Daily News Channel
At the request of the Colombian government, Interpol, an international police agency, has issued an alert for the arrest of a Mexican student linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Nearly two weeks of silence on the streets of Tehran were broken in the evening of July 9 when thousands marched through the central districts of the Iranian capital to protest the June 12 presidential election. Another anniversary helped precipitate the show of apparent defiance: the 10th anniversary of a bloody student uprising that was brutally put down by the government. Despite threats earlier in the day of a “crushing” response, men, women and even some children went onto the streets with chants of “Death to the dictator” and “Mousavi, Mousavi!” But the response was indeed crushing
Two weeks after the contested results of Iran’s Presidential elections led to widespread street riots and demonstrations across the country, the Islamic Republic pronounced its harshest threat yet to protesters. At the official ceremony for Friday prayers, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a hard-line cleric who often delivers the sermon, said those who agitate on the streets were “waging war against God,” a crime that carries the death sentence. It was the latest example in which government forces have tightened their control over and heightened their rhetoric against opposition supporters of the defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
The fate of Iran’s Islamic revolution now rests in the hands of an enigmatic cleric who is little understood at home, let alone by the outside world. For the past 20 years, pictures of Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, with his oversize glasses, black turban and untrimmed white beard, have adorned shops, government offices and living-room walls throughout Iran. His modest childhood home in Mashhad has become a virtual shrine, his edicts are binding and his powers absolute
They may wear a uniform, or ordinary street clothes. Their numbers are unclear.
The son of the former shah of Iran called Monday for solidarity against Iran’s Islamic regime, warning that the democratic movement born out of the election crisis might not succeed without international support. “The moment of truth has arrived,” Reza Shah Pahlavi said at Washington’s National Press Club
Iranian protesters who "disturb the peace and stand up to security forces" will be considered a threat to the regime and will be met with a strong response, the country’s Revolutionary Guard warned Monday. “The guardians of the Islamic revolution and the courageous Basiji together with the security forces following the orders of the supreme leader and following him unquestioningly, are determined to act strongly to return peace and tranquility to society ..
Iranian state television yesterday broadcast the soap operas and covered the news about Rafael Nadal’s withdrawal from Wimbledon and Pakistani operations against the Taliban as if they were the most important stories in the world. Meanwhile, arriving over the internet transom, rough and insistent and bloody, were the tiny electronic dispatches from protesters forced off the streets of Tehran, shaky videos from a city screaming for help. For outsiders tuned into the blog posts, Facebook updates, Tweets and YouTube videos, the torrent of information was compelling and confusing, emotional and rife with rumors, full of sound and fury signifying …
For almost a week, tens of thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets in daily protests — handkerchiefs shielding their faces from the pungency of tear gas, fists punching the air, and chants of "Down with the dictator" echoing against buildings. The massive outpouring is a result of a disputed presidential election that the protesters think coronated the incumbent hard-liner, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over their candidate, Mir Hossain Moussavi
Some observers see Iran’s courageous protests against a stolen election as a replay of the 1979 revolution that ended the tyranny of the Shah — or of the “velvet revolutions” that ended communism in Eastern Europe.