Iran-Canada Controversial Football Friendly In Limbo

The Iranian Red Crescent has reported eleven deaths and warned about the collapse of the rest of the building. So far 39 have been pulled from the rubble alive. Rescue operations cintinued Tuesday as there were as many as 50 people buried under the rubble. Three rescue workers were injured on Tuesday when another part of the building collapsed.

Saeed Hafezi, a journalist and whistle-blower, claims that Hossein Abdolbaghi, owner of one of the ten-story Metropol twin towers which collapsed Monday, was seen leaving the building half an hour before it collapsed, and authorities are lying about his death in the accident. Hafezi says he has personally spoken to a witness.

Radio Goosheh Kenar, a local internet radio station run by Hafezi, on Tuesday published an audio file sent by a man claiming to be an employee of the Abadan coroner’s office who claims officials of the coroner’s office were pressured by unidentified authorities to issue a death certificate in Abdolbaghi’s name for an unidentifiable body they brought in. The man whose voice was altered in the recording says the coroner’s office has so far not relented to outside pressure and declined to issue a death certificate.

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Initially, suspicions arose right after the collapse of the building on Monday when media, including the official news agency (IRNA), reported Abdolbaghi’s arrest but on Tuesday prosecutor general of Khuzestan province, Sadegh Jafari-Chegeni, told the judiciary’s news agency, Mizan News, that he died in the incident. Abdolbaghi’s identity papers were discovered on a very badly damaged and unidentifiable body in the rubble, he said, and the body was eventually identified as belonging to him, officials claimed, without saying who made the identification.

A photo taken from CCTV footage in the area has also been circulating on social media allegedly showing Abdolbaghi running away after the incident. Dariush Memar, a journalist currently residing in London, in a tweet Monday said he had met Abdolbaghi in Iran many times and he can confirm that the man in the photo is highly likely to be him, “unless a photo of his body is shown at the coroner’s office by the justice department of Abadan.”

Abdolbaghi, 40, is a well-known entrepreneur in Khuzestan with alleged strong connections with influential officials and centers of power. In 2018 the ministry of industries, mines and trade named him as the top entrepreneur of the Arvand Free Zone in Khuzestan.

In an article published in August 2020 in Feydus, an Iranian news website, Memar accused Abdolbaghi of corruption. “His formula for amassing wealth, like many others in Iran today, is very simple: Clever management of connections and opportunities based on rente.” ‘Rente’ is a French word used in Persian to imply privileges resulting from undue influence.

He also had close connections with the police and security forces who once gave an award.

The head of Iran’s Construction Engineering Organization, Hamzeh Shakib, on Monday said adding three extra stories to the original plan built illegally had caused the tragedy of the building’s collapse. He also said the organization had several times reported critical faults in the construction of the building, including in their most recent report, but the municipality of Abadan which was responsible for stopping the construction ignored the warnings.

Authorities say they have arrested ten officials including the current mayor of Abadan and two former mayors, for negligence leading to the tragedy of the building’s collapse.

Mirani said during a live television show Tuesday they should be “tracked” so as not to be allowed back to Iran to take up managerial positions. He drew a parallel with the 1980-88 war with Iraq, saying that no Iranian official would have allowed family members to live with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president, comparing him as an enemy with the West. Mirian suggested that what amounted to an exodus of these Iranians resulted from a weak commitment to revolutionary ideology.

A figure of 5,000 “descendants” of senior officials living abroad was cited in 2020 by Mohammad Gharazi, communications minister between 1985 and 1997 who was at the time considered a presidential hopeful. In November 2021, Alireza Salimi, a member of parliament, suggested that officials from the previous administration, under President Hassan Rouhani, including deputy ministers had moved to Europe due to fears they would be banned from leaving the country.

In 2019, Brian Hook, special representative for Iran (from 2018 to 2020) under President Donald Trump told Iran International that “children of Islamic Republic officials live rich and comfortable lives in the United States and other countries while Iranian people live in terrible conditions.” Hook said this showed “the regime’s hypocrisy.”

Sunni power Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran, which are locked in proxy conflicts across the Middle East, have held five rounds of talks hosted by Baghdad.

"We have made some progress but not enough," Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told a World Economic Forum panel. “Our hands are stretched out.”

"We continue to encourage our neighbors in Iran to lean into what can be a very, very important sea change in our region," he said, adding that a "new era of cooperation" could deliver benefits for all.

Saudi Arabia and Iran, which severed ties in 2016, launched direct talks last year as global powers moved to salvage a 2015 nuclear pact with Iran, which Gulf Arab states had seen as flawed for not addressing regional security concerns.

The nuclear talks have been on hold since March.

Prince Faisal said if a deal is reached it would "be potentially a good thing if it's a good deal" and reiterated Riyadh's stance that Tehran's regional activities should be addressed.

Asked whether Riyadh was pleased by elections in Lebanon in which Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies lost their parliamentary majority, the prince said: "This may be a positive step, but it's too early to tell."

Report by Reuters

The 66-page report, published Tuesday, found Iran executed at least 314 people in 2021, a 28 percent jump from at least 246 in 2020 and the highest figure since 2017. Amnesty drew attention to Iran’s “mandatory death penalty for possession of certain types and qualities of drugs,” with drug-related executions making up 132, or 42 percent, of all Iran’s executions in 2021, up from 23 in 2020.

The Amnesty report, Death Sentences and Executions 2021, also noted Iran’s execution of three people under 18 at the time of their offense, “contrary to international law,” and to the execution of 14 women, up from nine in 2021.

The global figures given in the report are for confirmed executions based on official records, media reports and evidence from families and civil-society organizations. Amnesty notes that no reliable data is available for China, North Korea, Belarus, and Laos. The report suggests that thousands were executed in China, “the world’s lead executioner.”

At 314 Iran was easily responsible for the highest number of confirmed executions, followed by Egypt with 83 (down from 107 in 2020), Saudi Arabia with 65 (up from 27), and Syria on 24. The US executed 11, Japan three and the United Arab Emirates one.

Instrument of state repression

Globally, the number of confirmed executions rose from 483 in 2020 to 579 in 2021, with the number of known death sentences meted out jumping almost 40 percent from 1,477 in 2020 to 2,052 in 2021.The reports relates this increase to both a general return to the use of the death penalty with the easing of the Covid-19 pandemic and “as a clear instrument of state repression against minorities and protesters.”

As well as highlighting torture and unfair trials by emergency courts in Egypt and the “deeply flawed justice system” in Saudi Arabia, Amnesty says that in Iran “death sentences were disproportionately used against members of ethnic minorities for vague charges such as ‘enmity against God’.” It points out that 19 percent of those executed (61) in Iran were Baluchi, an ethnic minority making up 5 percent of the population.

Globally, Amnesty finds at least 28,670 people under sentence of death at the end of 2021, including 8,000 in Iraq despite a fall in executions from 45 in 2020 to 17 in 2021. But the overall trend, at least on confirmed figures and outside certain states, confirms a long-term reduced use of capital punishment: the global figure of 573 is the second-lowest, after 2020, recorded by Amnesty since 2010.

‘A troubling enthusiasm’

“Instead of building on the opportunities presented by hiatuses in 2020, a minority of states demonstrated a troubling enthusiasm to choose the death penalty over effective solutions to crime, showing a callous disregard for the right to life even amid urgent and ongoing global human rights crises,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“After the drop in their execution totals in 2020, Iran and Saudi Arabia once again ramped up their use of the death penalty last year, including by shamelessly violating prohibitions put in place under international human rights law.”

Amnesty opposes the death penalty in all circumstances.

In his first press conference in post, Setayeshi ruled out exchanging Djalali with another prisoner and any link between the Djalali case and Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian official on trial in Sweden over his alleged role in a wave of prison executions in 1988.

As well as calls for Djalali’s release from Sweden and the European Union, there has been speculation over a possible prisoner swap, but in early May, ISNA news agency suggested Djalali would be executed by May 21.

Setayeshi said that Nouri had been charged under influence from the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Most of those executed in 1988 were MEK members or sympathizers, and some trial sessions have been held in Albania, where the MEK is based. Sweden arrested Nouri in 2019 as he arrived at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport on holiday and has prosecuted him under principles of universal justice.

Setayeshi also addressed the case of Assadollah Assadi, who was jailed February for 20 years for planning a bombing of an MEK gathering in France in 2018. The spokesman said Assadi’s arrest, prosecution and sentencing were not legal, and called for his release.

Djalali was arrested while visiting Iran in 2016 and sentenced on espionage charges. Amnesty International recently called him a “pawn in a cruel political game” as Iran escalated “their threats to execute him in retaliation for their demands going unmet.”