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."

JORDAN: Indonesia to sue doctor for dumping sick maid outside a hospital

The Indonesian Embassy in Amman intends to sue a Jordanian doctor for allegedly abusing an Indonesian domestic worker at his home and then abandoning her outside a medical facility after she became ill with tuberculosis, the Jordan Times reported today.

Indonesian deputy envoy to Jordan Ari Wardhana told the paper that the victim, identified only as "Aminah," had not only been abused by her employer and his family, but also had been forced to work without pay since she arrived in Jordan in 2008.

“We are currently collecting information from the girl to file a lawsuit against the doctor," Wardhana said.

“We will take this matter to the Jordanian government," he added. "She is a human being and should have been treated in a better way."

Ahmad Armouti, president of the Jordan Medical Assn., said his organization will investigate the doctor, who has so far gone unnamed.

IRAN: Will U.N. sideline human rights concerns?

An Iranian American activist who obtained an advance copy of the United Nations high commissioner on human rights' statement about Iran is outraged, saying her planned remarks at a big meeting next week "fall well short" of conditions on the ground.

Trita Parsi, head of the Washington-based National Iranian American Council, said the U.N.'s top human rights montor, Navanethem Pillay (pictured at right), plans to give Iranian authorities a pass on their recent actions against dissidents and political protesters after Iran's disputed June 12 presidential election.

Here's Parsi's preview of Pillay's comments:

The recent elections in Iran and the subsequent protests over the result were a reminder of both the vitality of Iran’s civil society and political life, but also of the towering constraints that peaceful activism faces. I call on the government to release those detained for peaceful protest, to investigate reports of their ill-treatment, and to ensure respect for human rights.

Parsi said the South African's statement includes "no mention of government-sponsored violence, repression, show trials, who is responsible for those 'towering constraints.'"

IRAN: Authorities investigated victim instead of rape, opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi says

Instead of investigating allegations of guards raping detained protesters, Iranian authorities went door to door in one alleged victim's neighborhood trying to dig up dirt about him, one of Iran's leading opposition figures said. 

Barely 24 hours after he spoke to the Los Angeles Times' Ramin Mostaghim on Monday, authorities raided and shut down the prison abuse investigation office of Mehdi Karroubi, an Iranian opposition leader and politician who was profiled in a story published today.

Karroubi enraged Iran's conservative hard-liners when he began to publicly raise the issue of the abuse of detained protesters and dissidents during the recent weeks of unrest. 

Committees formed to investigate and collect information on those allegations came under attack during raids conducted this week. 

During the interview, Karroubi said he had submitted documents and introduced witnesses to a judiciary fact-finding commission. 

But authorities acknowledged only that they had received Karroubi's "remarks," as if he had just spouted off some opinions.

EGYPT: Police arrest 155 for failing to keep Ramadan fast

Egyptian newspapers and human rights activists announced that 155 people were detained by police forces in Aswan, southern Egypt, for publicly eating, drinking or smoking during daylight hours in the holy month of Ramadan.

Islam requires the faithful to adhere to a dawn to dusk fast during the lunar month of Ramadan.

However, many of those arrested said that the arrests were random. Some claimed they were actually fasting when they were rounded up by police. 

"I didn’t break my fast, I was just buying a bottle of juice for breakfast time when officers [took] me away," one of the detainees told Al Youm Al Sabee newspaper.

EGYPT: Authorities detain and deport American blogger

Egyptian authorities briefly detained an American journalist at Cairo International Airport on Thursday before barring him from entering the country, without stating a reason.

Travis Randall had been living in Cairo for the last 2 1/2 years, working as a freelance writer and an environmental consultant. He was stopped by authorities upon his return from the United States and was told that his name was on a list of people banned from entering Egypt.

The 27-year-old Denver native was taken to a cell where he spent 12 hours before being placed on a flight heading to London.

"It's pretty weird to be deported and no one gives you a reason. I'm basically going to stay in London and figure out what happened, figure out if [Egyptian authorities] could tell me why," Randall told reporters in London.

IRAN: Jailed former government official tells his story

A former government official in jail for nearly three months after Iran's disputed presidential election has given an account of his time in detention, speaking along the sidelines of a court appearance this week in Tehran. 

Just four years ago Abdollah Ramazanzadeh (right) was the official mouthpiece for the Iranian government, the equivalent of the White House spokesman, under the presidency of the moderate Mohammad Khatami.

But just hours after the June 12 election, Ramazanzadeh was forcibly arrested and locked up in prison. Now he's being held by the same government he once worked for. 

Despite gruelling interrogations, he has apparently refused to crack and deliver a televised confession, as have some of his allies.

At a court hearing on another matter Wednesday, he spoke to a reporter for the reformist Parlemannews.ir, which published his comments today. 

Here are excerpts:

After 80 days in custody, I still don’t know what I’m charged with. 

During this time, I’ve been cross-examined many times. In all interrogations, I was blindfolded and the interrogator was always behind me and I never saw his face. The interrogations began around 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. and continued up until  3 or 4 in the morning.

EGYPT: Governmental report says human rights have deteriorated

A report  by Egypt's National Council for Human Rights, or NCHR, said the state of human rights had deteriorated in the country over the last three years.

Among a number of critical issues raised in the council's report was the continued implementation of the emergency law since 1981, changes to the constitution, and the approval of a new anti-terror law that allows President Hosni Mubarak to order any suspect to stand trial before military and state security courts.

"We praised the government when it vowed to end the implementation of emergency rule in 2005,"  Hossam Badrawi, the head of the NCHR group, told The Times. "But rather than fulfilling their promise, they extended the law for two more years in 2008."

IRAN: Lawyer spent 10 weeks in prison 'for nothing'

On the 28th day of his detention inside Iran's Evin Prison, he was granted his first family visit. 

It was then that he found out that while he had been locked up, his sister had died in a car accident. 

Prison authorities offered to let Abdul-Fatah Soltani attend the mourning ceremony. 

There was just one condition. 

The famed human-rights lawyer had to promise that he wouldn't speak out to the media about his incarceration.

He rejected the offer, missing the chance to join his family to grieve for his sister. 

"I did not believe I had done anything wrong, so accepting their condition was against my belief and my principles," Soltani, now free, told The Times in an interview at his downtown office a few days ago. "Accepting their condition was a rubber stamp on my non-committed crime."

Instead he vowed to prison authorities that once he was out of prison, he would haul all of them into court, suing them for unjustly locking him up.