Dinah Lord

Iran: Justice delayed is justice denied.

Iran hangs 3 Men held in bombing of Mosque. 

The blast took place on Thursday, the necktie party on Saturday.

Iran hanged three men on Saturday morning who were accused of being involved in a mosque bombing that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Two others were arrested and are being questioned in connection with the bombing, which took place Thursday in the southeastern city of Zahedan, the news agency said.

The Zahedan prosecutor, Muhammad Marzieh, said the three men were convicted of importing explosives from neighboring countries, taking two hostages in Zahedan, and taking part in a separate bombing against the security forces and the Revolutionary Guards a year ago, the INSA news agency reported.

“They said that they had eight other terrorist operations which they could no longer carry out because of their arrest,” Mr. Marzieh said.

A provincial judiciary official, Ibrahim Hamidi, said the men were arrested a few days before the bombing but all three confessed to providing the explosive, the IRNA news agency reported.

They were hanged at 6 a.m., before the funeral of the victims today.

In related "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb Iran news", The Iconoclast at the New English Review Journal brings us this:

From The Washington Post

Security personnel defused a homemade bomb found on an aircraft during a domestic flight in Iran late Saturday, Iranian media said, two days after a mosque bombing killed 25 people in the southeast of the country.

The device was defused after the Kish Air aircraft with 131 passengers on board made an emergency landing in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Fars gave no further details about the incident, which was also reported by other media.

According to the BBC

Plain-clothes security guards, who are believed to travel on every Iranian flight, found it in a toilet.

How Iran messed with Miss North Dakota's head.

They really are bastards over there, aren't they?

A snippet from Ms. Saberi's NPR interview courtesy of Gawker.

The government pressured her into a false confession; "The first few days, I was interrogated for several hours, from morning until evening, blindfolded, facing a wall, by up to four men, and threatened, as I said, that I would be put in prison for 10 to 20 years or more or even face execution." Later, she recanted it, and that pissed off her captors further:

The prosecutor got upset with me for recanting my confession and sent my case to trial instead of freeing me, and that's when I was sentenced to eight years in prison. I knew this was going to happen when I recanted my confession, but I told myself, I would rather tell the truth and stay in prison instead of telling lies to be free.

Welcome home, Ms. Saberi.

Iran: Coincidence? Has a senior Obama advisor traveled to Iran?

What timing.  And right on the heels of Miss North Dakota's release!  I wonder, did he bring his checkbook or will we just see the release of the Iranians held in Iraq in the near future?   Hmmm?

<--Nasr is the author of The Shia Revival, The Islamic Leviathan, Democracy in Iran, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama`at-i Islami of Pakistan, and Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism.

From Press TV:

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Vali Reza Nasr, a senior Obama administration advisor on Iran, has come to the Iranian capital of Tehran.  New reports claim that Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani and former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel may be behind the visit.

"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was informed well after Nasr entered the country," Tabnak reported on Wednesday.

Nasr, who was appointed as a senior advisor to Richard Holbrooke -- the special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan --, is the son of renowned Islamic philosopher and historian of science, Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Tabnak and Fararu claimed the alleged unannounced trip by the US official to be linked to the recent release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.  According to the reports, Saberi's appeals court had been postponed due to the fact that the visit by Nasr had not yet been confirmed.

There has been no official confirmation of whether Nasr is, in fact, in Tehran.

Of course not.

Iran: Miss North Dakota. Free at last.

The exact date of her return to the US has not been determined.

From the Daily Mail

American journalist Roxana Saberi said today she was very happy to be free and reunited with her parents and thanked those who helped win her release after four months in an Iranian prison.

Saberi, 32, walked free after an Iranian court overturned her eight-year jail sentence for spying.

She had been convicted of spying for the U.S. in Iran. But an Iranian appeal court cut the former Miss North Dakota's sentence to a suspended two-year term - a move welcomed by Barack Obama as a 'humanitarian gesture'.  (dolt.)

Can something good possible come out of this whole magilla?  Maybe.

Reporters Without Borders, which last month said Saberi's conviction was a warning to foreign journalists in Iran ahead of its presidential election in June, welcomed her release.

'The appeal court's decision to free her can be used as a legal precedent for other journalists currently detained in Iran,' the Paris-based media watchdog said. It said 14 journalists and bloggers were in detention.

Iran denies Western allegations that it is trying to stifle dissent. The government says it welcomes constructive criticism and upholds the principle of free speech.

How can the Obama admin consider Miss North Dakota's release to be a 'humanitarian gesture'

When it was the Iranian government that seized her and threw in jail on trumped up charges to begin with?

Although according to this report she had a classified document in her possession and horrors!  Had visited Israel four or five times.  Not only that, she was having sex with Iranian officials!  (Hmmm.  It couldn't have been this <---Iranian official, could it?  Nah!)

And what's this about her freedom coming about after Ahmadinejad sent a letter to the judges?

In the face of the outcry, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote to the country's judiciary chiefs, saying that she should be given full rights of defence and appeal.

Some Iranian websites yesterday credited Ahmadinejad's intervention with securing Saberi's release, but said Iran had lost out because it had failed in return to win the release of diplomats that the government says are being held by American forces in Iraq.

If Michael Ledeen is right, you can look for the release of the Iranian diplomats forthwith.

Iran: Miss North Dakota to be released?

That's what the BBC (and Hot Air) is reporting.

From BBC

An Iran court has cut jailed US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi's sentence to two years suspended and she will be freed later on Monday, her lawyer says.

The court heard Ms Saberi's appeal against her original eight-year prison sentence on Sunday, after an international outcry.

She will be able to leave the country, but has been banned from working as a journalist in Iran for five years.

Ms Saberi was convicted of spying for the US in April but denies the charge.

The case sparked international concern and US President Barack Obama has appealed on her behalf.

Her father Reza expressed joy at the ruling and said he and his wife Akiko were on the way to collect their daughter from the jail.  "We are very happy," he said, quoted by AFP news agency. "We heard the news half an hour ago, we are going to Evin prison to take her home."

Iran: Miss North Dakota's appeal heard. Lawyer 'optimistic'.

Could this be Miss North Dakota's mug shot?  -->

From Press TV:

After an appeal court heard the case of an American-Iranian journalist who is sentenced to eight years in jail for spying, her lawyer expresses optimism about the verdict.

"I am optimistic that fundamental changes would be made to the sentence," Roxana Saberi's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, was quoted by IRNA as saying on Sunday. "The verdict is to be issued this coming week."

Saberi, 32, is a freelance journalist who was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the government of the United States.

"The court session was held under good conditions and my colleague and I... were given adequate time to defend our client," the lawyer told reporters.

Before the court convened on Sunday, judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said that the verdict would be "fair and lawful."

According to this report, Ms. Saberi abandoned her hunger strike at the request of her parents who feared for her health and well being.

Miss North Dakota: Hospitalized briefly.

But the Iranians deny that she is on a hunger strike.

The American journalist on a hunger strike for two weeks to protest her imprisonment in Iran was briefly hospitalized after she intensified her fast by refusing to drink water, Reporters Without Borders said Monday.

The press freedom group said 32-year-old Roxana Saberi, accused by Iran of spying for the U.S., was taken Friday to a clinic at Tehran's Evin prison, where she has been held since her arrest in January. She was released from the clinic within a day after again drinking water, the group said.

And the Iranians don't like pesky reporters sticking their nose in Iranian business.

In Tehran on Monday, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman called for an end to what he called outside interference in the case from groups like Reporters Without Borders.

Four of the journalist group's members, including its secretary-general, began their own hunger strikes a week ago in support of Saberi, while urging her to end her own protest out of concern for her health.

Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi said the group's protest was not welcome.

"Iran's judiciary is an independent body and any foreign attempt to intervene in it goes against international measures," he told reporters in his weekly briefing. "This is not a complicated issue. This Iranian woman has been sentenced and should wait and see what verdict the appeals court will issue," he said.

I like that Reporters Without Borders is taking this to the UN.

Four US members of the press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, on Sunday started a hunger strike outside the United Nations headquarters in New York, to press for the release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.

Iranian denial:

The Iranian judiciary denies Saberi is on hunger strike and says she is in good health.

All righty then.

Must see: American Car day in Tehran.

Thank you FReeper nuconvert.  How sweet this is!  But hey, where are the chicks?  Oh that's right.  Muslimworld...chicks aren't seen or heard.

Many more great cars at the link.  Treat yourself.  (P.S. Chicks at slide 15)

USA: Hundreds rally for Miss North Dakota.

Well, today is World Press Freedom day and you'll be happy to know that Obama has issued a statement.  He even MENTIONED the three US reporters being held as hostages in Iran and N Korea and said he was 'especially concerned'!  Wow, that was big of him wasn't it?  (I am almost impressed.)

<--rally.

The Iranian Foreign minister announced that her sentence is under review, Ms. Saberi is still on her hunger strike and Hillary still has 'grave concerns'.

About yesterday's rally:

Hundreds of people supporting a U.S. journalist imprisoned in Iran have gathered for a vigil on a bridge connecting Fargo and Moorhead, Minn.

North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven said the rally Saturday at the Veterans Memorial Bridge recognizes Roxana Saberi's plight and asks that she and her family "be allowed to return home."

Saberi's father says the Fargo native went on a hunger strike after she was convicted of espionage in Iran and sentenced to prison last month. The trial was not made public and lasted one day. Her parents are in Iran trying to persuade the government to release her.

Concordia College president Pamela Jolicoeur says Saberi is an "inspiration." Saberi had been scheduled to speak at her alma mater's commencement this weekend.

And you'll be happy to know that a group of students are going to undertake a pseudo-hunger strike in support of Miss North Dakota.  (It's hard for me to get worked up about a fake hunger strike, kids.  IMO, if you mean it you should go for the real deal.)

Northwestern University students plan to be among 160 supporters of jailed Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi taking part in a hunger strike Sunday.

The fluids-only food boycott, staggered over 12 days with each volunteer taking a 24-hour shift, is being organized by FreeRoxana, a campaign organized by students, professors and alumni of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, Saberi's alma mater.

And this is just another reason why you don't ever want to become an American pawn in what is nothing but a high stakes game of diplomatic chicken.  Listen to what Representative Earl Pomeroy, DEM-ND has to say about getting her released.

Yet Pomeroy said officials must be careful to not let the situation threaten the tense relationship between the U.S. and Iran.

“We will not say anything that will somehow be fuel to a fire,” he said.

OH no, we musn't upset the Persian pipsqueak and his merry band of Mullahs!  (Or certifiable nut case Kimmy Jong Il.)  Not when an American life is at stake.  Feh.