You can see last news & events here.

Iranian president allegedly involved in Vienna murders

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was part of a death squad that killed three Kurds in Austria, it was claimed today (Thurs).

Green party security spokesman Peter Pilz said Ahmadinejad had been involved in the killings in Vienna in 1989 and may have actually shot one of the trio.

Pilz said: "I have no doubt he was involved", adding he may have pulled the trigger on one of the guns used to kill the men.

Pilz said new eye-witnesses had come forward who had identified Ahmadinejad as being involved in the assassination of Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran chief Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, his deputy Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar and Austria-born Fadel Rasoul on 13 July 1989.

He said a German weapons dealer had told Austrian investigators there had been a meeting in the Iranian embassy in Vienna during the first week of July 1989 at which a certain "Mohamed" who later became president of Iran had been present.

The dealer said the purpose of the embassy meeting had been to discuss illegal arms deliveries.

Pilz claimed there had been two Iranian teams involved in the assassinations - a negotiations team and an execution team. Pilz said Ahmadinejad had been responsible for gathering and preparing the weapons used and had been a member of the execution team.

Pilz said he had passed on documents on the case that had been translated into German to the interior ministry and the state prosecutor’s office.

Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr has also claimed Ahmadinejad had belonged to the execution team in Vienna, and a number of media reports implicated him in the murder of the three Kurds.

The Iranians suspected of having killed the Kurds took refuge in the Iranian embassy after the murders and were allowed to leave Austria after the Austrian government came under massive pressure from the Iranian government.

The Greens spokesman called for a foreign-policy initiative to support democratic forces in Iran and warned: "A president who has probably engaged in massive election fraud, been responsible for the deaths of many journalists and Kurds in Iran and strongly suspected of murder in Vienna is not someone capable of respecting democracy and human rights.

"The European Union should not consider him credible."

Meanwhile, more than 700 Iranians demonstrated in Vienna on Tuesday in support of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mussawi.

The demonstrators, who walked from the Heldenplatz to the Iranian Embassy, carried posters with slogans such as "where is my vote, election fraud in Iran, and time for a change" and chanted "freedom, freedom" and "free elections, free people" in Farsi and German.

Police said the gathering had been peaceful and passed without incident.

Source: http://austriantimes.at/index.php?id=14092

Iran Military Warns Online Media

Iran's most powerful military force has warned online media of a crackdown over their coverage of the country's election crisis.

The Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force answering to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said through the state news service that Iranian Web sites and bloggers must remove any materials that "create tension" or face legal action.

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports that Iranian authorities appear to have successfully blocked all access to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter Wednesday morning. Access had been intermittent since the election.

The Guards are a separate military with enormous domestic influence and control of Iran's most important defense programs. They are one of the key sources of power for a cleric-led establishment that has been pushed by the crisis into an extraordinary public defense of the Islamic ruling system.

It was the Guards' first public statement since the crisis erupted following the presidential election last Friday.

Along with the Western social networking sites which are now blocked, Iranian reformist Web sites and blogs have been vital conduits for Iranians to inform the world about protests over the declaration of election victory for hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Despite official warnings and a ban on street demonstrations, some Web sites allied with opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said Wednesday that supporters should gather in a downtown square in the late afternoon.

Mousavi has dubbed the election an "astonishing fraud," and called for it to be nullified and done again.

The announcement raised the prospect of further clashes with security forces. The violence has left at least seven people dead, according to Iran's state media.

CBSNews.com editor-in-chief Dan Farber noted that several sites are offering information on what is happening on the ground in Iran and other countries, piecing together and triangulating data to create almost real-time snapshots. While it's often impossible to verify the authenticity of the information, the combined force of the Web in conveying the story from Iran has been unprecedented. Click here to see some of the recent video and images from "citizen journalists" covering the aftermath of the contested vote.

Iran's government barred foreign media Tuesday from leaving their offices to report on the street protests.

Iran clamped down Tuesday on independent media in an attempt to control images of election protests, but pictures and videos leaked out anyway - showing how difficult it is to shut off the flow of information in the Internet age.

The restrictions imposed by the government made such social networking sites as Twitter and Flickr more prominent - with even the U.S. State Department calling on Twitter to put off a scheduled shutdown for maintenance.

Iranians were posting items online, but it wasn't known how much of that information was being seen by others inside the country. And although some of the posts on Twitter appeared to be from users in Tehran, others clearly were not.

The crackdown on media kept most Western journalists off the streets of Tehran Tuesday, but it did nothing to stifle the dramatic mass gatherings of political supporters, thousands of whom swarmed the streets of Tehran in rival demonstrations, pushing a deep political crisis into its fourth day despite a government attempt to placate the opposition by offering to recount a limited number of ballots.

Iran's supreme ruler drew a firm line against any threats to the regime, warning Iranians to unite behind the country's Islamic system.

Khamenei called for Iranians to unite behind the cleric-led ruling system despite the rival demonstrations Tuesday.

There's a lot of political maneuvering going on to contain the unrest, and one sign of that is the arrest of at least 100 prominent opposition members - including some senior members of the clergy, reported Palmer on Tuesday.

"In the elections, voters had different tendencies, but they equally believe in the ruling system and support the Islamic Republic," said Khamenei.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/17/world/main5092901.shtml

Special Forces attacked a girls dormitory in Urmia

Urmianews: the incoming news from Urmia indicates the savage beating and torture of demonstrators in this city. As is told by our colleagues, the city of Urmia never saw such terror after 2nd of khordad 1385.

More than 300 people were arrested and were moved to many detention centers like the police station at mokhaberat neighborhood, police station no. 17 at the urban terminal outline, and some other security and disciplinary offices around the daneshkadeh junction and also shahrchai river. These people were beaten by batons and cudgels after being arrested.

Reports indicate that the arrested people are asked about their identity only after first being beaten by the agents. Some of the arrested people who were labeled as "pro-disintegration" or ""pan-turkist" were moved to other places. Most of them are individuals who have a record of attending other demonstrations like the one on the day for Azari language, school commencement day, protests in the month of khordad, or the 21st of azar ceremony.

Individuals who have a clean record and are younger than 25 may be freed after giving collaterals, but the older ones are delivered to security centers. Nevertheless, both groups should first have their share of being kicked and beaten.

An Urmian citizen who has taken his 21 year old son from a police station reported his condition critical. Agents have broken the boy’s arm and shattered his teeth. This youngster and another 8 were beaten by 20 agents in the courtyard of a police station.

Beside all these events, about 10 members of the Special Force units have attacked a girls’ dormitory behind the police station at mokhaberat neighborhood. After wounding the person in charge of the dormitory who was preventing them from entering, they have confiscated the students’ mobile phones. Urmanews correspondent reports that the reason was that some of these students have captured scenes of agents beating the people in the police station courtyard.

Although the internet lines are not totally disconnected in Urmia, it is quite impossible to send any email or even enter any websites which provide email services since 12 a.m. June 15.

Rezaee’s letter to the Ahmadi Nejad’s interior minister: why don’t you give me the details even five days after the election?

Dr. Mohsen Rezaee protested the unprecedented postponement of announcing the detailed information of ballots to his representatives by the interior ministry. He noted that this postponement will lead to the obliteration of the candidates’ right to legally protest the results. According to the official website of Dr. Rezaee, this is the letter: In the name of god Dear interior minister Mr. Mahsouli I want to inform you that in spite of my official letter to the president and repeated requests of my representatives, I could not have the information about the individual ballots yet. Five days has passed after the election and I do not have to remind you that this is my basic right as a candidate to have these statistics.

The unprecedented 5 days delay in announcing the results of counting the votes in each ballot after announcing the final results of the election, strengthens the taints that the results of individual ballots are being made up to match the announced result in each election district. With respect to this issue, I expect you to deliver me the information about each ballot until the end of today’s working hour. Otherwise I have no option other than asking the guardian council for something other than recount. Wish you the best Mohsen Rezaee 1388/03/27 It is notable that Rezee had written a similar letter to the interior minister but the interior ministry and the country election headquarter illegally did not provide him the information of individual ballots so far.

Analysis: Iranian leader's ultimatum to protesters

(CNN) -- Iran's supreme leader delivered an impassioned defense of the Islamic Republic on Friday, insisting a majority of Iranians had faith in the existing establishment and issuing a "religious ultimatum" to protesters to end days of street demonstrations triggered by last week's presidential election.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last week's election demonstrated the majority of Iranians trusted the Islamic regime.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last week's election demonstrated the majority of Iranians trusted the Islamic regime.

Addressing a large crowd at Tehran University, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the historic voter turnout of 85 percent legitimized the Islamic system and had been a clear demonstration of the Iranian people's trust in the regime.

He rejected suggestions that fraud or cheating had been involved in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, pointing out that the 11-million vote difference between Ahmadinejad and his principal opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi, was too large to have been manipulated by vote-rigging.

Khamenei then directly addressed the people on the streets, telling them it was time to end their protests and pursue their grievances through the Guardian Council, which has already said it will recount some of the votes

And he made clear there would not be another election, warning that the consequences of any further violence or public disturbances would be borne by those responsible.

Analysts in Iran suggest this was Khamenei's way of sending a religious ultimatum to the people: Come off the streets, don't defy me and work out these problems through the legal system.

Despite the political differences between the candidates, Khamenei stressed that all came from inside the establishment; in other words, none were plotting a revolution or a coup against the Islamic Republic. See where protests have taken place »
"From the Streets of Iran"
Christiane Amanpour shares her first-hand look at the explosive Iran election, Saturday and Sunday night.

He also accused foreign governments of agitating against the Islamic Republic. Iranian television last night showed so-called "terrorists confessing" to being paid by the U.S. to come to Iran from Iraq and cause violence.

Khamenei welcomed the live television debates that had preceded the election, which he said had been vigorous and free with each candidate given a chance to put across his point of view.

But he did criticize some of the "emotion and insults" exchanged during the debates and rapped the knuckles of both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- for criticizing former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- and his main opponent Mir Hossein Moussavi for what he called misrepresenting Ahmadinejad's record on the economy.

This was a clear call from the man from whom all power flows in Iran and it will be interesting to see how the situation unfolds from here.
Don't Miss

* Iran's supreme leader defends election
* Complete coverage of Iran fallout
* Moussavi addresses silent throngs
* Analysis: Iran's leaders divided

advertisement

Iranian sources say they believe the real reformers -- Moussavi, former president Mohammad Khatami and others -- will listen to Khamenei and pull back to work out a new strategy and new tactics. One source warns that some radicals committed to fighting the regime may stay out on the street.

The big question is whether Moussavi will call on his supporters to end their demonstrations -- and whether those on the street will listen.

Iran: Google's translator and Khamenei's head

(CNN) -- Internet giant Google on Friday started translating Persian, also known as Farsi, in a move that could dramatically help spread information on the Iranian election crisis, but the service is far from perfect.

Badi Badiozamani, who has been helping with translations at CNN, said it was good at translating short phrases like "Hi, how are you?" but struggled with longer sentences and terminology.

He said when asked to translate "Mr. Khamenei, people will put you in your place", the Google translator came up with: "Mr. Khamenei, people instead of your head you can (and then an indecipherable word)."

Badiozamani added: "The machine can never replace the human mind. The Persian language is very poetic, full of metaphors and poetry and expressions. You give it to the poor machine, it's not a person or a poet, it has not got a heart. So the end result is disastrous."

Peter Norvig, Google's research director, admitted to CNN that the service was "not perfect yet."

Norvig said the program "tried to do the best job possible."

Norvig said Google had pushed out the service early because of the situation in Iran but it was not a political move.

"We are just offering access to information."

Last week's contested presidential election has led to widespread protests and turmoil in the country.

Tens of thousands of Iranians have demonstrated in daily protests since, and the government has restricted coverage by news media and social networking sites.

Google said it is working to add 40 more languages that Persian can be translated into.