Iranian Aerospace Engineer Dies In Suspicious Circumstances

In an exclusive interview with CBS News on Friday, Sharghi’s wife and two daughters said they have requested a meeting with Joe Biden "numerous times," including as recently as ten days ago, but has so far not received a response from the White House.

"Really what we would like is to sit in front of the president and tell our story and beg him — because he is the only one that can make the decision to bring Emad and the other hostages home," said Bahareh, Emad's wife.

"We really hope that the administration puts patriotism over politics and brings these Americans home," said Emad's 25-year-old daughter Ariana. 

In April, which marked four years since Sharghi’s detention, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley called on Iran to release Sharghi and stop its policy of holding people as political pawns.

The 56-year-old businessman has been sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of espionage and collecting military intelligence but had attempted to flee while on bail awaiting the result of an appeal.

Foreign governments and human rights organizations have accused Iran of detaining foreigners and dual nationals on trumped up charges to use them for getting concessions from Western countries.

A former political prisoner and civil rights activist, Arash Sadeghi, said in a tweet on Thursday that the guillotine machine arrived at the prison about a month ago and was installed at the infirmary to carry out such sentences. 

According to Sadeghi, the man whose fingers were cut off on Tuesday had been transferred from the Kermanshah prison to carry out the sentence.

He added that three other prisoners convicted of robbery, namely Hadi Rostami, Mehdi Sharafian, and Mehdi Shahivand, have been transferred from the Orumiyeh prison in the northwestern province of West Azarbaijan to Evin to carry out their amputation sentences. 

According to Islamic Sharia law, punishment for theft can be amputation of fingers or hands.

The three prisoners have spent five years waiting for their sentence to be carried out.

Human rights organization Amnesty International had previously condemned the move to “deliberately mutilate and traumatize prisoners through unspeakably cruel judicial corporal punishments.”

Their trial was grossly unfair and relied on “confessions” which the men have said were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment while they were detained, without access to their lawyers, Amnesty said in December 2020. 

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic previously jailed in Iran for over two years, deplored the move, describing the procedure as “barbaric and medieval.”

The hardliner cleric, who is the Friday prayer Imam of the city, said on Friday that a troubled young man in his 20s ambushed him from behind after the prayers, adding that he was hit on the neck, but it was nothing serious and he was not hurt.

Tabatabai-Nejad said the assailant, whose identity was not announced, was arrested immediately and his motives are being investigated. Iranian media say that the cleric suffered minor injuries.

People on social media said the man attacked the cleric with a metal object.

In 2020, Tabatabai-Nejad said society must become unsafe for women with loose-fitting hijabs. Similar calls for crackdown on those who fail to comply with compulsory hijab sparked a series of acid attacks on women in Esfahan in 2014.

Earlier in the year, a member of the Assembly of the Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers, Mohammad Taghi Fazel Meybodi, said that clerics and seminary students are avoiding their usual garb for fear of being insulted in public, adding that the people in Iran have a negative view of the clergy, and blame them for the current hardships they experience, including high prices and corruption.

Another well-known cleric, Mohammad-Reza Zaeri, also talked about the growing hatred and grudge towards the clergy in January, warning of a crisis unfolding in society.

Mohammad-Reza Bakhtiari, the managing director of Tehran province Water and Wastewater Company, said on Friday with about 179 millimeters of rain since the beginning of the current Iranian year, (March 21), the reserves of water supply dams in Tehran province is at 636 million cubic meters, down from 815 million cubic meters compared to last year.

Iran has been suffering from drought for at least a decade and this year officials have been warning of a further decrease in precipitation.

As drought persists, more underground water is exploited for irrigation, depleting natural reservoirs formed during thousands of years. The drought has also led to a reduction in hydroelectric power generation.

On Thursday, a member of parliament’s energy committee, Parviz Mohammadnejad, said that the country faces a deficit of about 14,000 megawatts in electricity production, adding that the deficit will lead to regular blackouts during the summer when consumption is at its peaks.

Electricity consumption has been increasing in Iran because of extremely low prices, considered a subsidy in the state-controlled economy. While both power plant capacity and their fuel supply remain inadequate, Iran exports electricity to Iraq. 

Unlike normal visits by the president to other cities, which are usually announced beforehand so local authorities can organize state-sponsored welcoming ceremonies, the Friday junket was without the presence of people except for his security detail and a couple of city officials. 

Protests began last week, when the 10-story Metropol building collapsed, leaving nearly 40 people dead and dozens missing. It quickly became apparent that the owner and builder was a powerful and well-connected businessman who had disregarded regulations and building codes, being backed by officials, who might have had their own financial interests.

He also visited homes of some families of the victims of the disaster that triggered protests in Abadan as well as in several other cities across the oil-rich Khuzestan province who have been taking to the streets to demand accountability.

During the visit, Raisi said people have the right to expect investigation into corruption and some businessmen's connections with authorities that led to the Abadan incident, adding that they should be dealt with quickly.