An Iranian court sentenced to death on Saturday three citizens who participated in opposition protests that took place after the national elections which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won. Oh boy, are they going to get in trouble with human rights defenders. Continued on Page 47
In another sign of continued tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem, the Turkish military canceled a planned joint exercise with the Israel Air Force scheduled for this week, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Defense officials told the Post that Turkey informed Israel of the cancellation of the Anatolian Eagle exercise last week, which was to also include US, Italian and NATO forces, saying this was because the planes that Israel was going to send likely bombed Hamas targets during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.
#2
US and NATO outcry against the Turkish decision, g(r)omgoru. The US and NATO need to rein in Turkey's "moderate" Islamist political leadership, and cancelling the exercise that Turkey was so looking forward to being part of is as good a place to start as any. Now if someone can lean on Britain to end their attempts to arrest Israelis for so called war crimes, not to mention all the other insults aimed at Israel for insisting on protecting her citizens, then perhaps Turkey wouldn't have felt confident enough to take that position.
#3
Remember that it was the Erdogan regime's veto threat that forced SecGen Rasmussen to apologize for upholding Western Democratic principles, and to do this in front of an assembly of Islamic potentates.
Quite ironic, given that NATO's "Raison D'etre" is ultimately the preservation of just these Western rights and freedoms.
The Erdogan regime might be de jure a NATO member but de facto it is too unfriendly to be even classified as 'neutral'.
Iran has sentenced to death three more protesters who were arrested after the country's disputed presidential election in June. The verdicts came despite a widespread international protest over the death penalty given last week to a man identified as Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, a member of a group seeking to reinstate the country's monarchy.
The sentences were said to be for involvement in the countrywide protests that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election as president in polls many Iranians said were rigged. The authorities have rejected the charges and portrayed the protests as a foreign-backed bid to undermine the Islamic republic.
Announcing the latest sentences through the ISNA news agency, Zahed Bashiri Rad, a spokesman for the justice ministry, said: "Three people who were accused [for their role] in the post-election incidents have been sentenced to death."
The identities of the three protesters were not revealed. Instead Bashiri Rad supplied only the initials of those condemned. "MZ and AP were convicted for ties with the Kingdom Assembly of Iran" an organisation that seeks to bring back the Shah while NA was convicted for ties with the People's Mujahideen, an exiled opposition group. It is unclear whether Zamani is the "MZ" mentioned by ISNA.
The four prisoners who have been sentenced in the last week are among more than 4,000 Iranians arrested for their part in the protests that followed the disputed election, many of whom have been accused of trying to overthrow the Islamic republic. Most of those detained have been released, but about 200 remain behind bars and around 110 have so far been put on trial.
Last week Amnesty International called on Iran to lift the death penalty on Zamani, 37, after he was sentenced by the court, criticising his prosecution as a "show trial" and a "mockery of justice".
Bashiri Rad said the death sentences were "not final and they can still be appealed to the supreme court".
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/11/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
