganji Is Near Death in Iranian Prison, a Dissident Reports BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun July 18, 2005 WASHINGTON - Akbar Ganji's 36-day hunger strike has nearly cost the Iranian dissident his life, according to a writer recently released from the Tehran prison that holds Mr. Ganji, whom President Bush and European Union leaders have demanded the mullahs set free.In a telephone interview from Tehran, a former political prisoner who was released temporarily from Evin prison at the end of June, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, told The New York Sun that Mr. Ganji's...

Top News Story Iran police chief authorises use of bullets Sat. 17 Jul 2005Iran Focus Tehran, Iran, Jul. 16 – Iran’s new police chief today called on the forces under his command to deal “decisively with criminals” and use live bullets if necessary. “When a policeman is sent on a mission, his mind must be focused entirely on getting the job done”, Brigadier General Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam said in the first flag-raising ceremony he attended after moving to his new command last week. “Using bullets is not the first way of dealing with criminals, but sometimes it is inevitable....

Top News Story Iran-Shahr The Strange Death of Iranian Islamism Political Islam, at least in its contemporary form and content, was born in Iran, under the auspices of Khomeini, Ali Shariati, and a 1960s-intelligentsia (1). "To make communist rule secure in the USSR for the indefinite future", Soviet leadership under Gorbachev made "a strategic decision". However, operating in a world of increasing openness, glasnost and perestroika, from within a system designed to be closed, "set the ball rolling toward the system's collapse" (2). Pursuing the same objective of lasting rule and learning maybe from their defunct Soviet predecessors, the...

Top News Story Free Ganji Ganji's Second Letter to the Free People of the World Akbar Ganji, FreeGanji.blogspot.com: [Disclaimer: there are many quotations of other thinkers in the following letter. Unfortunately references are missing from the Farsi text of the letter published on the internet. We have translated the quotes back into English from Farsi, so they might not match word for word with their original. We will try to amend this in future revisions.] This candle is dying out, but its voice will not Today, Sunday July 10, 2005 exactly 30 days have passed since I started my...

Iran's Ministry ready to recount of ballots cast Saturday, July 16, 2005 IranMania.com LONDON, July 16 (IranMania) - Iran's Interior Minister said he was prepared to order a partial recount of ballots cast in last month's presidential election after one of the losing candidates complained of fraud. "The Interior Ministry is ready to recount ballots in the provinces of Tehran and Isfahan in order to dispel all doubts," Abdolvahed Moussavi-Lari wrote in a letter to President Mohammad Khatami, AFP reported. In an open letter to Khatami, moderate former parliament speaker Mehdi Karoubi, who polled third in the June 17 first...

Top News Story Kofi Annan Claims Ignorance on Iran Dissident ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun July 14, 2005 WASHINGTON - As three senators joined President Bush's call for the Iranian regime to release dissident journalist Akbar Ganji from prison, the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, yesterday refused to comment when pressed, claiming ignorance on the matter.When asked by a New York Sun reporter if he would speak out on behalf of Mr. Ganji in light of the president's statement Tuesday, Mr. Annan said, "I don't know enough about the case, so I'd prefer not...

Top News Story Standing With Ganji New York Sun Editorial July 13, 2005 One evening not many years ago, we fell into a conversation about the heroes of the Cold War with Stephen S. Rosenfeld, who had recently retired as editorial page editor of the Washington Post. When we proffered the name of President Reagan, Mr. Rosenfeld cocked an eye and offered in return the name of Sakharov. Mr. Rosenfeld didn't gainsay Reagan's achievements. But it was important, he said, to remember that being a hero was much harder when one risked being thrown into the dungeons.We thought of...

Top News Story Freepers: Join the President and call for the release of dissidents in Iran DoctorZin reports, 7.12.2005: Special Report: Thousands of Iranians defied their government today and demonstrated in Tehran in support of an Iranian political dissident Akbar Ganji. Remarkably, he has defied the Iranian government, saying he is willing to die if he is not immediately and unconditionally released. Today, he is on his 31st day of a hunger strike. The regime was out in force and there were clashes with the security forces. Dr. Corsi and Ken Timmerman both provided reports. See photos here and...

Top News Story Reuters TEHRAN, July 12 (Reuters) - Iranian police beat dozens of protesters with batons on Tuesday at a demonstration to call for the release of Iran's most prominent jailed journalist. About 150 people, mostly students, had gathered in front of Tehran University chanting "political prisoners must be freed" when dozens of police moved in to break up the protest. The rally was in support of Akbar Ganji, an outspoken critic of the Islamic state's clerical leadership who was sentenced to six years in jail in 2001 for articles he wrote alleging links between senior officials and...

Tehran, Iran, Jul. 10 – In a poignant letter to Iran’s outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, Hojjatol-Islam Mehdi Karroubi accused “an autocratic political clique” of making use of “part of the armed forces and government employees” and taking advantage of “this country’s resources and manpower to conduct illegal activities”. He said fake ballots were used in two provinces to bolster the vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the first round of the election to allow him to go on to the second round. Ex-Speaker of Parliament Karroubi, who came third in the first round of last month’s presidential elections, said that while...

Top News Story Do the London Bombing's Lead Back to Iran? Today, the Sunday Times reported that the top suspect in the London Bombing is Mustafa Setmariam Nasar. If this proves true it spells more trouble for Iran. Nick Fielding and Gareth Walsh, The Sunday Times UK reported: THE terrorist believed to have organised last year’s Madrid train attacks is emerging as a figure in the hunt for the London bombers. Spanish security sources are said to have warned four months ago that Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a 47-year-old Syrian, had identified Britain as a likely target. Coded commands from...

Top News Story IranVaJahan Commemoration of the July 99 student uprising in Iran has become an annual event for the opposition to the mullahs inside and outside Iran. Today, the commemoration in London had a broader message however in the aftermath of the London bombings. The first demonstration was held outside the Embassy of the Islamic Republic in Kensington. A one minute silence was held in memory of Thursday’s victims of the indiscriminate bombing attacks in London. Speaker after speaker emphasised the global threat of the Islamic fundamentalism and the need to establish a global front to combat it....

Top News Story Islamic Republic News Agency: EU Calls on Iran to Release Ganji The European Union has made "urgent representations about Akbar Ganji, a political prisoner detained in Iran", according to a statement issued Friday night by the EU's British Presidency. He is believed to be seriously ill and reportedly in need of urgent medical attention, it said. READ MORE DoctorZin:We have been getting phone calls saying that Ganji is now in a coma. A new website in support of Ganji is now in operation. It has some interesting ideas. Check it out. Update: International demonstrations around the...

Top News Story Iran's President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Complete Bio - In His Own Writing 1 July 2005: Is the president-elect of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of the hostage-takers at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979? The Northeast Intelligence Network called upon its Farsi-language resources to help determine the answer to this question. Sure enough, the answer is readily found on the official website of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, written entirely in Farsi, and complete with images. The website includes various documents from Ahmadinegad’s campaign where he claims "I Can Control the Americans - I Have Experience Doing It".In one particularly...

Top News Story Adnoki The well-known Iranian writer and journalist Akbar Ganji, who has been in prison for more than four years, is in a critical condition after being on a hunger strike for the past 23 days. His wife, who met him in an Iranian jail, confirmed that the renowned dissident's life was in danger. "My husband, before beginning the hunger strike weighed 77 kilograms, but today his weight has fallen to 58 kilograms and he can no longer stand on his feet," Massoumeh Shafii, said in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI). Shafii told AKI that her...

Top News Story Benador & Associates Amir Taheri, Benador & Associates: THE winner in Iran's recent presidential election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, makes no secret that he is a professional revolutionary, having spent all his adult years in the service of the Khomeinist movement. But was he the chief interrogator of American diplomats held hostage during the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979-80? And was he involved in the assassination of three dissident Kurdish leaders in Vienna in 1989? ... Ahmadinejad's presence at the killing of the Kurdish leaders in Vienna on July 13, 1989, however, is an...

Top News Story Iranian.ws Montazeri open letter criticising the recent presidential elections Jul 4, 2005 One of Iran's highest-ranking theologians and dissident Shiite clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hassan Ali Montazeri has written a open letter criticising the recent presidential elections, and calling for the urgent amendment of Iran's constitution, which he argues is the principal obstacle to the country's democratisation. "As an Iranian citizen, I feel the duty - and it is also my right - to pass judgement on the current situation and indicate the way out of this crisis," Montazeri said. The letter describes last month's presidential elections,...