Daily News Channel
Iranian security forces arrested three Americans, accusing them of illegally entering the country from Iraq’s Kurdish region, Iran’s official Press TV said on Saturday. The network’s Web site quoted a wire story saying the three Americans were backpackers and that a Kurdish official had warned them not to hike in the mountains because of the proximity of the Iranian border. Officials say the case is under investigation, Press TV said
Trials for nearly 100 Iranians arrested in the aftermath of the disputed June 12 presidential elections began Saturday, two Iranian news agencies reported.
Three American tourists are believed to be in Iranian custody after they may have strayed across the border from Iraq during a mountain hike, Kurdish officials said Friday.
Iran’s controversial president defended his government’s relationship with the country’s supreme leader on Friday, disputing charges of a political rift. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to a gathering in Mashad in northern Iran, rejected claims by people who have attempted to cast the relationship between his government and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “as tainted,” according to Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency.
Crying “Death to the dictator!” supporters of Iran’s opposition movement charged once more into the breach on July 30, defying a government ban on protests by gathering in the thousands at Iran’s largest cemetery to honor slain victims of the government’s crackdown. The protest was timed to coincide with the traditional Shi’ite practice of observing the 40th day of mourning following a death — the deceased in this case being Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose videotaped shooting at a June 20 demonstration against the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made her a global icon of Iran’s protest movement
It may have been a case of hitting the target but missing the opportunity. Reports last week said Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s fourth son and a mid-ranking al-Qaeda operative, was killed by a recent CIA Predator strike
Prominent Iranian reformist Saeed Hajjarian will be released from jail Wednesday, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported. A spokesman for Iran’s courts announced Hajjarian’s release, prompted by a recent order by Iran’s judicial chief to expedite the processing of files for all those arrested in post-election demonstrations, Fars said. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Hajjarian, a reformist journalist and former adviser to President Mohammed Khatami, was detained in Tehran’s Evin prison on June 15.
The Iranian government has released 140 people arrested in the aftermath of the Islamic republic’s disputed presidential election, a semi-official news agency reported Tuesday. Kazem Jalali, spokesman for the parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, said the detainees posted bail and were freed from northern Tehran’s Evin Prison during an inspection of the prison by a task force made up of commission members, the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) reported.
The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Saturday that Iran will strike Israel’s nuclear facilities if the Jewish state attacks Iran, a semi-official news agency reported.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has appointed Esfandyar Rahim Mashaie as his adviser, a day after the controversial political figure resigned as first vice president, Iran’s state-run news agency reported on Saturday. Ahmadinejad praised Mashaie as a pious, trustworthy, and self-sacrificing human being in his letter of appointment, the IRNA report stated