NYTimes: “Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares”

Michael Slackman has written a piece about the story of the alleged confessions by the Iranian reformists politicians in the New York Times today. Although, many of these prisoners have not contacted their families for more than two weeks, some of the ranking Iranian officials have claimed that they have confessed to their wrongdoings in the prison. It shows how those people are under a huge pressure. (Read the article here) Read more

Iran: Saberi is no spy

25Apr09 – The imprisonment of Roxana Saberi for ‘espionage’ is the act of a government obsessed with controlling the media, says Omid Memarian

American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was sentenced to eight years in Iran’s notorious and feared Evin prison last weekend. She had been arrested in January by Iranian authorities. Her family was initially told it was for buying a bottle of wine, illegal under the country’s Islamic laws. It later emerged she did not hold a valid press card, required by law and issued by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The charge was then changed to espionage, of which she was found guilty. Read more

Q&A: Islamophobia Alive and Well in the U.S.

BERKELEY, California, Apr 24 (IPS) - In an Apr. 6 address to the Turkish Parliament on the final day of his European trip, President Barack Obama praised Muslim Americans for “enriching the United States”.

However, according to Dr. Munir Jiwa, director of the Centre for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union of the University of California, Berkeley, “virulent Islamophobia” persists across the country.

Jiwa, who is also a professor of Islamic Studies, told IPS that among those who did not vote for Obama last November, there are even more anti-Muslims. “They think we have voted in someone who is, as they say, a ‘closet Muslim’, and they think that sometime, he will come out of the closet,” he said. Read more