IRAN: Campaign launched to annoint Neda Agha-Soltan Time magazine's Person of the Year 2009

The flickering images of Neda Agha-Soltan’s last moments in a Tehran street on June 20 before she died from gunshot wounds gripped the world, galvanized the nation and made the 26-year-old music student the face of Iran’s recent protest movement.

Five months after an unknown assailant took her life at a demonstration in the Iranian capital staged by pro-reform activists, supporters across the world have spearheaded a grassroots initiative in a move to immortalize her.

Through the use of various social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, they are pushing to make Agha-Soltan Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2009.

Each year, the U.S.-based magazine grants the title to one or several persons who "most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year."

Administrators of the more than 1,000-member strong Facebook group "Nominate Neda Agha-Soltan as the Time Woman of the Year" say she deserves the title because she has become “the symbol of the recent Iranian movement towards democracy and freedom" through her tragic death that shocked the world.

LEBANON: 'Clear pattern' of migrant-worker deaths alarms rights advocates

On Oct. 21, 26-year-old Zeditu Kebede Matente of Ethiopia was found dead, hanging from an olive tree in the southern Lebanese town of Haris.

Just two days later, her compatriot, 30-year-old Saneet Mariam, died after falling from the balcony of her employer’s house in Mastita, just north of Beirut.

It's been a deadly month for women working as domestic laborers in Lebanon. At least six have died under mysterious circumstances, constituting a "clear pattern that cannot be ignored," Human Rights Watch researcher Nadim Houry told the Daily Star recently.

EGYPT: Police officer imprisoned for torturing suspect

In a nationally followed case that highlighted Egypt's long-standing problem of human rights abuses, a police officer has been sentenced to five years in prison for torturing a mentally disabled suspect in July.

Col. Akram Soliman first appeared in front of a criminal court in the city of Alexandria in September after he was accused of detaining and beating Ragaie Soltan for eight days without any formal charges. Soltan had been taken into custody July 21 during a random police sweep of the homeless in the seaside city.

Soltan was transferred to a public hospital one week later, where he was diagnosed with brain concussion and internal bleeding after losing consciousness as a result of the physical abuse.

TUNISIA: Online activists rally to free fellow blogger Fatma Riahi [Updated]

Lina Ben Mhenni was one of the last people to see Fatma Riahi the day she was arrested. The two women bloggers had been in touch online and by phone, but it wasn't until Ben Mhenni saw that Riahi's Facebook profile and blog had been shut down that they made urgent plans to meet for coffee on last Sunday. Riahi, a high school drama teacher in the small seaside city of Monastir, had been ordered to report to the Criminal Brigade in the capital, Tunis, where Ben Mhenni lives.

"From one cup of coffee, we spent the whole day together," Ben Mhenni wrote of Riahi in a series of e-mails to the Times. "In fact, I discovered an exceptional person -- funny, full of life, [an] artist [...] We talked about music, we laughed watching Tunisian television, we talked about blogs and bloggers."

They also talked about the Criminal Brigade, the investigative security force Riahi would have to answer to, and Ben Mhenni's boyfriend, Muhammad Soudani, who was arrested on Oct. 22 after giving an interview to a foreign radio station and has not been seen since.

[Updated, Saturday, Nov. 7, at 11:55 p.m. PST: Fatma Riahi was released Saturday morning, according to a statement posted on the Facebook page and blog devoted to her release. 

The statement said Riahi was in good health but was still in danger of being re-arrested.]

IRAN: In wake of protests, accusations and counter-accusations of media lies

 

It was supposed to be a public show of Iranian unity during day marking the 30-year anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Islamic revolutionaries.

But not only did anti-government demonstrators, many of them dressed in green scarves and headbands,  hijack the state-sponsored event. They also managed to steal the media's attention media, much to the displeasure of the authorities, who blamed the Western media for distorting the facts.

On the other hand, Iran's official media, also appeared to play fast and loose with reality. 

IRAN: Concern over fate of star student who spoke out to Khamenei [Updated]

 

It was near the end of a meeting Wednesday between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a group of university students when the man who is Iran's highest political and spiritual authority asked if there were any other questions. 

He spotted a young man in the corner with his hand raised and called on him, asking him to go to the podium to speak through the public address system. 

What followed was an extraordinarily candid 20-minute speech by the student, later identified as national math Olympiad winner Mahmoud Vahidnia, in which he publicly and explicitly criticized Khamenei for the government's conduct in the unrest that followed Iran's June 12 elections. 

Vahidnia, a first-year student of mathematics at Tehran's prestigious Sharif University, spoke without notes.

[UPDATED at 4:30 a.m. PST on Nov. 1:  Despite reports of his arrest, reports surfaced that Vahidnia is okay. He told the Persian-language Alef.ir news agency in a report that appeared in the reformist newspaper Sarmayeh on Sunday that rumors of his detention were unfounded. 

He also said he made the speech on his own volition. "I had not coordinated with anyone," he told the news agency. "Even my family had no idea what I was going to say."

He added, "On the whole the meeting with the Supreme Leader was constructive."]

IRAN: Grim fates for prisoners with ties to foreigners

No mercy for those accused of trying to topple the Islamic Republic.

Britain on Thursday protested a four-year jail sentence apparently imposed on one of its senior employees at its embassy in Tehran accused of spying and fomenting violence. 

Hossein Rassam, 44, who served as chief political analyst at the British Embassy in Tehran was sentenced in a closed courtroom earlier this week, according to The Times of London. 

British authorities were informed of the sentence Tuesday and have summoned the Iranian ambassador while Britain’s ambassador to Iran has filed a complaint with Iranian authorities. The outcome of the trial has yet to be officially announced. 

In other developments, an Iranian human rights group is claiming that judiciary officials in Iran refuse to let a lawyer file an appeal on behalf of Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian American scholar sentenced to 15 years in jail for allegedly stirring up trouble during recent protests. 

And a vacation video (above) said to “prove the innocence” of three American hikers detained in Iran since the summer has been released online. 

Not all the news is grim. Iranian authorities recently released Maziar Bahari, a Newsweek reporter and Iranian Canadian who was arrested in the post-election unrest.

TUNISIA: Government cracks down on press freedoms, opposition before elections

It's a big weekend for Tunisia's longtime ruler, Zine el Abidine ben Ali.

Less so for its voters.

Ben Ali, who has ruled the North African country since wresting power from previous lifetime President Habib Bourguiba in 1987, is expected to extend his mandate Sunday through an election his critics have described as a "masquerade." 

Ben Ali has introduced constitutional amendments to allow himself to run for another term, limit the number of opposition candidates and guarantee his Constitutional Democratic Rally an overwhelming majority in parliament.

The U.S.-based advocacy group Committee to Protect Journalists has criticized the Tunisian government for its news media crackdown, including the arrests and violent attacks on critical Tunisian writers. This week, French reporter Florence Beauge was detained while attempting to enter the country and sent back to Paris.

But Tunisia's relative stability and secularism have made it a Western ally in the global "war on terror," and the same international community that condemned Iran's and Afghanistan's flawed elections is unlikely to exert the same pressure on Tunisia, despite recent crackdowns on reporters and serious opposition figures.

YEMEN: Outrage over death of 12-year-old child bride aimed at government [Updated]

Mounting outrage following the death of 12-year-old Fawziya Abdullah Youssef, who died giving birth to her stillborn child, is renewing pressure on Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to ratify a law passed in parliament that would make 17 the minimum marriage age.

Youssef died on arrival at a rural hospital in Yemen's Al Hodeida province after several days of difficult labor, according to the Yemeni child rights association Seyaj.

Youssef, the oldest of four children, was just 11 when her ailing father pulled her out of school and married her to a man twice her age, 25-year-old Youssef Ghrad, Seyaj director Ahmed Qorashi told The Times.

Qorashi said early marriages are not uncommon in poor families such as the Youssefs, who probably did not think they were doing anything wrong. The family's poverty may also explain why the girl was not taken sooner to the hospital, which was 10 miles from where she lived.

[Updated, 12:30 p.m., The Yemeni embassy in Washington sent an email lamenting Fawiziya's death.

"We were profoundly saddened to hear the news of the death of the young Yemeni girl, Fawziya Abdullah Yousef (age 12)," said the email by Mohammed Albasha, spokesman for the Embassy. 

He said President Ali Abdullah Saleh tried to amend the marriage law to raise the minimum age to 17 but was thwarted by conservative lawmakers.  But he vowed that the government would soon pass legislation to raise the marriage age. 

"It is deemed an important priority of the government," he wrote.] 

IRAN: Mehdi Karroubi refuses to back down from rape allegations

He's been threatened with imminent arrest, called a liar and an enemy of the state.

But 72-year-old Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi shows no signs whatsoever of backing down from his claim that security forces brutally raped protesters swept up in weeks of unrest following the elections.

Instead of quieting down in the face of a relentless call by hardliners for his arrest and the issuance of a government report denying his explosive allegation of rape, Karroubi responded today with more detailed allegations and accused the government of a coverrup. 

"I wish I were not alive to hear a citizen of the Islamic Republic come to me and recount his story of having been subject to improper and heinous acts by unknown individuals in deserted buildings," he said in the letter on his new website, Tagheer.ir, launched after his newspaper and old website were shut down by authorities. 

"[The detainees] were stripped and seated face-to-face, insulted impudently, urinated upon and abandoned blindfolded with hands tied behind their backs in deserts," he wrote. 'That's not all. Young boys and girls were raped in detention centers."