MESOPOTAMIA INSIGHT NEWS IRAN : MORE EXECTIONS / BUT NO WESTERN OUTCRY

Court Sentences 30 Men to Jail for Economic Crimes: An Islamic revolutionary court handed prison terms of up to 20 years to 30 men for bribery, embezzlement and “disrupting the economy” on December 9. According to Reuters, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei established the Islamic revolutionary courts in August of this year in order to “confront an economic war by foreign enemies.” In addition to the jail terms, the court ordered that the men receive lashings and have their “ill-gotten” assets seized, according to Judiciary Spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei. This ruling comes less than a month after Iran executed Vahid Mazloumin and Mohammad Esmail Ghasemi, two prominent currency traders, for allegedly “spreading corruption on earth.”

Meanwhile, Vahid Sayadi Nasiri, an Iranian political activist jailed in August 2018, died in prison on December 13 after a 60-day hunger strike. According to BBC, Sayadi Nasiri was originally detained in September 2015 and sentenced to eight years in prison for allegedly “insulting the supreme leader” and spreading “propaganda against the state.” Though he was pardoned and released in March 2017, intelligence authorities arrested him again in August on similar charges. Sayadi Nasiri began his hunger strike in October of this year to protest the prison conditions and lack of access to a lawyer according to Iran Human Rights Monitor. In an official statement, Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State Robert Palladino condemned the death, saying, “Mr. Sayadi-Nassiri languished in prison without his voice able to reach the outside world and he is just one of many more unjustly detained prisoners held at the mercy of the Iranian regime’s whims.” Palladino also called for the release of two additional Iranian activists, Farhad Meisami and Nissrin Satoudeh. More via www.mesop.de