Prisoners Iran

Iran and Iraq began a 10-day exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war Thursday, but a jet chartered by the International Red Cross shuttled fewer men than than promised between the enemy capitals. A Red Cross statement issued in Geneva said that only 19 Iranians and 41 Iraqis were flown home Thursday despite an accord with both sides providing for the repatriation of 41 Iranians and 115 Iraqis every day.

An Orange County Iranian American businessman was released from prison Saturday after 30 months behind bars, family members have confirmed. Reza Taghavi, 71, left Tehran's notorious Evin Prison and reportedly plans to return to California within a week. The Tustin resident was never formally charged or tried but was accused of passing $200 to a monarchist group called Tondar, which Iran says has been behind terrorist attacks. Taghavi said he gave the money unknowingly. Taghavi's relatives in Tustin and the San Fernando Valley declined to comment Saturday, saying they didn't want to say anything until he was safely out of Iran.

Even assuming that the diplomatic and battlefield maneuvering between Iran and Iraq leads to a firm cease-fire in their eight-year war, the wrangling will be far from over. According to the timetable outlined in U.N. Security Council Resolution 598, which was adopted in July, 1987, to try to force both sides to end the fighting, Iran and Iraq are required to withdraw to the international boundary and exchange prisoners.

For people around the globe, the images of club-wielding men on motorcycles beating demonstrators on the streets of Tehran was just another case of brutality in a far-off land. But as he watched the violence of recent weeks unfold on television and YouTube, Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, an exiled Iranian, recognized some of the attackers. They were once good friends.

As anger over an allegedly blasphemous novel continued to gather force in the Islamic world, Iran's spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said Tuesday that the author and publishers of the book should be killed.

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 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.

The former combat tank driver seemed out of place selling bras and panties in an indoor bazaar. He was slightly more drawn than when he left for war six years ago, friends said, but he was still brawny enough to haul big sacks of clothing as if they were weightless, and his thick hands made the flimsy wares he sold look like dolls' clothing. He was content, he said, haggling over prices with his customers and patiently tugging at elastic bands to show off the quality.

A British diplomat was allowed to visit one of two Britons being held in a Tehran prison on spying charges, the Foreign Office said in London. David Reddaway, who went to Iran on Aug. 12 after a thaw in relations between the two countries, visited Nicholas Nicola in Tehran's Evin Prison and found him "in good health and reasonably cheerful," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

About 9,000 members of opposition groups are in Iranian jails, an Iranian official said in a Tehran Radio broadcast, monitored in Nicosia, Cyprus. Davoud Karimi, the top drug-enforcement officer in the Komiteh revolutionary police, said Iranian jails also hold about 40,000 drug addicts or smugglers. Iranian officials are usually tight-lipped about the number of prisoners in Iranian jails.

Two well-known physicians accused of taking part in a plot to overthrow the Islamic Republic were given stiff prison sentences Wednesday, their lawyer said. Arash Alaei was sentenced to six years in jail and his younger brother Kamiar got three years, attorney Massoud Shafaei told The Times, adding that he would appeal the verdict within the 20-day limit. Also Wednesday, human rights activists identified a third defendant in the case: Sylvia Hartounian, 33, a reproductive medicine specialist.

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 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.

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."

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.

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.

Iran freed more than 1,300 prisoners from jails in three provinces to mark the anniversary of its 1979 Islamic revolution, the national news agency IRNA said Monday.

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.

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.