From the International Transport Workers' Federation, Dec. 28:

Trade unionists and human rights activists are sending a strong warning signal to the international community following the detention of trade unionists by the Iranian secret police over the holiday period.

Police in Tehran raided and shut down the office of the Center for Protecting Human Rights, led by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi Dec. 21. Dozens of uniformed police and plainclothes security officials sealed the office in the raid, which came hours before the Center was to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Human Rights Day. The police presented no warrant, a witness said. At the ceremony, the Center was planning to honor a longtime political activist, Taqi Rahmani, who has spent a total of 17 years in prison since the 1979 revolution. The government banned the Center in 2006, but it has continued to operate. (NYT, Dec. 21)

Iranian students protested Dec. 7 at Tehran University, calling for political freedoms and denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The protest amid heavy security was called by the radical Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU) to mark National Student Day. The official news agency IRNA, calling the OCU an "illegal splinter group," said protesters caused property damage and clashed with security personnel, adding that "Marxists" were involved. Photos from the student newspaper website (see below) showed hundreds gathered at the university, many carrying pro-democracy banners and some tearing down a metal gate. (AFP, Dec. 8; AP, Reuters, AutNews, Tehran Polytechnic, Dec. 7)

Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi, a dissident cleric imprisoned since October 2006 for criticizing the Islamic Republic's system and advocating separation of religion and state in Iran, was "exiled" from Tehran's Evin Prison to another facility in the city of Yazd Nov. 24. Boroujerdi was taken away blindfolded, according to a report on the Human Rights Activists in Iran website.

Farzad Kamangar, a teacher, trade unionist and rights activist from Iran's Kordistan province, sentenced to death on what his attorney calls "absolutely zero evidence," could be hanged today, his supporters say. Sources report that he has been taken from his cell at Tehran's Evin prison in preparation for execution. Security officers at the prison are reported to have informed him that he is to be executed imminently, taunted him and called him a martyr.

Iran's judiciary has sentenced a Sufi leader to five years in prison, flogging and exile on charges of spreading lies, the moderate Kargozaran newspaper reported Nov. 15. The report identified the man as Amir Ali Mohammad Labaf, of the Nematollahis or Gonabadi Dervishes order based in the northeastern province of Khorassan Razavi. Labaf was convicted by a court in Iran's clerical center of Qom, finding that his holding of traditional Sufi prayers constituted "a case of spreading lies," the report said, without elaborating. In addition to the five-year prison term, Labaf was sentenced to 74 lashes and internal exile to the southeastern town of Babak. (AFP, Nov. 15)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a letter congratulating US president-elect Barack Obama, said his nation and the world expect "fundamental" changes to US policy, and "welcomed" the prospect for "justice, respect for human rights, friendship, and non-interference in other countries' internal affairs."

In response to Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a military attack, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is planing to build an inland canal to bring Persian Gulf oil to world markets. "Our oil revenues will be jeopardized if we don't find an alternative to using the Hormuz Strait for exporting oil," Dubai Chief of Police Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim told the UAE daily Gulf News. The canal, passing through the northern emirate of Ras Al-Kheima, would be big enough to accommodate super-tankers.