Iran (original) (raw)

Sunday 10 November 2024

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In the middle of a Berlin hotel cafe, Masih Alinejad raises her voice and starts singing at the top of her lungs in Farsi, as waiters and her three German government bodyguards turn to watch.

“I blossom through my wounds and my scars,” she translates the lyrics as. “Because I am a woman. I am a woman. I am a woman.”

Alinejad was expressing her defiance and asserting her right to express herself following the news of Iranian murder-for-hire plots to kill her and Donald Trump that were disclosed by the U.S. Justice Department. She said that some Iranian women had been jailed for singing.

The Iranian American human rights activist, who was in Berlin on Saturday to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall together with other human rights activists from around the globe, told The Associated Press in an interview that despite the shock of the news, she felt more determination than ever to continue fighting for women's rights in Iran.

“They want to get rid of me. When they want me dead, it means that I’m doing something. I’m hurting them so bad," said Alinejad, 48, referring to the Iranian government. “I’m echoing the voice of powerful women and that scares them.”

She raised her hand in a defiant fist repeatedly during the interview.

On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department said that it was charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before this week’s election with planning the assassination of Trump.

Investigators were told of the plan by Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in American prisons for robbery and who authorities say maintains a network of criminal associates enlisted by Tehran for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots.

Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran. Two other men — identified as Jonathan Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera by the U.S. Justice Department — were arrested on charges that Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill Alinejad, who has endured multiple Iranian murder-for-hire plots foiled by law enforcement.

The Justice Department alleges that the two men spent months conducting surveillance on her and, during their efforts to locate and kill her, shared messages about their progress and photographs.

Around February, they traveled to Fairfield University in the U.S. state of Connecticut, where Alinejad was scheduled to appear, and took photos of the campus.

Around April, Shakeri sent Rivera a series of voice notes discussing their efforts to locate and kill her, the Justice Department said in a statement Friday.

In one voice note, Shakeri told Rivera that “you gotta wait and have patience to catch her either going in the house or coming out or following her out somewhere and taking care of it,” the statement said.

“It’s scary. But at the same time, I was very pleased that the U.S. law enforcement is protecting me,” Alinejad said, recounting her call with American security officials.

“The same person who was trying to kill President Trump was assigned to kill me as well. I mean, that’s a badge of honor.”

In Tehran, Esmail Baghaei, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, rejected the report and called it a plot by Israel-linked circles to make Iran-U.S. relations more complicated, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Alinejad is a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that critically view Iran, and she has worked as a contractor for U.S.-funded Voice of America’s Farsi-language network since 2015. She fled Iran following the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election and became a U.S. citizen in October 2019.

Alinejad accused the Iranian government of continuing to oppress women in Iran and make them wear the mandatory headscarf, or hijab, even two years after the death of Mahsa Amini that sparked weekslong mass protests.

The fact that the Iranian government has repeatedly tried to kill her, she said, "makes me more determined to give voice to powerful women inside Iran who are facing the same killers every single day.”

TEHRAN, IRAN —

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused Germany of defending a "terrorist" after the death in Iran of Jamshid Sharmahd, a dual national sentenced to execution, which triggered condemnation from Berlin.

Iran on October 28 announced the execution of Sharmahd, 69, but eight days later the judiciary spokesperson said Sharmahd had died before the "imminent" execution could be carried out, implying natural causes.

After the initial execution announcement, Berlin recalled its ambassador to Iran and closed three Iranian consulates in Germany. That in turn triggered what Iran called a "strong protest" to the German charge d'affaires, who was summoned.

"I regret that this is straining German-Iranian relations, and I wish I could have prevented it," Araghchi said in an interview published Friday by the German weekly Der Spiegel.

"But to do that, the German government would have had to cooperate and communicate that this is a terrorist, instead of defending someone who has trampled all humanitarian standards underfoot," he said, according to Spiegel's English edition published online.

Earlier this week, Germany's Foreign Ministry, reacting to the official's comment about Sharmahd’s passing, said, “His death was confirmed to us by the Iranian side.

“Jamshid Sharmahd was abducted by Iran and held for years without a fair trial, in inhumane conditions and without the necessary medical care," the ministry said. “Iran is responsible for his death."

Germany added it was "lobbying the Iranian government to hand over his body to his family.”

Iran, which does not recognize dual citizenship, announced Sharmahd's arrest after a "complex operation," without specifying when, where or how he was detained.

His family said he was seized by Iranian authorities in 2020 while traveling through the United Arab Emirates.

Iran sentenced Sharmahd to death for his involvement in an April 2008 bombing of a mosque in Shiraz, in the south of the country, which killed 14 people and wounded about 300.

Sharmahd was also accused of leading the Tondar group, which aims to topple the Islamic Republic. Iran classes it as a terrorist organization.

Jamshid Sharmahd's daughter has told AFP that she and her family "do not trust anything" Iran says about the circumstances of her father's death.

"If there is a corpse, he needs to be returned and brought back to us as soon as possible," Gazelle Sharmahd said.

Araghchi told Der Spiegel that, "If his family officially submits a request, we see no obstacles" to returning Jamshid Sharmahd's body.

"The question of whether he was executed or died of natural causes is beside the point," he said.

During the interview, Araghchi also censured what he called the Western "double standards" that he said failed to condemn Israel for its actions in the Gaza Strip, where its war with Hamas has led to tens of thousands of deaths.

"I am not calling Hamas, Hezbollah and others, 'proxies.' I call them freedom movements. Supporting them brings no benefits to Iran," which arms and finances Lebanon's Hezbollah and backs Hamas, Araghchi told the German publication.

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