Government’s Mismanagement Evident In Pilgrimage Chaos – MP

According to the Guardian on Saturday, Sarah Shourd, her ex-husband and fellow journalist Shane Bauer, and their friend Josh Fattal were detained by Iranian security forces while hiking along Iraqi border in 2009 have filed a lawsuit overseen by federal judge Richard Leon in Washington, the same judge who in 2019 ordered Iran to pay Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian $180 million for imprisoning him for more than a year on false espionage charges.

Any damages that the trio and their families might receive through their lawsuit would come out of Iranian government assets seized by the US due to sanctions, as part of the congressional Justice for Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund.

The lawsuit said Shourd and Bauer moved to Yemen and then Syria in 2008 while dating because they wanted to continue practicing their Arabic language skills, and Fettel visited them in July of the following year and accompanied them on a hike to a waterfall in Iraqi Kurdistan, during which they apparently crossed into the Iranian territory without realizing it.

Iran let Shourd free in September 2010, describing her release as an act of clemency honoring the end of Ramadan after the intervention of the-then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bauer and Fattal were released a year later, presumably as a gesture meant to curry favor for Ahmadinejad as he was about to fly to New York to attend a United Nations general assembly meeting.

An empty chair stood in for Panahi during the screening of "No Bears," a movie about two parallel love stories in which the partners are thwarted by the forces of superstition and mechanics of power.

Panahi, who has made several award-winning movies, including "The Circle", "The White Balloon" and "Taxi", sent a letter from his prison cell which festival director Alberto Barbara read out this week in a panel on filmmakers in peril. "The work we create is not commissioned (so) some of our governments see us as criminals. Some (directors) were banned from making films, others were forced into exile or reduced to isolation. And yet, the hope of creating again is a reason for existence,” read the letter.

In July, Iran’s judiciary said the award-winning film director has been sent to Evin prison to serve his six-year sentence, after he was arrested as he was protesting the detention of two other filmmakers Mostafa Alehahmad and Mohammad Rasoulof at the prosecutor’s office of the Evin prison. Panahi is sentenced to six years in prison – five years for “conspiracy and collusion against national security” and one year for “propaganda against the system.”

The two had been detained on July 8 as part of the Islamic Republic's crackdown on the signatories of a statement titled “Lay down the gun,” which called on military and security forces who “have become tools for cracking down on the people,” not to suppress protesters during popular demonstrations in May. Since then, Iran’s security apparatus is increasing pressure on the signatories to rescind their signatures.

Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Kurdish rights group, reported on Saturday that the convict, identified as Morteza Jalali, was transferred from another prison to Tehran’s Evin prison for the amputation last week. 

His fingers were cut off with a guillotine-like device that the prison recently acquired at the infirmary of the detention center.

Iran has amputated fingers of several prisoners during the past few months while authorities said several cases of amputations for robbery are currently at the execution stage, calling on judges not to hesitate to issue death and amputation sentences.

Late in June, the head of the Iranian association of surgeons, Iraj Fazel, called on the judiciary not to allow the amputation of fingers to punish thieves, describing the practice as "worrying and horrifying."

According to Islamic Sharia law, punishment for theft can be amputation of fingers or hands.

Human rights group Amnesty International said late in July that Iranian authorities must be held accountable for amputating the fingers of prisoners. “These amputations are particularly harrowing displays of the Iranian authorities’ contempt for human rights and dignity,” said Diana Eltahawy, a deputy director of the group.

Khatami told reporters on Wednesday, September 7, that recent public discussions about Supreme Leader’s succession were simply rumors. He did not elaborate, but it was obvious that he was speaking about widespread discussions on social media about Ali Khamenei's son, Mojtaba, being groomed to be the country's next leader.

According to Etemad Online, Khatami had said in December 2015 that a secret committee has been formed to determine probable successors for the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

At the time he said that the identity of the three committee members would remain concealed from the other members, while they would work on a list of eligible candidates for succession, adding that the committee was formed based on advice by Khamenei.

Khatami was criticized at the time for the comment as some of the members of the AoE said there was no point in having an assembly with over 60 members if only three people are going to make the decision about succession.

Selecting a successor for the Supreme Leader and disqualifying an existing supreme leader are the main responsibilities of the Assembly of Experts. However, on the only occasion to determine a leader in 1989, it was the assembly's deputy chief Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who imposed his choice of the next leader on others and named Khamenei as a temporary leader "until a final decision on succession is made."

After harsh criticism by several Assembly members, Khatami said as a second thought that "The committee has only discussed the characteristics of the leader and the criteria to choose one." He even said that "the committee has been active for many years based on the Iranian Constitution," and that "its job is to determine who is potentially eligible to become the leader, rather than determining a leader."

He added that "Khamenei told the committee several times that the AoE should have quite a few next leaders up their sleeves."

Ayatollah Mohsen Araki who was a member of the assembly in 2009 told Fars news agency, there is a confidential list of potential supreme leaders. He said the committee holding the confidential list was known as "the research committee." Araki added that AoE members can suggest more names to be added to the list. However, when he was asked how many names are already on the list, he answered: "We do not know. It is one-hundred-percent confidential. Only the three members of the committee know the names." Parts of Araki's comments are still available on the official news agency (IRNA).

Another Assembly of Expert member in 2009, Ayatollah Hashem Hashemzadeh Harisi said that "the committee's only job is to determine the criteria for choosing the next leader. They are tasked with doing research not with determining the leader."

Harisi clarified further that "This is not an important committee, therefore, there should not be any public sensitivity about it. This committee is formed within the Assembly of Experts, but it is not important. It does not have any authority, and it is not legal. Therefore, it does not have much of an impact and it is not entitled to determine who is going to be the Islamic Republic's next leader."

The most interesting part of Araki's comments was that "The committee can name eligible next leaders from Iran or elsewhere including An-Najaf in Iraq" where Iraq's biggest seminary is located. However, he added that although there is no condition about the next leader's nationality in the regulations, but when it comes to choosing the next leader, being an Iranian will be one of the criteria."

Prosecutors said on Friday that police confiscated 700 kilograms (1,543 pounds) of heroin in the port city of Hamburg at the end of August, but the arrests were made overnight on Thursday, September 8, when police searched 10 premises in the eastern cities of Dresden and Chemnitz, as well as in Hamburg and in the Netherlands.

The detainees were an unnamed 35-year-old Iranian in the Netherlands, a 40-year-old Turkish-Serbian suspected ringleader, a 54-year-old German suspected of using his firm's logistics fleet to transport drugs, and a 53-year-old Turkish go-between.

One was detained in Germany, one in Spain, and two others in the Netherlands. Prosecutors are seeking the extraditions of the three who were arrested abroad. 

Last year in September, Indian officials said they had seized nearly three tons of heroin originating from Afghanistan and shipped from Bandar Abbas Port in Iran to Gujarat Mundra port worth an estimated 200 billion rupees ($2.72 billion). More than 2,988 kg of heroin was recovered in one of India's biggest such hauls to date.

In May, Jordan said Iran-backed forces in the Syrian army and militias loyal to Tehran are trying to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of drugs across the Jordanian border to Persian Gulf markets.