Watchdog

Iran's leading reformist coalition has called for the release of prominent reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh, who was arrested last month over accusations of undermining national security.

In an open letter to the judiciary, Behzad Nabavi, head of the Reform of Iran coalition, called for Tajzadeh's case to be "examined in an open court session" by an "impartial" prosecutor. Nabavi urged the judiciary to release Tajzadeh "as soon as possible," according to the letter published in local media on August 20.

Tajzadeh, 65, "did nothing but express his opinions," the coalition said, adding that he has been held in "solitary confinement" since his arrest on July 8.

Tajzadeh -- who last year made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency as a reformist and "political prisoner for seven years" -- reportedly faces several charges, including conspiracy against national security and publishing lies to disturb public opinion.

A former deputy interior minister, Tajzadeh is a staunch critic of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

His trial began last week at a branch of Iran's Revolutionary Court. Tajzadeh declined to speak in court during the hearing after a request for him to talk one-on-one with his lawyer was rejected, the defense said.

Tajzadeh was arrested in 2009 during mass protests disputing the re-election of then President Mahmud Ahmadinejad that was contested by an opposition supporting reformist candidates Mehdi Karrubi and Mir Hossein Musavi.

In 2010, Tajzadeh was convicted of harming national security and propaganda against the state. He was released in 2016 after serving a seven-year sentence.

Since his release, Tajzadeh has often called on authorities to free Karrubi and Musavi who have been under house arrest for more than a decade.

Tajzadeh served as deputy interior minister under reformist former `president Mohammad Khatami, who held office from 1997 to 2005.

Based on reporting by AFP and jamaran.news

The U.S. State Department and the European Commission have criticized Russia over its treatment of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny on the second anniversary of Navalny’s near-fatal poisoning by a Soviet-era nerve agent and has called for his "immediate" release from custody.

In a statement on August 20, the State Department said the Kremlin “shamelessly imprisoned” Navalny on politically motivated charges, after a failed attempt by “officers of the Russian government” to assassinate him.

The State Department reiterated its condemnation of Russia’s use of a chemical weapon to poison a political opponent, and call on Moscow to fully declare and dismantle its chemical weapons program.

The statement also said since launching its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has escalated its crackdown on dissent and independent media in Russia, including through broad censorship laws carrying harsh prison sentences.

It said the Kremlin seeks to prevent the people of Russia from knowing about the atrocities its forces are inflicting on Ukrainian civilians, and also from learning about the Russian military casualties.

The statement said the State Department reaffirms its solidarity with all political prisoners in Russia, as well as the thousands of other courageous Russian citizens who, despite personal risk, confront the Kremlin’s lies with the truth.

Earlier, European Commission High Representative Josep Borrell expressed regret that Moscow has banned Navalny’s organizations in Russia as “extremist” and over its “continuous persecution and imprisonment of Mr. Navalny and his team members.”

Borrell called for Navalny’s immediate release from prison and for Moscow to fulfill its commitments under the European Convention on Human Rights.

In August 2020, Navalny fell violently ill while on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. After receiving emergency medical care in Omsk, he was medically evacuated to Germany, where experts determined he had been poisoned by a nerve agent of the Novichok group, the same type of poison that was used in the attempted assassination of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, in 2018.

Navalny has said the poisoning was carried out by Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives acting at the behest of President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny was arrested immediately upon his return to Russia in January 2021. The next month, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for an alleged parole violation during his convalescence abroad.

In March, Navalny was sentenced in a separate case to nine years in prison on embezzlement and contempt of court charges that he and his supporters reject as politically motivated.