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Iran furloughs imprisoned US Navy vet amid virus concerns

March 20.2020 – AP – By ERIC TUCKER- WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran has granted a medical furlough to a U.S. Navy veteran who has been imprisoned in for more than a year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Thursday.

Michael White of Imperial Beach, California, is now in the custody of the Swiss Embassy and must remain in Iran as a condition of his furlough, which was granted as the Islamic republic works to curb the spread of coronavirus. The U.S. government will seek his full release, Pompeo said, as he called on Iran to free other Americans who remain jailed there.

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Iran Must Embrace Religious Pluralism

New York Times – FEB. 10, 2014 – By CAMELIA ENTEKHABIFARD
Last March, I sublet my Manhattan apartment. A woman called Shireen answered my ad, and when she came to visit I was surprised to learn that, despite her traditionally Persian name, she was Indian. Mentioning this, Shireen replied, “But I am Persian! I’m Zoroastrian.”

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Asylum-seeker boat carrying 105 sinking off Australia

TENGRI News – Tuesday, 20.08.2013, A rescue operation was under way Tuesday after an asylum-seeker boat carrying 105 people began sinking north of Australia, two weeks away from an election where boatpeople are a key policy issue, AFP reports.
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Human Rights Council renews mandate of Iran Special Rapporteur with overwhelming majority

22 March 2013 – The United Nations Human Rights Council renewed today the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Mr Ahmed Shaheed, with an unprecedented majority.
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Human rights organisations call on Human Rights Council to renew Iran Special Rapporteur’s mandate

Amnesty International, Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Conectas Direitos Humanos, East and Horn of African Human Rights Defenders project (EHAHRDP),

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IRAN: United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention orders immediate release of Abdolfattah Soltani!

Paris-Geneva, February 6, 2013. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) has just concluded that the detention of lawyer and founding member of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC) Abdolfattah Soltani is arbitrary, and requested the Iranian Government to release him immediately.
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Human Rights Day 2012 – Reflecting on the Dire Circumstances of Lawyers in Iran

To claim that the Islamic legal system is not capable of integrating these scientific achievements and cannot arm itself with new weapons, is a catastrophe that must be averted with utmost vigilance and awareness…Behind the veil of legal words, there is a spirit which must be discovered and recognized and strived to achieve. Content must never be sacrificed for the sake of form and the end must not be sacrificed for the means…
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Iran: UN experts call for an independent and impartial investigation into the death in custody of a blogger

GENEVA (15 November 2012) – A group of United Nations experts today urged the Government of Iran to undertake a thorough, independent and impartial investigation of the death in custody of Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti, particularly the allegations of torture, and to make the result of such an investigation public.

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Iran: Political Prisoners Denied Visits, Care

Sakharov Prize-winner Sotoudeh’s Detention Highlights Denial of Basic Rights

(Paris, London, New York, October 31, 2012) – Iran’s judiciary and prison authorities should end mistreatment of the prominent rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi and six human rights organizations said today.

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Iran Should Return Bodies of Execution Victims, Giving Closure to the Families

“I recall the words Kak (brother) Farzad whispered in my ears in our last phone conversation: ‘human rights have no borders. We have to eliminate borders. This is our duty; me from within prison and you from outside’.”

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