Canada Says Day Of Reckoning Looming For Islamic Republic

In a post Saturday, Khatibi, 43, said that in the past three months he has been living in hiding and fear. “I was arrested and questioned for allegations made against me 90 days ago, charged and my case was handed over to a judge,” he wrote in Persian in his post which also included a message in English.

Khatibi said his “endless” interrogations came with verbal and physical violence and that after being freed he was assaulted in the street by plainclothes security forces who accused him of blasphemy. The actor said he received so many death threats by phone that he had to change his cellphone number. “I had to leave behind my career, my life, and everything that I had worked hard for all my life.”

The actor has had a stroke during this time and is suffering from panic attacks resulting from the violence he was subjected to, but he says he’s not telling his story to make people feel sorry for him.

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”I know and you know that this [revolution] will not stop and that the blood [that is being shed] will not be in vain,” he said while making a plea, presumably to people outside Iran, to be the voice of Iranian protesters and their“unique revolution”.

‏Over 312,000 “liked” Khatibi’s Instagram post within a day, his first since the very early day of the protests that swept across the country in late September. He has also reposted some of his Instagram stories which have been used as evidence against him. “I will talk about the details of what has happened when the time is right,” he said.

Khatibi is one of scores of celebrities who have been detained for sympathizing with protesters or criticism of the government. Around fifty filmmakers and actors of Iranian cinema are currently in detention.

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Only a week ago, Taraneh Alidoosti, one of Iran's most famous actors, was arrested at her home by security forces for defiantly posting a photo of herself without the compulsory veil and criticizing the death penalty. Over a million of her followers liked her post.

Alidoosti who introduced herself as “actor, translator, feminist, mom” in her social media bio, was holding a poster that read “Women, Life, Freedom”, the signature slogan of the protests or “revolution” as many prefer to say.

“Now sit and watch for the consequences of [your] blood-thirstiness,” she told regime authorities in protest to the execution of Mohsen Shekari, 23, who was hanged on December 8 in Tehran after a bogus trial.

“His name was Mohsen Shekari. Any international organization that witnesses this bloodshed but takes no action is a shame to humanity,” Alidoosti wrote.

A few days after Shekari’s execution, another young man, Majidreza Rahnavard, was hanged from a construction crane on a street in Mashhad while a hand-picked group of government officials and plainclothes security forces watched.

Instagram has deactivated Alidoosti’s account to prevent the authorities from accessing her private messages as it is a well-known fact that one of the first things that authorities do after arresting someone is demanding their email and social media account passwords to dig for information to use against the detainee and others.

“It’s official: Congress has passed the Masih Alinejad HUNT Act, imposing mandatory sanctions on Iranian officials responsible for ongoing suppression of basic human rights in Iran and identifying any foreign banks transacting with those sanctioned individuals,” Twitter account of Senate Banking Committee Republicans said on Saturday.

Its Ranking member is Pennsylvania’s Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who cosponsored the act with Maryland Democrat Senator Ben Cardin. The Masih Alinejad Harassment and Unlawful Targeting Act of 2021 or the Masih Alinejad HUNT Act of 2021 was introduced in the Senate in December 2021 after the New York-based journalist was the target of an Iranian plot to kidnap her and take her to Iran via Venezuela, according to US law enforcement. On July, a man armed with a loaded AK-47 was arrested outside the Brooklyn home of the Iranian dissident and women’s rights activist. A federal complaint said the man named Khalid Mehdiyev, 23, was found with the assault rifle, multiple high-capacity magazines and additional rounds of ammunition and a suitcase full of cash as well as two other different license plates when he was arrested after lurking in the area for two days.

This bill imposes sanctions on foreign persons (i.e., individuals or entities) that are acting on behalf of Iran's government and involved in the harassment of certain individuals, such as human rights activists.

The news about the adoption of the bill was announced on Christmas eve, December 24 when the US Congress is in recess. It is not clear when it was approved, unless if it was part of the omnibus budget bill that was passed right before the holidays.

The bill requires the Department of State to periodically report to Congress on the identities of foreign persons acting on behalf of the Islamic Republic regime that are knowingly responsible for or complicit in the surveillance, harassment, imprisonment, or killing of citizens of Iran or the United States. These can be individuals “who seek to expose corruption or illegal activity by Iranian government officials; obtain, defend, or promote internationally recognized human rights; or obtain, defend, or promote the rights and well-being of women, religious and ethnic minorities, and the LGBTQ community in Iran.”

The report must include foreign persons involved in such actions that occur inside or outside Iran, and then the US president must impose property-blocking sanctions on such person, as well as visa-blocking sanctions on the identified individuals.

The Department of the Treasury must also submit to Congress a report identifying any foreign financial institution that knowingly conducts a significant transaction with a person sanctioned under this bill. The Treasury may prohibit the opening or impose strict conditions on the maintaining of a US correspondent account by such a financial institution.

Dozens of Iranian journalists in other countries, including those working for BBC Persian TV and London-based Iran International TV, repeatedly complain about their own and their family members' harassment in Iran, and say they have been threatened by authorities about possible actions.

Iran executed in December 2020 Rouhollah Zam, editor of a social-media channel, after he was kidnapped in Iraq and convicted on security charges and televised confessions, without due process of law.

In an open letter Sunday, a number of academics living abroad stated that during the past 100 days of protests, more than 650 students have been kidnapped by the security and intelligence forces.

“It is a shame for the Science Ministry that 21 students have received sentences of up to five years in prison for participation in peaceful protests. Some students have also received sentences to be lashed. The sham trials of the students are held in a situation that the defendants do not even have access to lawyers,” reads the letter.

Many students have been banned from entering university campuses so quickly that it is not clear the life of how many students has been ruined, adds the letter.

The signatories have urged university officials to follow up on the situation of detainees and identify the people who have killed students during anti-government protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in mid-September.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) announced in its latest report that from September 16 until Tuesday, December 20, at least 506 protestors have been killed, of which at least 69 were minors.

While the Islamic Republic has not provided accurate figures of those detained, the watchdog went on to say that at least 18,457 protesters have been arrested including 652 students.

Reports from Tehran say people held rallies in Narmak and Tehranpars neighborhoods in the east chanting slogans against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

A group of others marched from Enghelab square in central Tehran towards City Theater Hall in Vali-e Asr avenue.

In the flashpoint neighborhood of Ekbatan in the west people once again chanted slogans against the clerics from their windows. More than 30 people have been arrested in the restive district of large, middle class apartment blocks.

There were also protests in other cities, including the religious city of Mashhad in the northeast, Sanandaj in western Iran and the port city of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf.

In Tehran a small team of protesters threw Molotov cocktails at a paramilitary Basij base, an act of defiance by young dissidents that has occurred numerous times in recent weeks.

Ashkan Khatibi, the famous Iranian actor, published a post on Instagram, saying he was summoned and interrogated by the security services.

He added that he has received multiple death threats on the phone for publishing posts in support of the popular protests.

Iranians in several European cities also held demonstrations to mark the hundredth day of the uprising, which is further fueled by executions and brutalities by the government.

In Copenhagen, protesters formed a human chain and chanted slogans to demand the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

Demonstrators in Istanbul also held a rally raising the pictures of those who were killed during the crackdown by the regime. They also chanted “Death to the Dictator” and “Death to Khamenei”.

Iranians living in Frankfurt, Germany also held a protest rally in the center of the city demanding to designate the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

A group of 43 members of the Social Democratic Party in the German Parliament this week demanded that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard – or IRGC --be designated as a terrorist group. The IRGC is the major force repressing dissidents and protests.

Lawmakers said, "A regime that defends its survival only by assassinating its own people has lost its legitimacy." Considering that other German parties such as Alliance 90/The Greens, and Free Democratic Party also seem to favor such a measure, it is possible that the IRGC will be blacklisted by Berlin and the European Union.

On Friday, Germany also suspended all export credits and investment guarantees for companies doing business with Iran as a measure against government’s harsh treatment of protesters.

In a statement Saturday, the Association of Qom Seminary Teachers urged the authorities to continue executions but use the amputation punishment to deter people from joining the protests instead of lenient punishments in the law such as exile.

The association (Jame’e Moddaresin-e Howzeh Elmiye-ye Qom) suggested that anyone who “instigates fear in society” -- supposedly by participation in anti-government protests -- is belligerent (mohareb) which in Iran's Sharia-based laws is punishable by death, crucifixion, severance of limbs, and/or exile.

Ayatollah Abbas Ka’abi, a member of the clerical group, said last week that despite normal practice in the case of murders where victims’ families can practice the “right to blood” – that is demand retribution in kind (death sentence), ‘blood money’, or forgive -- the “imam” of the society should punish a belligerent protester even if the family forgives the killer.

Another member, Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, said Friday that those who participate in the protests, whether this includes direct involvement in the killing of government forces or not, should be considered as belligerents and be found guilty of “corruption on earth.”

The clerics, who are loyal followers of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei and are regime insiders benefitting from power and perks, simply twisted a 1,400-year-old vague concept of a crime to fit the regime’s agenda against dissent.

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“The severing of fingers of one hand and toes of the opposite foot could be effective [as a deterrent punishment]” if a person “instigates fear in society, without the involvement of the [opposition] media and without urging others to follow suit,” the clerics of the powerful association suggested while arguing that the ‘exile’ option is too lenient to “prevent crime”.

Several Shiite religious scholars this month voiced their opposition to this interpretation of Islamic law, but the harsh approach is what the regime prefers.

They also stated that even if no killing is involved, a protester’s “crime” should be punished by death if they commit it with the “goal of causing fear and a sense of insecurity in the society and knowing that these actions would be publicized domestically and abroad.” Exile would be totally ineffective in such cases, they declared, because such actions tarnish Iran's image in the international community and bear other costs for the government.

The reference to the media and publicizing acts of protest is a reminder of the regime’s extreme sensitivity to media coverage of its repressive acts, particularly by television channels abroad that broadcast in Persian.

The Islamic Republic on December 8 hanged 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari after a secret Revolutionary Court trial. Four days later Majidreza Rahnavard, also 23, was hanged on a street in Mashhad in front of a hand-picked group of insiders to call it a “public hanging”. At least forty protesters are in risk of execution or death penalty sentences by courts in nearly all of which their rights, such as the right to due process, are grossly violated.

Besides intellectuals, politicians and activists in Iran, some high-ranking clerics and former officials such as the prominent scholar Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaqeq-Damad have also condemned protester executions or urged leniency.

A top Sunni cleric, Mowlavi Abdolhamid Esmail-Zehi, who leads the Sunni Friday congregation of Zahedan in the capital of the restive province of Sista-Baluchestan, argued this Friday that the death sentences passed on protesters were not religiously justifiable and warned about the consequences of such harsh punishments. “No ruler has such authority,” he said defiantly.

The international community including various rights organizations and activists, western officials, and politicians have also condemned the recent executions and urged the government to put an end to death sentences. In the past two weeks many European parliamentarians have also offered political sponsorship to detained protesters who are in imminent danger of execution or being sentenced to death.