Iran Focus has this report:
Tehran, Iran, Jul. 01 - Iranian authorities hanged six people in Tehran on Wednesday, state media reported.
All six were hanged in the morning, according to Esmatollah Jaberi, a judiciary official. The state-run news agency ISNA, which did not identify the six, said they were hanged in Tehran's Evin Prison. All six were accused of murder.
Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on bogus charges such as armed robbery and drug trafficking....
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has warned it would unleash its wrath on anyone breaking a government ban on demonstrations. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on 19 June rallied behind Ahmadinejad and demanded protestors stop their action.
Since Khamenei’s announcement, demonstrators have markedly directed their protests at the entirety of the clerical establishment, with chants of “death to Khamenei”.
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a ranking cleric, on Friday said, "Anyone who takes up arms to fight with the people is worthy of execution."Those who disturbed the peace and destroyed public property were "at war with God" and should be "mercilessly dealt with", Khatami said in a nationally televised sermon.
Evin Prison was built by the Shah’s regime as a modern security prison to house political dissidents, but it became the Islamic Republic’s most dreaded gulag and the site of thousands of political executions. Ward 209 is exclusively set aside for political prisoners.
And from the Jerusalem Post:
As the Iranian authorities warned the opposition on Tuesday that they would tolerate no further protests over the disputed June 12 presidential elections, a report emerged of the hangings of six supporters of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Speaking after Iran's top legislative body upheld the election victory of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sources in Iran told this reporter in a telephone interview that the hangings took place in the holy city of Mashhad on Monday. There was no independent confirmation of the report.
Underlining the climate of fear among direct and even indirect supporters of Mousavi's campaign for the election to be annulled, the sources also reported that a prominent cleric gave a speech to opposition protesters in Teheran earlier this week in which he publicly acknowledged that the very act of speaking at the gathering would likely cost him his life.
"Ayatollah Hadi Gafouri said that the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] never wanted [current supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei to succeed him. He even went to say that the Islamic republic died the day the Imam did," one source said.
This comment was left on my blog by a blogger from Tehran:
"Sitting here in Tehran, I feel even more useless.
My boyfriend and five other friends were arrested 5 days ago, midnight, at their homes. For 5 days we didn’t know if they were really arrested or were they hiding. The news is confirmed now. They were arrested.
The mere thought of them being tortured is crushing. I can’t sleep. I can’t think.
And there is nothing I can do. I don’t even know where they are.
Every night I sit in the dark wondering whether I’m next.
Wondering where he is sleeping tonight… Is he hurt? Is he getting anything to eat? Are they going to keep him for days? Months? Years?
What will happen to them?
I’ve heard of some families who were called in to collect the bodies of their loved ones.
I live here, and yet there is nothing I can do.
Walking the streets of Tehran for five hours…As if in a coma… looking around, i wondered why the shops were open, why people were going about their daily business, why nobody did anything to help my friends … but then, there is nothing we can do …
I shouldn’t mention his name anywhere, because they’d put him under more pressure if they assume that he is supported by people outside Iran.
It’s crazy!"
And here are some more of her unbearable cries for help:
http://antiutopia.wordpress.com/
Posted by: Noga | July 01, 2009 at 11:17 PM