Prisoners Iran

A father who allegedly set fire to his apartment this week, killing his wife and six children, apparently gained entry to the United States by concealing a criminal record in his native Iran when he was questioned under oath, immigration and State Department officials said Thursday. Jorjik Avanesian, 40, who has been charged with arson and seven counts of murder, has told police and others that he served eight months in an Iranian prison for stabbing his wife.

Iran's Supreme Court has denied an appeal from 10 Iranian Jews jailed after being convicted of spying for Israel, the state IRNA news agency reported Wednesday. It quoted a statement by the prosecutor's office as saying that the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case after three judges studied the appeal and found it to have no legal basis.

Iran's hard-line watchdog body has rejected legislation aimed at guaranteeing public trials by jury for government critics and protecting the rights of political prisoners, newspapers reported Thursday. The Guardian Council, whose oversight role is intended to ensure that statutes do not violate the Iranian Constitution or Islamic law, rejected the "political crime" bill approved by parliament in late May, the government-owned daily Iran reported.

Iran's supreme leader has pardoned the popular, reform-minded former mayor of Tehran after seven months in prison, a move seen as part of an effort by hard-liners to project a more moderate image ahead of parliamentary elections. Gholamhossein Karbaschi was imprisoned on corruption charges, which he denied, and sentenced to two years in prison. Now he is poised to plunge back into public life and will soon launch a daily newspaper, according to Parvin Emami, a journalist who is working with him.

It is a cry as old as the Book of Exodus and as urgent as the plight of 13 Iranian Jews facing what U.S. and Israeli officials call "baseless" espionage charges: "Let my people go." From a small courtyard commemorating the Holocaust, the cry arose again Sunday as more than 300 Jews gathered for an emergency vigil at the Simon Wiesenthal Center to lend their voices to the demand that Iran free 13 men accused of spying for the U.S. and Israel.

About 7,500 Iranian Americans converged at the Federal Building in Westwood on Saturday night in an emotion-packed but peaceful show of support for jailed university students in Iran. The demonstration, which had been planned for months, occurred the same day that Iranian police fired bullets and tear gas at protesters in Tehran.

The charges were trumped up, the two televised confessions were coerced, the so-called trial was a sham and the convictions a travesty, speakers at a rally demanding the release of 10 Iranian Jews convicted of spying for Israel told the men's supporters Monday. "For each and every one of us who are Jews, we are not allowed to turn our backs on those in prison," Rabbi Harvey Fields of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple said. "We know what show trials are about."

The head of Iran's judiciary said Friday that 13 Iranian Jews held on charges of spying for Israel and the United States could face the death penalty, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. "The laws [in Iran] have their own prescriptions which at certain instances provide for the capital punishment of spies," the agency, monitored in Dubai, quoted the Ayatollah Mohammed Yazdi as telling thousands of worshipers attending Friday prayers at Tehran University. U.S.

A key suspect in a series of slayings of Iranian intellectuals and dissidents has committed suicide in jail, complicating a top-secret case involving intelligence officers, a senior judicial official said Sunday. The suspect, identified as Saeed Emami, killed himself Saturday by swallowing a hair-removal substance while taking a bath in prison, Mohammed Niyazi, the head of Iran's military tribunals, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Efforts to revive Emami failed, he said.