Welcome to ICFTO

Amnesty International is urging Iran halt the planned execution of a young man who was sentenced to death for a crime that took place when he was a child, following a grossly unfair trial marred by torture-tainted “confessions”.

Arman Abdolali was moved to solitary confinement in Raja’i Shahr prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, in preparation for his execution on Wednesday October 13. His execution was scheduled twice before – in July 2021 and in January 2020 – but was halted both times after an international outcry, Amnesty International said in a statement on October 11.

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, called on the authorities to “immediately halt all plans” to execute Abdolali, saying the use of the death penalty against people who were under 18 at the time the crime was committed is prohibited under international law and constitutes an “abhorrent assault on child rights.”

Arman Abdolali was first sentenced to death in a grossly unfair trial in December 2015 after being convicted of murdering his girlfriend. The court relied on torture-tainted “confessions”, in connection with the disappearance of his girlfriend in 2014, according to Amnesty International.

October 10 is World Day Against the Death Penalty. More than 140 countries have agreed to abolish the death penalty, according to Amnesty International. The Iranian regime, however, holds the world record for both executions of women and the highest per capita execution rate.
The death penalty is a violation of Articles 3 and 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which emphasize the right to life of every human being.
It is also contrary to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The Iranian regime continues to use the death penalty as a tool to intimidate and repress dissidents; And many regime officials also defend it.

With Iran’s new academic year, beginning on September 23, 2021, several Iranian teachers are imprisoned solely for peacefully exercising their human rights, including through their peaceful activism.

More than three weeks after the arrest of the Chemistry teacher Gholamreza Gholami Kandazi, he remains in a state of uncertainty in Adelabad Prison in Shiraz.

He was arrested by security forces on September 8 and taken to an unknown location.

He was held in solitary confinement for some time and was transferred to Adelabad Prison after the end of his interrogation. The prosecutor has set a heavy bail for his temporary release. Since his family do not afford to pay the bail, his illegal temporary detention has continued.

Mr. Gholami Kandazi is a teacher union activist in Fars province who is about to retire after 30 years of service.

Mehdi Fathi, another trade union activist in Fars province, was violently arrested on September 14. He has had only a brief contact with his family since he was arrested.

Authorities have denied him medical treatment despite his heart condition.

Iran’s parliament voted to restrict the internet amid growing popular discontent and escalating protests, calling for Khamenei’s ouster.
Iran’s parliament on 28 July approved a bill to ban foreign messengers and step up internet censorship. During the unofficial parliamentary session, 121 members voted in favour, and 74 voted against the bill.

The parliament agreed to discuss the bill requiring social media companies to have an office in Iran and be registered with the government.

Failing to do so would see them banned by the authorities. The bill also takes control of the internet away from the civilian government and places it under the armed forces.

After the passing of the bill, it will be forwarded to the Cultural Commission, where it can be put in pilot implementation. The pilot implementation will last between three to five years before it is finalized.
The “Protection of the Rights of Cyberspace Users” project severely restricts the Internet access in Iran.

Immediately after Ebrahim Raisi was announced as Iran’s next president, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, said on 19 June 2021: “That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran.

In 2018, our organization documented how Ebrahim Raisi had been a member of the ‘death commission’ which forcibly disappeared and extra judicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity.”

Three days of Water shortage Iran protests in the south-western Khuzestan, south Province have turned deadly, with the state security forces killing at least two protesters.
Ghasem Khozeiri, 17, who was shot and wounded by security forces during Friday protests in Kuta Abdullah, Ahvaz, died later at the hospital.
According to local reports, Mostafa Naeemawi, was shot and killed on the same day in the restive city of Shadegan.
The state-run IRNA News Agency confirmed a young man was killed and said “seditionists” shot Mostafa during in the protests. The regime uses the word seditionists to refer to protesters.
IRNA quoted Omid Sabripour, a local government chief of the city of Shadegan in Khuzestan province, as saying “a number of Shadegan’s people had gathered to protest water shortages due to the drought, during which opportunists and rioters shot dead one of the demonstrators.” He said the person had been killed by a stray bullet fired into the air.

On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, hundreds of thousands of Iranian expatriates in 105 different countries tuned in to a series of live-streamed speeches by high-profile politicians, freedom-loving people, and the supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). During the three-day Free Iran World Summit over 1,000 political dignitaries took part in the event as members of delegations representing the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, the Arab world, and beyond.

The keynote speaker of all three events was Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the NCRI’s president-elect. On Saturday, those remarks largely focused on Iran’s domestic affairs and the perceived vulnerability of the clerical regime, but also touched upon the international community’s inaction vis-à-vis the ongoing human rights violations in Iran and export of terrorism abroad.

Monday marks the conclusion of the three-day Free Iran 2021 world summit organized by the Iranian resistance for the purpose of promoting more assertive policies toward the Iranian regime and demonstrating the prospect for regime change to be brought about by the country’s domestic population.

President-elect Mrs. Maryam Rajavi used her keynote speech on Saturday to highlight the theocratic regime’s apparent fear of escalating protest movements and to call on Western powers for a firm policy towards the Iranian regime. In her follow-up remarks on Sunday, she gave voice to more specific criticisms of existing Western policies, especially in the wake of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

As Mrs. Rajavi described the situation, those revelations, including the location of the regime’s fortified nuclear facility at Fordo, have presented a crucial challenge to Tehran’s persistent strategy of “hiding its nuclear program” and “deceiving the world” while also courting Western efforts to “stop or curb this project by granting concessions or by showing complacency.”

The international community must hold Ebrahim Raisi, the new president of the Iranian regime, to account for his crimes against humanity, politicians from around the world emphasized on the third and final day of the Free Iran 2021 World Summit.
Raisi, a key figure in the 1988 massacre of Iranian political prisoners, has become notoriously renowned as the “henchman of 1988.” He is sanctioned in the U.S. and Europe for his human rights abuses. And the speakers at the Free Iran conference urged their governments not to deal with a regime whose head of state is a murderer.
“As far as the international community is concerned, this is a test of whether it will engage and deal with this genocidal regime or whether it will stand with the Iranian people,” said Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in her address to the conference.