Iran News in Brief – May 4, 2022
Written by
Hamideh Taati
Iran To Execute Swedish-Iranian on Spying Charges by May 21 – ISNA
DUBAI, May 4 (Reuters) – A Swedish-Iranian national sentenced to death in Iran on charges of spying for Israel is to be executed this month, Iran’s ISNA news agency said on Wednesday, as the trial of a former Iranian official suspected of war crimes ended in Sweden.
Ahmadreza Djalali, a disaster medicine doctor and researcher, was arrested in 2016 on an academic visit to Iran and is to be executed by May 21, the semi-official ISNA said, citing sources.
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UPDATE: 12:00 PM CEST
Executions up 25-Percent Under Raisi Rule
Iran (MNN) — Executions are up 25-percent in Iran, according to a new report from human rights groups in Europe. “The correlation between Raisi’s election and the increase of executions is to be noted,” Edwin Keshish-Abnous of Heart4Iran says.
Iranians chose the hardline Islamic cleric Ibrahim Raisi for president in June last year. More than 50 executions took place in July, the report reveals, and numbers surged again in September and December. At least 333 people were put to death in 2021.
“[People in Iran] can be executed for crimes that are not really considered among the most serious under international law, such as drug trafficking,” Keshish-Abnous says.
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Iran’s Rulers Demanding Too Much Even for Biden
For months, the smart money has been betting that a nuclear deal between President Biden and Iran’s rulers was a sure thing. Mr. Biden had promised that any new agreement that would be “longer and stronger” than the deal President Obama concluded in 2015 and from which President Trump withdrew in 2018. But Iran’s rulers refused to go along.
They demanded concession after concession, knowing that Mr. Biden’s envoys would claim they’d prevented the Islamic Republic from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability — even if that claim was in stark contrast with reality.
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UPDATE: 9:00 AM CEST
Calls for Regime Change in Isfahan, Central Iran
On Tuesday, May 3, at 3:45 PM local time, people who were visiting the Aftab Shore Park came to hear slogans against the Iranian regime and in support of the organized resistance. Some slogans were as follows:
“Down with Khamenei, Viva Rajavi”,
“Raisi, you are the butcher of 1988”,
“Down with the mullahs’ rule”!
MEK Lawyer’s Closing Arguments in Trial of Iran Operative Hamid Noury
On Monday, May 2, Kenneth Lewis, the lawyer of plaintiffs from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in the Hamid Noury case, presented his closing arguments in a Stockholm, Sweden, court where Noury, one of the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre of Iranian political prisoners, is being tried for crimes against humanity.
In the court session, Lewis confirmed the arguments made by the prosecutors and other attorneys of the plaintiffs pertaining to Noury being guilty of crimes in 1988. He also presented new aspects of the case to the court. He first gave a brief history of the PMOI/MEK and its struggle against the Shah dictatorship and in defense of freedom in Iran.