13May/08

Iran’s Suicide Registration Service

Iran, Middle East, , , , ,

By Nir Boms
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 6, 2004

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are usually associated with humanitarian relief and peaceful advocacy work.  As such, it is not everyday that an NGO is in charge of recruiting “suicide volunteers” to dispatch overseas to strike at “world arrogance.”

Yet that was precisely the case at a three-day conference in June sponsored by the Iranian government and its state-financed “Committee for Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement,” which the mullahs bill as an NGO.

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13May/08

Dissident Graveyard

Human Rights, Iran, Middle East, ,

Khatami’s “vision.”

May 04, 2004, 8:26 a.m.

By Nir Boms & Erick Stakelbeck

“I never said that we have no political prisoners. We have them, and that is incontestable. They have been jailed for what they believe in.”

With this admission, made during an April 27 event marking Iran’s “National Youth Day,” Iranian President Mohammed Khatami merely acknowledged what the rest of the world has known for the past 25 years: The Islamic Republic is a graveyard for political dissidents.

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13May/08

Iranian Justice

Iran, Islam and Democracy, , , ,

August 4, 2004

By Nir Boms and Reza Bulorchi

It is not often that legal rulings in other countries make headlines in the United States. But two recent verdicts in Iran have made activists in the U.S. and around the world take notice.

Last week, Hashem Aghajari, who was previously sentenced to death by the Iranian Supreme Court, received a five-year prison sentence following appeals and a rare intervention that came directly from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Continue reading →

13May/08

Facing the Iranian Elections

Iran, Islam and Democracy, ,

By Nir Boms and Elliot Chodoff
June 16, 2005

While Iran continues to play an ongoing nuclear ping-pong match with the European Union, risking the nuclear stability of the Middle East and a possible showdown with the West, it is also eagerly preparing for its upcoming elections Friday. Carrying the flag of Islamic democracy, the “rule of law,” progress and change, Iran is attempting to compete in two worlds simultaneously as it hopes to emerge victorious in both.

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