Iran sets up special unit to monitor political websites

The head of the unit, Col Mehrdad Omidi, said it would target political “insults and the spreading of lies”. Most opposition websites are already banned, especially those linked to the defeated presidential candidates from Iran’s disputed June elections. More here.

US seeks seizure of mosques from Islamic foundation alleged to be Iran front

[JURIST] The US government on Thursday amended a complaint against Islamic charity the Alavi Foundation  to include a request for the seizure of assets, including four mosques, claiming that the organization is actually controlled by the Iranian government. The amended complaint, originally filed in 2008, alleges that Alavi is funneling assets to fund Iran’s nuclear [...]

EChR non-refoulement case of Abdolkhani and Karimnia v. Turkey

The court ruled that two ex-members of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation (PMOI), who were both recognised as refugees by UNHCR when they left Iran for Iraq to live in a PMOI camp. Discontent with the organisation’s goals and methods, they left and entered a refugee camp set up by the United States forces in Iraq. [...]

Internet filtering in the Middle East and North Africa

The Open Net initiative just released it’s 2008-2009 report on filtering trends across the Middle East and North Africa. Overall, there has been an increase in filtering practices since 2007, and further measures to monitor Internet activities, particularly in Internet cafés, have been introduced. Additionally, countries that have been filtering political content continue to add [...]

Iranian Acknowledges Torture of Some Protesters

Qorbanali Dori-Najafabadi, the prosecutor general of Iran, acknowledged Saturday that some detainees arrested after post-election protests had been tortured in Iranian prisons, the first such acknowledgment by a senior Iranian official, the New York Times reports. Najafabadi called for those responsible for mistreating detainees to be punished, saying that the protesters weren’t even meant to [...]

Khamenei orders closure of notorious detention center

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered the closure of Tehran’s Kahrizak detention center to be closed because of “illegal pressures on some detainees of the postelection unrest,” IRNA reported.  It is not clear how many detainees are still in the jail, whether they were arrested in the post-election protests, or whether they will [...]

US Senate approves funds to thwart Iran web censors

The U.S. Senate has authorized up to $50 million to help Iranians evade their government’s attempts to censor the Internet and to pressure foreign corporations not to help Iran clamp down on communication.The $50 million in the Senate bill was not in the House version and will have to be worked out in negotiations between [...]

Iran implements controversial Internet data retention law

[JURIST] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has implemented a law requiring the country’s Internet service providers to retain records of users’ incoming and outgoing data for at least three months, according to a report by the state-run PressTV news agency. The government said the law is designed to help catch those who illegally steal others’ personal [...]

Amnesty issues lists of detainees in Iranian custody

Following the mass arrests of demonstrators and opposition activists in Iran over recent weeks in connection with the disputed presidential election, Amnesty International has compiled a list of the names or identities of 368 people arrested since 12 June.

Iraqi commentators: Saudi Arabia is behind terrorist attacks in Iraq

As terrorism in Iraq increased in the lead-up to the June 30, 2009 U.S. withdrawal from Iraq’s cities, official Iraqi sources began to openly accuse Saudi Arabia of aiding terrorism in Iraq in order to prevent the withdrawal. Hadi Al-Ameri, chairman of Iraq’s parliamentary Security and Defense Committee, accused Saudi Arabia of heading a group [...]