Muhammad Sahimi of Tehran Bureau posted this list last evening, before the reports of the arrests that we have confirmed this morning in our LiveBlog:
Haleh Sahabi, a daughter of Ezatollah Sahabi, leader of the Nationalist-Religious Coalition; she had also been arrested after the rigged June 12 presidential election;
Mohammad Taheri, a son of Ayatollah Seyyed Jalaloddin Taheri, a progressive cleric and close friend of the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri;
Mohammad Moein, a son of Dr. Mostafa Moein, former Minister of Science and Research in the administration of Mohammad Khatami, a former Majles deputy, and a reformist candidate in the 2005 presidential election; Read the rest of this entry »
2200 GMT: Stopping the Mourners. Rouydad News carries a story we’ve been hearing on the Internet all evening: Iranian security forces have stopped a bus carrying families of political prisoners and members of Women’s Human Rights Committee to the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri in Qom, arresting several people.
2049 GMT: The Revolutionary Danger of Dating. More than 60 operators and managers of Iranian Internet sites for dating have been arrested for anti-cultural and immoral activities in their promotion of “a gallivanting lifestyle”.
2045 GMT: The Kahrizak Abuses. The blog Persian2English has produced an English translation of the official report of the Armed Forces judiciary panel concluding that three detainees died from abuse at Kahrizak Prison.
1845 GMT: Another Demonstration. A brief video clip has come in of a protest today at Arak University.
1600 GMT: Ongoing Coverage of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s Death. We have updated with extensive information and analysis on condolences, political developments, and plans — including tomorrow’s funeral — surround Montazeri’s passing.
1345 GMT: EA’s Mr Smith comments:
Grand Ayatollahs Safi Golpayegani, Mousavi Ardabili, and Sanei and Ayatollahs Gerami, Shabbiri Zanjani, Mousavi Tabrizi, and Taheri Khorramabadi have visited Montazeri’s bayt (house) to offer their respects. This is extremely important as, in Shia clerical custom, going to someone’s house means deferring to that person’s authority and or power. It is therefore a significant slap in the face of Government efforts to belittle Montazeri.
1145 GMT: The Political Challenge of Montazeri. We’re getting a lot of news on the regime’s attempts to deal with the challenge posed by Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s death, first by ignoring it, now by belittling it and criticising the cleric — all will be posted soon in an update in our separate entry.
Meanwhile Mr Smith checks in to give the political dimension of the events: “Montazeri simply could not have died at a more topical moment: the seventh day of his passing will be none other than Ashura itself, which this year is shaping up to be the very worst in the lives of Khameni, Ahmadinejad and their cohorts. The pressure on them on those days simply cannot be measured.”
1135 GMT: Videos, Protests in Memory of Montazeri. We’ve posted the first videos of demonstrations in memory of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, and we also have put up the video of his October criticism that the Supreme Leader was not worthy to be a marja (senior cleric worthy of emulation).
1110 GMT: The Latest on Montazeri’s Death. We have latest developments in a separate entry. One notable political move: the pro-Government newspaper Raja News is using Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s passing to attack Hashemi Rafsanjani, claiming the Grand Ayatollah was working with the “gang” of Rafsanjani’s son Mehdi Hashemi.
1100 GMT: Karroubi Responds to Threat of Arrest. We’ve posted Mehdi Karroubi’s letter responding sharply to the threat of Iran’s head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, that he has enough evidence to arrest the cleric and other opposition leaders. Read the rest of this entry »
I initially refrained from posting this video, an interview of a purported Basiji militiaman by Britain’s Channel 4 News, with its explosive claims about detainee abuse and rigging of the Presidential election, as I cannot confirm the authenticity of the interviewee and Channel 4 (understandably) offers no evidence to verify his claimed identity. In light of reader feedback, however, I am posting this for viewers to consider the assertions and make their judgements.
This article from Nick Baumann at Mother Jones is filled with political-insider information, but I think it is a significant marker of how the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility has moved from an Obama pledge in January 2009 to a site for internal Administration struggle in November.
I learned several weeks ago that the Administration’s top lawyer, Gregory Craig, was going to leave or be pushed out the door, in part because his political position was fixed to the promise to shut Gitmo. I was always sceptical, given the politics of the War on Terror, that the deadline of January 2010 was going to be met, so it was no surprise that Craig would have to walk the plank.
The broader issue is that we are now in a mish-mash of measures. There will be trials in the US for a few detainees (such as 9-11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad) whom the Administration is sure will be convicted without the use of lost or discredited (i.e., obtained “via duress”) evidence. There will be military commissions for about 75 detainees whose convictions cannot be assured. And the rest of the prisoners will remain in the limbo of a Guantanamo that is open well into 2010.
Liberals have not done enough public wrestling with Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf’s Time article on the ouster of White House counsel Gregory Craig. Perhaps that’s because they don’t want to deal with the article’s troubling implications. As Kevinexplains, Craig was “the White House lawyer tasked with dismantling Bush-era interrogation and detention policies. At first, Obama was on board with Craig’s plans. Then, reality set in.” Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE 1115 GMT: Spectacle has posted the video of an interview with Omar Deghayes, speaking about his interrogation by British Intelligence agents while detained in Islamabad, Pakistan and Bagram, Afghanistan. – Long-time EA readers will know that I have been none-too-happy with the evasions of the British Government over torture in the War on Terror, criticising Foreign Secretary David Miliband for using deceptions as well as court action to prevent the truth from emerging.
This week Human Rights Watch brought out a bit of that truth, publishing a 46-page report on Britain’s involvement (not observation, involvement) in the torture of detainees in Pakistan. This is the summary, followed by a link to the full report:
A key lesson from the past eight years of global efforts to combat terrorism is that the use of torture and ill-treatment is deeply counterproductive. It undermines the moral legitimacy of governments who rely on it and serves as a recruiting sergeant for terrorist organizations. This is recognized in the UK government’s counterterrorism strategy, “CONTEST II,” which asserts that the protection of human rights is central and that the UK’s response to terrorism will be based on the rule of law.
However, this principled and pragmatic assertion of core values is being undermined by the official whitewash surrounding the complicity of UK intelligence and security agencies in torture in Pakistan, with ministers repeatedly rejecting calls for an independent judicial inquiry from a cross-party parliamentary committee and human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) alike. Research by Human Rights Watch and path-breaking investigative reporting by The Guardian newspaper makes it clear that British hands are not clean. The refusal of the government to order an independent and transparent investigation has been an important missed opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »
Within hours of the British court order for the release of documents connected with the alleged torture of detainee Binyam Mohamed, and British Foreign Minister David Miliband’s insistence that release of the material would risk the US-UK intelligence relationship, I spoke with Peter Allen of BBC Radio 5 about the case (and, yes, I did use the word “lie” with reference to Mr Miliband). The interview starts just before the 2:20.00 mark.
This afternoon a British court issued an important and long-awaited ruling in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident tortured in Pakistan and then detained at Guantanamo Bay. The court ordered the British Government to present documents, demanded by Mohamed’s lawyers, that established not only the torture but also US and British complicity in the “enhanced interrogation”. The British Government had maintained that, because the documents contained information which originated with their US counterpart, its revelation could jeopardise the US-UK intelligence relationship.
In the last hour, I have heard British Foreign Secretary David Miliband maintain in two radio interviews that he would be happy to release the documents but that Washington has insisted they be withheld. Therefore, before getting into the details and implications of his argument — for example, that any decision of a British court should be set aside because of the demands of the “intelligence” relationship, indeed that torture must not be investigated if there is a US-UK intelligence dimension — let’s re-state:
Miliband is lying.
Reprinted below is our entry from March 2009, after an earlier court decision reluctantly accepted the withholding of the documents. Then as now, Miliband trotted out the line that the decision was up to the Americans; unfortunately, his cover was blown by a State Department official who revealed that the Brown Government had asked Washington to make that statement to the court. That way, the material would still not see the light of day but the British Government could claim that it was not hiding evidence alleging London’s own involvement in the torture of Mohamed.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, is to be questioned by senior MPs over what he and his officials knew about the ill-treatment and secret interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, the former UK resident recently released from Guantánamo Bay. The move was announced yesterday by the Commons foreign affairs committee, which said it also intends to investigate other key issues where recent evidence has thrown up uncomfortable questions for ministers to answer. They are allegations of British complicity in torture in Pakistan, in the US practice of rendering terror suspects to countries where they risked being tortured, and in the transfer of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Muhammad Sahimi of Tehran Bureau posted this list last evening, before the reports of the arrests that we have confirmed this morning in our LiveBlog:
2200 GMT: Stopping the Mourners. Rouydad News carries a story we’ve been hearing on the Internet all evening: Iranian security forces 
UPDATE 1115 GMT: Spectacle has posted the video of 
Within hours of the British court order for the release of documents connected with the alleged torture of detainee Binyam Mohamed, and British Foreign Minister David Miliband’s insistence that release of the material would risk the US-UK intelligence relationship, I spoke with Peter Allen of BBC Radio 5 about the case (and, yes, I did use the word “lie” with reference to Mr Miliband). 
This afternoon 
Update (3 March): The Guardian reports….
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