Note to the West: This is what lies at the bottom of the slippery slope of any special legal status afforded Islam and Muslims with respect to freedom of speech and expression. From Agence France-Presse:
TEHRAN: Iran on Tuesday handed down jail sentences of at least two years each to three students imprisoned since May on charges of insulting Islam, the Mehr news agency reported.
The three students from Tehran's Amir Kabir University - Ehsan Mansouri, Majid Tavakoli and Ahmad Ghassaban - were among eight arrested on suspicion of publishing anti-Islamic images in four student reformist newspapers.
"The verdicts for the accused Amir Kabir students were issued today," their lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah said, according to the Mehr news agency.
"Ehsan Mansouri has been sentenced to two years in prison, Majid Tavakoli to three years and Ahmad Ghassaban to two-and-a-half years," he said.
Dadkhah,who is a member of Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi's group of human rights defenders, said that it was not clear whether the sentences issued by Tehran's revolutionary court meant prison or suspended terms.
The other five arrested have since been released, but this trio has been detained since May with the authorities saying they have not been freed because of the gravity of the charges against them.
Dadkhah vowed to appeal against the verdicts.
In August, Mansouri's mother publicly accused the authorities of torturing the young men at Tehran's Evin prison in an effort to obtain confessions. The judiciary insists that torture is not used in Iran.
Amir Kabir University has long been a hotbed of student activism, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the target of heckling in a stormy address to the university last year.
'The judiciary insists that torture is not used in Iran."
........ANYONE who believes that can go stand on their head in the corner for a while....
It would be QUITE a while exsgtbrown I think.
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate/hell.html
"Islamic hell-torture chamber for unbelievers"
http://www.derafsh-kaviyani.com/english/unbel.html
Beyond belief.
WARNING : DISTURBING IMAGES
http://images.google.co.in/images?hl=en&q=muslim%20atrocities&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
More DISTURBING IMAGES :
http://images.google.co.in/images?hl=en&q=muslim%20torture&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Islam insults me daily.
Who do I sue?
Just how does one "insult" Islam? It's a religion that sanctions lying, cheating, oath-breaking, child molesting, wife-beating, theft, piracy, torture, and murder. One doesn't insult Islam, Islam IS the insult.
exsgtbrown wrote:
'The judiciary insists that torture is not used in Iran."
........ANYONE who believes that can go stand on their head in the corner for a while....
------------------------------------------------
Gay people do not exist in Iran, either!
Islam, the biggest "Bag over the head, punch in the face" to humanity of all time.
In Turkey they jail people for insulting Attaturk!
"Dadkhah,who is a member of Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi's group of human rights defenders..."
-- from the article above
Shirin Ebadi herself has been quick to deflect attention away from Islam, whenever she senses that non-Muslims are connecting the mistreatment of women (Ebadi's special interest) to Islam itself. Iranian exiles have been rightly critical of her. Possibly she will be able to move beyond her filial piety to Islam, or at least stop being a Defender of the Faith even as she remains critical of the "excesses" that characterize the Islamic Republic of Iran. Or possibly, and more likely -- not.
Only 2 years for insulting Islam? That's liberal compared to the UK! Nick Griffin was facing 7 years for describing islam as a "vile ideology" at his trial a couple of years ago.
Fortunately for free speech, he was found not guilty, much to the disappointment of the ruling Labour party.
"There is no complusion in religion."
How there is absolutely ***NO*** torture in Evin Prison.
DOCTOR REVEALS WHAT HAPPENED TO CANADIAN ZAHRA KAZEMI IN IRAN
By ARNE RUTH AND HAIDEH DARAGAHI
Page A1
STOCKHOLM - Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was savagely beaten, tortured and raped while in Iranian custody in 2003, according to an emergency-room doctor who examined her before she died.
The doctor has recently received political asylum in Canada.
Shahram Azam, formerly a physician on the staff of the Iranian Ministry of Defence, says he examined Ms. Kazemi, a 54-year-old Iranian-born dual citizen, at Tehran's Baghiattulah hospital early on the morning of June 27, 2003 -- four days after she was arrested while photographing a demonstration outside Tehran's Evin prison.
His account of Ms. Kazemi's condition in the days before her death, the first by a medical eye witness, confirms that she was tortured -- far more brutally than even critics of Iran's hard-line theocratic regime had believed.
"Her entire body carried strange marks of violence," Dr. Azam said. "She had a big bruise on the right side of her forehead stretching down to the ear. The ear drum was intact, but the membrane in one of her ears had recently burst, and a loose blood vessel could be seen. Behind the head, on the left-hand side, was a big, loose swelling. Three deep scratches behind her neck looked like the result of nails digging into the flesh. The right shoulder was bruised, and on the left hand two fingers were broken. Three fingers had broken nails or no nails."
Dr. Azam's account of his examination, which he intends to describe at a press conference in Ottawa today, goes on to describe severe abdominal bruising, "stretching over the thigh down to the knees." Though male doctors in Iran are not allowed to carry out vaginal exams, Dr. Azam's emergency-room nurse thoroughly examined Ms. Kazemi and found the bruising to be the result of "a very brutal rape."
The nurse told him that "the entire genital area had been damaged," Dr. Azam said.
There was also evidence Ms. Kazemi had been whipped.
"The backs of both legs where the skin had come off indicated flogging, five marks on one leg and seven on the other. The big toe on the left leg was crushed," he said.
Though senior Iranian officials have at various times acknowledged that Ms. Kazemi was murdered by state security officers -- Iran's ambassador to the United Kingdom said as much in February, but later retracted his remarks -- the official Iranian position is that Ms. Kazemi died after she fainted, fell and hit her head.
Canada has tried to pressure the Iranian regime, without visible success, into reopening the case. Canada's ambassador to Iran was withdrawn last July, after a lower-level Iranian official was acquitted in a brief trial that was widely viewed as a sham. A new ambassador was sent to Tehran in November.
Dr. Azam fled Iran last August under the guise of seeking medical treatment in Finland. He later went to Sweden and from there applied for political asylum in Canada. This month he received landed-immigrant status as a refugee sponsored by the Canadian government.
He, his wife and 12-year-old daughter landed in Canada on Monday. For security reasons, he has not revealed where in the country they intend to settle.
Dr. Azam wants to testify to what he saw in a public hearing, he said, in hopes that the truth about Ms. Kazemi's death will renew worldwide attention on her case, and ultimately lead to the "indictment" of Iran's Islamic Republic.
***
What the doctor found:
"Her entire body carried strange marks of violence."
-Tehran ER physician Shahram Azam
*Bruised from forehead to ear
*Skull fracture
*Two broken fingers
*Broken and missing fingernails
*Severe abdominal bruising
*Evidence of 'very brutal rape'
*Swelling behind the head
*Burst ear membrane
*Bruised shoulder
*Deep scratches on the neck
*Broken 'nose-bone'
*Evidence of flogging to the legs
*Crushed big toe
What the Iranians said:
'The death of the late Kazemi was an accident due to a fall in blood pressure resulting from hunger strike and her fall on the ground while standing.'
-Iranian judicial branch, July 28, 2004
'The judiciary insists that torture is not used in Iran."
And according to old Armanidinnerjacket they have no homosexuals either. Admittedly that's because they have murdered them all. But still.
It's just amazing that people still act like this in the 21st century.
The work of God? I don't think so.