Iran Sentences Three To Be Blinded In ‘Eye-For-An-Eye’ Move
The three people who have been sentenced to be blinded
Iran has sentenced three people, including a woman, to be blinded in one eye in ‘eye-for-an-eye’ punishment under the Islamic Republic’s retribution laws.
The Tehran municipality’s Hamshahri newspaper said on Tuesday that the three have been transferred to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to prepare for the sentences to be carried out.
The woman had hurled acid at another woman in a 2011 dispute, causing her to lose an eye the paper said, adding that the supreme court has upheld the sentence of having her right eye gouged out, in addition to a jail term and a fine.
One of the men has been handed down the same sentence for causing his victim to lose an eye in a knife assault in 2017.
In the other case, dating back to 2018, a man has been convicted for blinding a friend in the left eye with a hunting weapon. According to the paper the plaintiff has “insisted” that his assailant suffer the same fate.
The Islamic Republic applies the eye-for-an-eye law, called ‘qisas’ according to Quranic principles, at the request of victims or their families, unless they grant a pardon. Amnesty International and other rights groups condemn such punishment in Iran as cruel and tantamount to torture.
Many people are executed in Iran every month because of this law. Late in July, two human rights organizations said Iran has embarked on an execution spree at a “horrifying pace” with at least 251 cases between January 1 and June 30, 2022.
Following Iran’s repeated failures to get a satellite into orbit, Russia's Roscosmos says it will launch one on behalf of the Islamic Republic into space.
Roscosmos said on Wednesday that the spacecraft, a remote sensing satellite called "Khayyam" after Persian polymath Omar Khayyam (1048 – 1131), will be sent into orbit by a Soyuz rocket.
"We plan to launch a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, equipped with a Fregat upper stage, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome [a spaceport in southern Kazakhstan leased to Russia] on August 9, 2022; it will take the Khayyam remote earth probing spacecraft into the orbit under an order of the Islamic Republic of Iran," the company said, highlighting that the spacecraft was designed and produced by Roscosmos enterprises.
It added that the rocket will also carry 16 smaller spacecrafts, designed in various colleges, commercial companies and non-profit organizations.
"Russian spacecraft are designed for scientific and technological research, including development of inter-satellite communications channels, measurement of electromagnetic radiation, remote earth probing and monitoring of ecological situation," Roscosmos claimed.
The three-stage Zoljanah (Zuljanah) satellite launch vehicle, which has two solid propulsion phases and a single liquid propulsion phase, was test-fired at a desert launch pad at Imam Khomeini Space Center southeast of Semnan, the site of frequent recent failed attempts.
A Sukhoi-22 fighter jet belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard crashed on Wednesday at an air base in the south-central city of Shiraz due to a “technical failure.”
According to an IRGC statement, “A Sukhoi 22 aircraft belonging to the IRGC’s Aerospace Force had a technical failure while taking off at the Shiraz Air Base on Wednesday morning, and the pilots were forced to eject from the plane.”
IRGC-affiliated Fars news said both the pilot and co-pilot survived the incident thanks to their timely reaction.
Such incidents occur frequently in Iran as the country’s air force has an assortment of aging Russian warplanes, and US-made military aircraft bought before the 1979 revolution that are not considered to be in optimal condition as decades of Western sanctions have made it hard to maintain the aging fleet.
In June, a US-built F-14 Tomcat warplane crashed and exploded in Esfahan due to a technical fault in the engine but the two pilots survived. According to a survey by Flight Global in 2019, the Iranian air force operates around 24 F-14 Tomcats from a batch of 79 of the Grumman-made swing-wing jets. Those that still in service in Iran are maintained by improvisation, since the US sanctions prevent purchase of new equipment and parts.
A report by Iran’s Shargh newspaper says at least 200 people are still missing following the severe landslide and mudslide northwest of the capital Tehran last week.
The newspaper quoted locals as saying that the repugnant odor of the bodies which are buried under the mud has taken over the area around the Shiite shrine complex of Imamzadeh Davoud, one of the places worst hit by mud and floodwater. Some locals said they have seen many dismembered body parts.
Shargh claimed the locals had not been warned about the possibility of the flood beforehand, while Sahar Tajbakhsh, the head of the National Meteorological Organization, said in a TV program that the amount of precipitation was not anything new for the area, a valley that has experienced heavier rains with no such floods. She concluded that some construction or development projects must have changed the course of the water, causing the catastrophe.
Partly due to the arid nature of the land and partly because of neglect in urban planning, even a modestly strong storm leads to deadly floods in Iran. Many dry riverbeds are choked off with construction or debris dumped by residents, leading to sudden flash floods in places no one expected.
Security forces laid siege to a village in northern Iran Tuesday and started demolishing houses and farms belonging to members of the persecuted Baha’i faith.
Simin Fahandej, a spokeswoman for the Baha’i International Community, told Iran International Tuesday that over 200 security forces were deployed to block the roads leading to Roshankouh, a village in Mazandaran Province, and begin demolition of the houses and farms belonging to Bahai’s.
According to Fahandej, security forces arrested some Bahai’s who tried to stop the operations, confiscated mobile phones of some villagers to prevent them from recording videos and publishing them on social media, and warned locals not to take any photos or videos of their operations.
A video posted on social media by the Baha'i International Community Tuesday shows security forces using heavy construction machinery to demolish buildings in Roshankouh.
Since early June security forces and the judiciary of the Islamic have intensified pressure on the followers of the Baha’i faith, raiding over a dozen households, arresting tens including three of the former leaders of the community, and shutting down businesses.
The intelligence ministry claimed on Monday that the arrested Baha’is were linked to the Baha’i Universal House of Justice in Haifa, Israel, and had collected information in Iran and conveyed it to their headquarters. The Universal House of Justice is the nine-member supreme ruling body of the Bahaʼi Faith.
In 2021 fifty Baha’i homes were demolished in the small farming village of Ivel in the same province and the authorities confiscated the assets of 27 Baha’i families who had lived there for several generations claiming that money earned by Baha’is is “unlawfully earned”.
The Worldwide Baha’i Community said in a July 20 statement that Tehran had intensified its systematic campaign to suppress the religious minority in recent weeks, either arresting, summoning to court, putting on trial or closing the businesses of at least 20 Baha'i citizens just in July. Baha'i Religious Minority Says Iran Intensified Persecution Of Members.
Established by Bahaullah in the 19th century, the Baha’i faith initially spread in Iran and parts of the former Ottoman empire and remained mostly confined to Iran and the Ottoman empire until after the death of Bahaullah.
The Baha’i Faith traces its beginnings to the religion of Ali-Mohammad Shirazi, known as the Bab (the Gate), the founder of Babism who claimed to be a messenger of God in southern Iran in 1844. The Bab who said God would soon send a new prophet to mankind was executed for heresy against Islam which considers Muhammad as the last prophet of God.
In 1863 Bahaullah, the founder of Baha’i faith who was banished from Iran and settled in Iraq later, announced that he was the prophet promised by the Bab. The leadership of Baha’is fell to his son Abdul-Baha after his death in 1892 near Acre in present day Israel.
Baha’is believe in Muhammad as a prophet of God, and in the Quran as the Word of God while the Shia clergy consider Babism and the Baha’i faith as heretical sects. Accordingly, Iranian clergy and officials often refer to Baha’is as “followers of the heretical sect”
For nearly three centuries the followers of the Bab and then Bahaullah have been persecuted in Iran to varying degrees and subjected to mob attacks often instigated by the Shia clergy.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has on several occasions called the Baha'i Faith a cult and in a religious fatwa in 2018 forbade contact, including business dealings, with followers of the faith.
Baha'is, who number around 300,000 in Iran, say their rights are systematically violated and they are often harassed, forced to leave their homes and businesses, and are deprived of government jobs and university education.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi says that “good words” from the Islamic Republic are not enough to satisfy international inspectors
Grossi expressed hope on Tuesday that Tehran is ready to be transparent about its nuclear program, which was “moving ahead very, very fast”.
When asked about the IAEA's role in monitoring any revival of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers under which it curbed its nuclear program in return for economic sanctions relief, he said Iran must grant IAEA inspectors access “commensurate to the size” of its uranium enrichment program if the agency is to credibly assure that it is peaceful.
“When it comes to nuclear, good words will not do it. What you need to do is to be transparent and compliant and work with us. We are ready and I hope they will be as well,” Grossi told reporters at the United Nations.
“They have a very ambitious nuclear program that needs to be verified in the appropriate way. The program is moving ahead very, very fast and not only ahead, but sideways as well, because it's growing in ambition and in capacity.”
