Iran Hangs Four Accused Of Working For Israel’s Mossad

Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said while explaining what he called "the hybrid war in recent riots, "December 1 that Iranians use various Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to circumvent government Internet filters.

"We shut down one VPN today and immediately it is replaced by another one supplied by foreign countries." He added that "The only solution is shutting down the Internet completely, which is neither possible, nor the officials want this to happen."

Although he blamed foreign countries for providing VPNs, it is local businesses, most controlled by people close to the regime who sell the software.

Montazeri said he has been criticized by Internet users for insisting on blocking websites and application, but previous government disobeyed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's order about strictly controlling the Internet.

He made the comment mindless of the fact that one of President Ebrahim Raisi’s main promises in the 2021 presidential election was giving access to high-speed Internet to all Iranians in a bid to boost business.

Montazeri said that “enemies” have tried all sorts of campaigns against the Islamic Republic during the past four decades. Today, he said, they have resorted to a hybrid war.

The term has become a buzz word of Iranian officials and military commanders who have been repeating Khamenei's words probably without fully understanding it. Montazeri added that "the main perpetrators of this hybrid war are Israelis, Americans, Germans and the French."

He explained that this hybrid war consists of political cyber campaigns, fake news and diplomatic actions, adding that Khamenei had particularly warned about the cultural aspect of this war many years ago, but officials did not take his warning seriously.

A report published by proreform Fararu news website indicated that up to 10 million Iranians' livelihood may be adversely affected by government’s Internet access denials and its ban on social media platfoems. This has prevented Internet-based businesses from marketing and selling their products and services. Economists told Fararu that the limitation will have alarming repercussions for Iran's economy while the country is suffering from high inflation and recession.

Fararu added that only during the past two months while the protests were raging on, Iranians lost up to 300 thousand jobs as a result of the restrictions imposed on the Internet. Some 53 percent of Internet-related businesses have been losing some 500 million rials ($1,500) per day each. According to the trade union of computer-based businesses, Instagram has a penetration rate of 80 percent in the market with some 3.5 million jobs depending on the platform.

Economist Ehsan Soltani warned that "the officials do not want to listen to this problem. They do not realize that filtering and slowing down the Internet will add to economic problems. They keep adding to the country's problems by insisting on their mistakes."

The government has been severely restricting Internet access in general and access to popular social media platforms, such as Instagram, that play a key role in e-commerce. The government is extremely nervous that people use the Internet and social media to share news and images about protests, possibly motivating a larger segment of the population to join demonstrations.

Earlier this year, several US lawmakers and former US official Victoria Coates, who served as senior advisor to the energy secretary in the Trump administration, called on entrepreneur Elon Musk to activate Starlink satellite access for Iranians. Reports on social media during September and October said that private entities have smuggled Starlink reception equipment into Iran. But there is still no substantial indication how widespread Starlink’s use is.

“Arash Sadeghi suffers from life-threatening bone cancer, and he has been deprived of some medication he requires since his arrest in October,” the UN experts including Javaid Rehman, special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said.

Sadeghi, 36, who is currently held by the intelligence ministry at its own dedicated ward at Tehran’s Evin prison, was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2018.His cancer-affected arm had to be amputated in 2019. He also suffers from various kidney and stomach problems resulting from hunger strikes.

Sadeghi was arrested on October 20 for unknown reasons during the ongoing anti-government protests that began in September and have spread to many cities and towns across the country.

Sadeghi has been in and out of prison many times since 2009 and has gone on hunger strike several times, including a 71-day hunger strike in protest to his wife’s arbitrary detention in 2016.

Iranian authorities have repeatedly denied him proper medical care outside prison, despite his physicians’ advice, including after a serious infection following a surgery to remove the tumor in his arm in 2018.

UN experts said in their statement Friday that they have sent five official letters on Sadeghi’s detention to the Iranian government between 2016 and 2020 about his arbitrary arrest and detention, violations of his right to fair trial and due process, as well as his poor detention conditions. They specifically highlighted that the activist had been deprived of medical care.

The experts have also noted that Sadeghi’s case is not an isolated one.

“We remain gravely concerned about the safety of prisoners in Iran, particularly those who have been arrested and arbitrarily detained in connection with the current wave of protests in the country,” the experts said while noting that, according to civil society organizations, by April this year 65 persons had died in detention since 2017 because they were denied access to medical care.

There are several other reports about life-threating denial of medical care for those arrested in recent protests.

The US-based Center for Iran Human Rights reported Friday that Hajir (Hazhir) Bakhishi who was arrested in protests in Tehran in September was denied access to vital medicine. The computer engineer was beaten up during his arrest and had head trauma. He has been charged with “assembly and collusion against national security” by Tehran Revolutionary Court and is held at the notorious Fashafouyeh Prison in the south of Tehran.

According to Iran Human Rights News Agency (HRANA), theater actor Nazi (Fatemeh) Habibi, is also being denied medical care. Authorities of Qarchak Prison in the south of Tehran have reportedly refused to accept medications from her family while also denying her the right to see her lawyer and pressuring her for self-incriminating “confessions”. Habibi was reportedly arrested on November 24 with several other artists for staging a street play in Tehran.

“Given the large number of allegations of torture and ill-treatment in Iranian detention facilities brought to our attention, we are fearful about the potential for irreversible health consequences for detainees, especially those being deprived of critical medical care,” the UN experts said.

They have created a website called stopirgc.com to receive citizen reports and submit cases to government agencies and police to take action.

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps or IRGC is the main branch of the Iranian military that defends the regime. It also controls most of the country’s military assets, including nuclear and missile programs.

Ramin Joubin, a Burnaby-based lawyer says over 100 cases in Canada are being investigated by the group.

“There are a lot of reports on family members of heads of state, or people who are high up in the current regime in Iran,” Joubin told Global News.

“They might be visiting, they might have a business, property, permanent residence or citizenship,” he added.

According to Joubin, they are also investigating cases of suspected money laundering, either from companies or individuals.

“A lot of the reports we’ve received are about business activities in Canada, but somehow bypassing sanctions and engaging in various types of money laundering.” said Joubin. “That is the biggest activity we are seeing by IRGC members and affiliates.”

In October, Ottawa barred some 10,000 IRGC members from entering Canada for life, as protests swept Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Joubin, however, said the lifelong ban does not address IRGC officials, their affiliates and close family members, who already live inside the country.

In the past couple of days “a large number of students” at Arak Industrial University and Kharazmi University in Karaj came down with symptoms of food poisoning including diarrhea, body aches, and vomiting, the Telegram channel of a national student union said Thursday.

There were food poisoning breakouts recently at two other universities, Al-Zahra University in Tehran and Isfahan University of Technology both believed to have originated from canteens.

Calling the incidents another case of “serial food poisoning”, the channel said, authorities of Arak University attribute the illness, which has sent many to hospital since Wednesday, to some sort of virus but given a similar incident at Isfahan university of technology last week where many students got seriously ill after eating canteen food makes authorities’ explanation implausible.

Students in Iran's state universities, particularly those who live in dormitories, often eat at the canteen where food is sold at subsidized prices. Outbreaks outside the universities have not been reported.

Some social media users have claimed that students in these universities are being deliberately poisoned by the authorities because of their very active role in the protest movement. The purpose they say is to keep them away from the protests planned on the occasion of Student Day on Monday. 

Students of Isfahan University staged a protest following the incident and demanded the resignation of the university officials. “We don’t want rotten food, We don’t want murderous authorities!”, they chanted.

Health officials of Esfahan Province last week attributed the mass poisoning of to Shigella Sonnei, a bacteria that causes an infection called shigellosis with symptoms including diarrhea (sometimes bloody), fever, and stomach cramps a day or two after infection. The outbreak reportedly affected over three hundred students at the university.

The foodborne Shigella bacteria can be found in foods such as salads, meats and dairy.

The student union said Thursday so many students of Kharazmi University in Karaj had taken ill that the campus health center ran out of intravenous injection fluids for dehydration treatment and there were no beds to accommodate all patients. “The university pharmacy is closed, and female students are not allowed at this time [late evening] to leave their dormitories to seek medical care,” the student social media channel reported.

The same source said Friday students at Al-Zahra University in Tehran where a similar incident happened on November 24 were threatened by university officials not to tell anyone their illness was caused by canteen food. “The physician of the university clinic insisted that students had been infected by a foodborne virus they ate outside the university,” the channel quoted students as saying.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement said those designated as countries of particular concern - which also include North Korea and Myanmar - engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom.

"Around the world, governments and non-state actors harass, threaten, jail, and even kill individuals on account of their beliefs," Blinken said in the statement.

"The United States will not stand by in the face of these abuses."

He added that Washington would welcome the opportunity to meet with all governments to outline concrete steps for removal from the lists.

Washington has increased pressure on Iran over the brutal crackdown on protesters. Women have waved and burned headscarves - mandatory under Iran's conservative dress codes - during the demonstrations that mark one of the boldest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.

The United Nations says more than 300 people have been killed so far and 14,000 arrested in protests.

United Nations experts have also called on Iran to stop persecution and harassment of religious minorities and end the use of religion to curtail the exercise of fundamental rights.

The Baha’i community is among the most severely persecuted religious minorities in Iran, with a marked increase in arrests and targeting this year, part of what the UN experts called broader policy of targeting dissenting beliefs or religious practices, including Christian converts and atheists.

Reporting by Reuters