Friday's Daily Briefing on Iran

DoctorZin reports, 7.29.2005:

Ganji Dying

Gooya News:

They are reporting Tehran's Prosecutor, Mortezavi, said that Ganji may not survive the night.

BBC Persian News:

Quoted Ganji's wife as saying her husband may be living his last days.

Iranian writers, please send us translated statements by Iranian leaders on Ganji's condition, here.

Here are a few other news items you may have missed.

• Muslim Wakeup reported that the International Committee in Support of Akbar Ganji, placed a full-page ad in the New York Times, appealing to the United Nations Secretary General to work for his immediate release.
• BBC News reported that the wife of journalist Akbar Ganji, says officials will not let her visit her husband, 49 days into a hunger strike, for giving interviews to foreign reporters.
• Reporters Without Borders today condemned what it called "the criminal attitude" of Iran's top leaders in refusing to release journalist Akbar Ganji, who has now been on hunger-strike for nearly 50 days.
• FrontPagMag has just published a series of news reports that have not made it to the English speaking world. Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzihas translated a series of recent Persian language news reports in this report. The stories were orginially published in Iran Press News. See below.
  
• Iran Press News reported that protestors attacked the offices of the 'Supreme Leader' Khamnei in that province of Khorveen.
• Iran Press Service reported that In Iran, under the watchful eye of the Mullahs, the age of prostitution has now been diminished to 10 years old.
• Iran Press News reported that an estimated 900,000 workers all around Iran are on perpetual strike.
• Iran Press News reported that in response to the stream of continued protests around Iran and clashes with protestors, the regime has begun installing suicide bombers around the various provinces in Iran.
• Iran Press News reported that the Islamic regime has now begun to imprison political detainees in prison wards where vicious murderers, rapists and felons are held.
• Iran Press News reported on the month-long clashes and strike in the Kurdish region.
• Iran Press News Iran's president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad's spiritual guide is also the brains behind recruiting suicide bombers.
• Iran Press News reported that Hashemi Rafsanjani continued his rant against the Supreme Leader, Khamnei saying If we fall victim to exclusion, expulsion and accusations and spin our wheels dealing with disorder, we will not only not progress but we will surely regress.
• Iran Press News reported that the Islamic judiciary, announced the arrest of several of the executives of the Oriental Kish Oil Company, which belongs to Rafsanjani's children and relatives.
• BBC News reported that Iranian officials have raided the home of a lawyer representing journalist Akbar Ganji.
• Amnesty International reported on dissident Akbar Mohammadi (m), aged 35, student activist (his brother) Manuchehr Mohammadi has reportedly gone into a coma having been on hunger strike since 6 July protesting his care in prison.
• The Jerusalem Post reported that a top State Department official informed Congress on Thursday that Iranian training personnel are helping Hizbullah fighters in Lebanon.
• Iranian.ws publishe a retrospective on Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980) on his reign on the occasion of the twenty fifth anniversary of his death.
• Yahoo News reported that the United States has concluded that Iran's president-elect was a leader of the movement behind the 1979 hostage crisis.
• Shirin Ebadi, Roozonline reminded the media that Akbar Ganji's perilous condition is just one distressing example of the dire state of Iran's political and ideological prisoners.
• Islamic Republic News Agency reported that a leading German lawmaker from the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Wednesday held talks with US President George W Bush on the latest developments in Iran's nuclear case.

And finally, photos from inside Iran.

• Iran Press News photos of tents in the streets of Tehran used to encourage the registration process of suicide bombers.
• Iran Press News photos of Iranian Kurd townspeople having closed their shops and left their offices and took to the street chanting anti-regime slogans.
• Roozonline and others have published the following photos of Ganji's supporters in front of the Milad Hospital. Many were arrested including eight young women.