Iran

It didn't take much for Iranian courts to sentence 10 people to death over the country's post-election turmoil. For one prisoner, the main evidence was that he allegedly sent videos of protests abroad. The government accuses the 10 of leading unrest after the disputed presidential election, but none of them seem to have played any significant role in the protest movement. What most of the prisoners have in common is tenuous past links to a much-disliked exile movement, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization.

For years, not only in Muslim countries but also in the West, the debate over a woman’s right to veil has been recognized as a complex issue. In the last week of April 2010, two simultaneous discussions about veiling took place in two different locations across the world. In Belgium, the parliament put to vote a law banning women from wearing burqas in public spaces. In Iran, government officials announced their plans for further expansion and enforcement of both veiling and chastity laws. Based on the law in Belgium, if a woman covers her entire body, including her face, she will be fined the amount of 15-25 Euros – or imprisoned for one to seven days. Based on Iran’s plan of action regarding the expansion of veiling and chastity, governmental entities are required to create further restrictions and limitations around issues of veiling and gender segregation within every public space.

La Française qui était détenue à Téhéran depuis juillet 2009 est rentrée à Paris hier. Une libération activement revendiquée par Me Abdoulaye Wade et sa diplomatie. L’universitaire française Clotilde Reiss a été libérée samedi dernier par Téhéran. Accusée d’espionnage, la Française a été arrêtée le 1er juillet 2009, dans la capitale iranienne. Il lui était reproché d’avoir filmé des sites classés sensibles et des scènes de manifestations lors des contestations électorales du 12 juin dernier. Dans les colonnes du journal Le Monde, le Président Abdoulaye Wade accuse cependant indirectement la France d’avoir retardé une libération qui était possible il y a six mois.

A French teaching assistant whom the Iranian regime accused of spying for the west said she was "very, very happy" to be back on home turf today after a Tehran court commuted a prison sentence that had kept her in Iran for 10 months. Making a brief but emotional statement at the Elysée palace, Clotilde Reiss, 24, thanked various French and Iranian figures – including the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy – for supporting her through the ordeal and securing her release.