Iran Letter: Journalist Emadeddin Baghi in Prison

EA has received this letter from Tehran:

More than a month has passed since the detainment of Emadeddin Baghi, writer and researcher on human rights issues, but he is still being kept in solitary confinement in department 240 of Evin Prison without a visitor’s permit. He has no access even to the Holy Qu'ran.

Baghi was detained at home on the day after Ashura on behalf of a general precautionary warrant for alleged abuse of Ayatollah Montazeri’s death; and his crime was declared as “making an interview with Ayatollah Montazeri”, which was released by the BBC [Persian]. This interview had been made two years earlier, even before BBC [Persian] started, and was published by this media only after Montazeri’s death.

The Latest from Iran (2 February): A Quiet Start

So far Emadeddin Baghi has spent four years in prison on several occasions, three years of which under the former government and one year under the government of the current President. In his first imprisonment, the accusations were related to media matters, and in the second imprisonment to his civil society activities in the “Society (Anjoman) To Defend Prisoner’s Rights”, which he founded.

In the second imprisonment from 2007, Baghi suffered from a malady due to adverse prison conditions, being finally transferred to hospital, and he spent the rest of his detention in the prison’s general ward. Doctors trusted by the Iranian Intelligence service had already noticed that keeping him in a closed and stressful room would be dangerous to him.

Today, however, he serves his penalty in solitary confinement without any possibilities [of a change in conditions]. He is also suffering from chronic disc damage. Baghi’s relatives have said that Tehran’s prosecutor met him last week in Evin prison, but even though they asked the prosecutor for information about him, this authority has not replied yet, pointing only to the fact that Baghi will have no visitor’s permit before a further message.

His relatives are convinced of the fact that even if Baghi is accused of making this interview, more than 35 days of interrogations in solitary confinement are not required, especially with regard to the condition of his health. Baghi, who has been summoned to court several times within the past years and always appeared in due time, could have better answered these questions in freedom and under more lawful conditions.

Baghi’s family is concerned about his health and demand a minimum of legal rights like contact by phone, visitor’s permit, leaving solitary confinement and access to books. They say that they informed Tehran’s prosecutor about these demands, but did not receive any answer.

UPDATED Israel: The Government Responds to the Goldstone Report on Gaza

UPDATED 2 FEBRUARY: Haaretz reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to persuade Defense Minister Ehud Barak to accept an Israeli investigation into civilian deaths during Operation Cast Lead. However, officials said that both Barak and Gabi Ashkenazi, the Chief of Staff of Israel Defense Forces, refused to yield authority to investigators from outside the defense establishment.

"The prime minister knows what he wants to do on this matter - but he does not want to bring the matter to the cabinet," a senior source close to Netanyahu said.

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With the General Assembly convening on 5 February 5 to discuss progress on the Goldstone Report and its recommendations, Israel submitted its response to United Nations over last year's Gaza War.

Palestine: Hamas Refuses An Independent Commission on Gaza “War Crimes”

The committee will reportedly have the authority to summon everyone who was in charge of the IDF investigations and any civilian who took part in the main deliberations. However, it will not have the authority to question operational commanders. The committee is likely to take testimony of lower-ranked officials, ensuring that there is no basis to send officials to international courts.


The Israeli Government said it is preparing to appoint a committee focusing on two main areas: 1) the quality of the investigations conducted by the Israel Defense Forces into incidents and 2) decisions taken by the Cabinet, the Security Cabinet and the IDF General Staff over the use of force. The first area will establish whether the internal investigations met the relevant international standards and the second will determine whether there is a basis to Goldstone's claims that the operation was planned in advance as a punitive campaign against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, announced  that he has decided to establish an independent panel of inquiry to evaluate the accusations on human rights violations carried out by his PA security forces during the Gaza War.

On the political front, Israel slammed the Goldstone Report's "misrepresentations" in a written response submitted to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, "Gaza Operation Investigations: Update":

As Israel has clarified before, Israel disagrees with the findings and recommendations of the Report, which reflect many misunderstandings and fundamental mistakes with regard to the Gaza Operation, its purposes, and Israel’s legal system.

Israel is committed to ensuring that every such incident is fully and fairly investigated, to ensure that lessons can be learned and that, if justified, criminal or disciplinary proceedings initiated.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak added that the Goldstone Report was "distorted, false, and irresponsible":

This morning we handed the UN a report of the investigations and operations that took place during Operation Cast Lead. This report stresses that the IDF is like no other army, both from a moral standpoint as well as from a professional standpoint.

All of the soldiers and officers whom we sent to battle need to know that the state of Israel stands behind them even on the day after.

Iraq: Continuing Violence and Yesterday's Bombing in Baghdad

As always, Juan Cole offers a valuable summary:

AFP Arabic reports that a female suicide bomber detonated her payload in a tent in northeast Baghdad (Bub al-Sham) among pilgrims walking to the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing 56 and wounding 144 according to late reports. The pilgrimage commemorates the 40th day after the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the hands of the Umayyad Empire in 680 CE. Thousands of Iraqi Shiites are walking or driving toward Karbala, creating a security nightmare for Iraqi army and police intent on preventing Sunni Arab terrorist attacks on the pilgrims.

Along the way philanthropic groups have set up tents with food and drink. Since Husayn was said to have suffered from thirst as he and his family and friends were besieged by the armies of the Caliph Yazid, it is common for pious Shiites to put out water stalls. The suicide bomber is said to have entered such a tent for women pilgrims, which had Interior Ministry female security personnel within, patting people down. The attacker set off her bomb before she could be inspected, killing 3 inspectors along with many others in the tent.

AP has video....

Some 35,000 pilgrims have already reached Karbala in preparation for the 40-day mourning sessions there, about five days from now.

Aswat al-Iraq reports via PNA that the Iraq ministries of the interior, defense and health said Sunday that 196 non-insurgent Iraqis were killed in political violence in January, 135 of them civilians and the others police or soldiers. In addition, Iraqi security forces killed 54 armed militants and arrested 681 others. The total of wounded this January was 782, 620 of them civilians.

The civilian deaths declined 56% from December, when 306 civilians were killed. The death total was also a steep decline from January of 2009 when 376 Iraqis were killed. The number of wounded showed no change from January 2009.

The US military suffered 5 deaths in Iraq in January, but only 2 were the result of hostile action. In December, no US troops died in Iraq.

Sunni-Shiite violence has continued as part of the low-intensity conflict in post-Baath (and increasingly post-American) Iraq. Already raw nerves have been rubbed even more raw by the exclusion of over 500 candidates out of some 3000 from running for parliament. Those excluded include some candidates who presented forged credentials to he High Electoral Commission. But many were disqualified by the Accountability and Justice Committee on grounds of close connection to the banned Baath Party. Since the more prominent politicians so excluded were Sunni Arabs of a secular cast of mind, Sunni Arabs are particularly upset.

Salih Mutlak, the leader of the National Dialogue Bloc in parliament (11 seats), was among those excluded, and his appeal to the courts has failed. Sunni Awakening leader Ahmad Abu Risha, whose group went on the US payroll to fight Sunni radicals ("al-Qaeda"), is considering boycotting the March 7 parliamentary elections over the exclusions.

Tensions over the election are running so high that US ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill has publicly weighed in, warning about the danger to the credibility of the elections of excluding high-profile Sunni Arabs.

One menace is that Sunni boycotts or noncooperation could complicate the process of forming a new government after the early March elections.

Tensions also remain high between Arabs and Kurds in the north, where the US is jointly patrolling with Iraqi and Kurdish paramilitary foces.

Yemen: A Beginner's Guide to (The Perils Of) Intervention

Yemen, the state on the Arabian Peninsula which has recently exploded into the headlines as a country of concern, is little-known to most Americans. It does have a track record, however, of embroiling outside powers who decided to intervene. Sean Foley, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University  and author of the forthcoming The Arab Gulf States Beyond Oil and Islam, writes for EA:

In October 1927 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, delivered an historic speech in which he explained why Turks had to abandon the Ottoman Empire and embrace his new state. Ataturk in particular focused on Yemen and the fact that the Empire’s leaders had sent millions of Turks to die in South Arabia in the name of a universal Muslim state: “Do you know,” he asked, “how many sons of Anatolia have perished in the scorching sands of Yemen?”  In the future, Ataturk promised, Turks would not die in wars in Yemen—a state that had become synonymous with the plight of the Ottoman soldier in Turkish folklore.

Saturday Special: Helping Yemen?

Forty years later, Yemen made a similar entrance into Egyptian national consciousness. When Israel defeated Egypt in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, much of Egypt’s army was fighting a protracted and bloody guerilla war in Yemen.

The experience of Turkey and Egypt should give U.S. officials pause, as they contemplate intervening in Yemen and along its 1,800-kilometer border with Saudi Arabia.


That border is one of the most disputed regions in the Middle East.  Its deserts and vast open spaces assist smugglers transporting various consumer goods, weapons, illicit drugs, and illegal immigrants. Al-Qaeda has reportedly brought weapons and explosives into Saudi Arabia from Yemen and trained operatives in the country, such as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the Nigerian man who sought to destroy a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009.

Although Yemen and Saudi Arabia both wish to eradicate al-Qaeda, their efforts to control the border are hampered by years of mutual mistrust. The two countries fought wars over the border region as recently as 1934, and Yemenis have claimed that Red Sea Saudi islands and the southern Saudi regions of ‘Asir, Najran, Tihamah, and Jizan should be part of Yemen. Saudi Arabia has tried to build a fence along the border, which was only officially demarcated in the year 2000.

Further complicating matters is the nature of the border communities. Not only are there Sunni Muslims, but there are also Ismailis and Zaydi Shi‘a Muslims. Zaydis are more than 40 percent of Yemen’s population and have a tangible presence in Saudi Arabia. (Jews even lived in Najran until the 1950s.)  Riyadh’s relations with border peoples are often problematic, while the Huthis, a Zaydi rebel group, have attacked Yemeni and Saudi military forces.  The Huthis have also received moral and potentially military support from Iran.  In 2009, Saudi Arabia sought to destroy the Huthis by launching the Kingdom’s biggest military operation since 1991.  As of February 2010, the Huthis continue to fight on both sides of the border, and the Saudi offensive has become a contentious issue between Riyadh and Tehran.

In the long run, the best U.S. approach in South Arabia is to continue to support Yemen and Saudi Arabia, since both have the incentive and the means to attack American enemies there. Any other approach risks starting Americans down the road to a military quagmire. Indeed, no American need die in the sands of Yemen for Washington’s policies to succeed in the Middle East.

Iran Document: Khatami Statement on Rights and Protests (1 February)

Adapted from the Facebook page supporting Mir Hossein Mousavi:

At the time the Islamic Republic was proposed and accepted and approved by the people, it was not an Islamic state and this is a very important point....

The other main outcome of the Islamic Revolution was the Constitution, and the fact that today it is being said that the constitution is the base, does not mean that the Constitution is something above all humans. Rather it was written, edited, and approved by the people to become the principal law for the society.”

If there are any objections, it is because the Constitution is not being fully honoured. If these shortcomings are by the parties and groups it is bad, but it is even worse if these shortcomings are by the government. If there are any objections it is dues to the odd and biased interpretation of the Constitution. If there are any criticisms, it is to clarify whether the Constitution is truly being guarded or not....


The Islam that was introduced in the Revolution promoted the republic, as well and the Islamic Republic itself is the result of a great human movement throughout our history.

Our people have suffered a lot from tyranny throughout the history, and this is why they have been against tyranny and dictatorial governments, the governments that have no representatives among the people. Today the governments that have no roots among their own people have become dependent on the foreigners.

“The Islam that is in the Islamic Republic is not the Islam that does not recognise the right of the people, does not recognise the freedoms of the people, and does not want justice. Such Islam is in no way in accordance with the Islam that is in the Islamic Republic. The Islam and Islamic Republic that we wanted was not this one that the government is not under people’s watch.

Today we defend the Revolution, and if we have any objections or anything to say, we say let us speak our minds; the response to the civil protests is not pressure, repression, imprisonment, and possibly execution. These will only make the crisis deeper and make the tendencies to exit from the boundaries [of the Republic?] stronger.

How could it be possible that people have the power but the Government is not based on the will of the majority of the people? Therefore elections are very vital and important for us, and if we show sensitivity toward this issue it is because having free, competitive and healthy elections is a practice based on the Republic part of the Islamic Republic. The fact that truly all the organisations of the government should be based on the free will of the people is not some minor issue.

The freedom that we are talking about is the freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, freedom of expressing that opinion, and freedom of employing that opinion and people being asked to give their inputs about that opinion.

The requirement for freedom in its true meaning, which in short is the power of the people over their own destiny, is the freedom of speech and assembly. How could it be possible that there are parties but they don’t have any platform to express their views and cannot hold gatherings?

In a calm and civil environment, people should get a chance to come and then it would be clear what poeple’s tendencies are. And more important than this is the elections that should be free, healthy, and trustworthy.

See what kind of atmosphere has been created these days. There is not only oppression and brutal confrontations and arrests but also there is the atmosphere of accusation and allegations. The fact is that there are extreme limitations on one side for its speeches and communicating with people and on the other side there are some in complete freedom whom I believe by fabricating lies and allegations are pushing the society toward violence (a blind violence that only God knows what would be its outcome).

How wonderful it would be if all the loved ones who are in [political] prisons were among us and we could all participate in the 22 Bahman (11 February) rally together.

Some have the authority to lie and say such person has written a letter and in the letter has said such things [referring to the coup government’s attempts to fabricate a story that Khatami has written a letter to the Supreme Leader] while no one knows what is in this [so-called] letter and there was no such a thing at all. Then the same people try to create tension and portray differences among those who have the honour of being accepted by the people and then say that they have differences among themselves while it is not like that at all. These are wrong and evil methods being used in order to disappoint people and to say that those who were accepted by the people have forgotten about the people and betrayed them but it is not like that at all.

People have the right to protest. They have the right to know that their votes are effective. People have the right to have proper freedom and good economy.

We never affirm defiance and violence and we pray to God that people also don’t be treated with violence.