Posts
According to BBC Farsi and as announced by Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, among those arrested were three Russians, one French, one Japanese, and one Afghan.
In an interview with the Students News Agency of Iran, Dolatabadi said, “All of these individuals were released, with the exception of one Russian citizen and one Afghan citizen for their lack of explanation of the charges.” Dolatabadi described the charges against the Afghan citizen as “participation in an illegal gathering” and said that he had been arrested in Sadeghiyeh Square.
According to the same report, the Russian citizen has been arrested for illegal entry into Iran and his case is currently under review by the Revolutionary Court.
This is not the first time that Iranian police and security agents have arrested foreign citizens during the post election unrest. Iranian officials have also reported the arrests of foreign citizens who were detained during street protests. Officials announced that these individuals had entered the country with the intention of taking advantage of the events (civil unrest) taking place in Iran.
A while back, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Chairman for the National Security Council of the Majlis in Iran announced, “During the protests on the day of Ashura, a European Charge d’Affaires was arrested in Tehran, however, according to the Geneva convention, the Charge d’Affaires was released with the mediation of the country’s embassy after 24 hours.”
Also in early July, eight employees of the British embassy in Tehran were arrested on charges of “playing an instrumental role in the creation of chaos.”
Other foreigners arrested during the post election unrest include Dubai TV’s Syrian reporter Reza Al-Bashaa, who was arrested on the day of Ashura. Clotilde Reiss, a French citizen was also arrested and tried on charges of participating in post election protests. She was arrested for taking photographs of the protests and e-mailing them to her friends outside of Iran. Reiss was one of the detainees who was a part of the televised mass trial. She is still waiting on her sentence.
It should be noted that on February 11th, during the commemoration ceremony for the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, the popular opposition movement protested against the government in numerous cities across the country and were violently treated by police and security agents.
The Iranian opposition had a strong presence in the cities of Tehran, Isfahan, Ahvaz, and Shiraz despite the preventative measures taken by police, security, and plainclothes agents, which included arresting political activists prior to the ceremony, cutting off the internet, filtering news sites, increasing satellite interference, and disrupting mobile phone and text services.
Police and security forces also used paint guns and daytime flash photography for the first time in order to create systematic chaos and fear.
According to unofficial data, at least 25o women were among the arrested and the number of detained men is much higher. Official authorities have not yet announced the official data of the arrests for February 11th.
For over eight months, the protests against the announced results of the Iranian presidential election have more or less persisted in various cities across Iran; protests that officials of the Islamic Republic and many analysts had considered impossible. It was the brutal treatment of protesters by the government, including violent beatings of protesters on the streets and arrests of political and civic activists, that caused the opposition to continue its protests and synchronize them with official events.
0 comments:
Post a Comment