Search Results for: iran elections

Iran’s Supreme Court overturned the death sentence imposed on dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi, his lawyer announced Saturday. The news was confirmed by Salehi’s lawyer, Amir Raisian, on X. Raisian said that, through this decision, the Iranian Supreme Court avoided an “irreparable judicial error”. Salehi had been detained since October 2022 for speaking out and participating [...]

In the aftermath of the recent rescue of four Israeli hostages held in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, an analysis of such extraction operations is warranted. To put this event in context, three things must be understood. First, hostage taking is a war crime. Second, hostage rescue is extremely logistically difficult. Third, the American public [...]

Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) published a report on Monday stating that some parliamentarians collaborated with foreign governments to engage in “foreign interference activities.” Evidence the NSICOP gathered suggests that these unnamed parliamentarians engaged in interference activities as “semi-witting or witting participants.” The report suggested that the parliamentarians engaged in foreign [...]

After a 15-hour search, the wreckage of a helicopter carrying Iran’s president and foreign minister was located by a Turkish drone, leaving a nation to grapple with an unexpected transition of power. Ebrahim Raisi was the eighth president of Iran to have been killed in the last year of his first term. When he ascended [...]

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday named a caretaker president and outlined constitutionally mandated succession plans following Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash. The helicopter carrying Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian  crashed in foggy conditions in northeastern Iran on Sunday, according to official state media. Search and rescue teams found [...]

The UN Human Rights Council adopted resolutions Thursday to call on UN member states to refrain from supplying jet fuel to the Myanmar military. The council also extended the mandates of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran and Myanmar and the independent international fact-finding mission on Iran. All members from [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Friday called on Liberian authorities to investigate the physical assault and violent arrest of Liberia journalist Kesselee Sumo on March 11 and to drop the charges against him. Sumo hosts a daily radio talk show from the Bong Mine Community in Liberia. A few days before his arrest, [...]

The US Department of State imposed arms restrictions Thursday on the import or export of US-origin weapons and services from or to Nicaragua. In a statement to the press, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller cited “brutal repression” and “recent sham elections” as ongoing concerns for the Biden administration, vowing to continue to use “diplomatic and [...]

Marissa Zupancic is JURIST’s Washington DC Correspondent, a JURIST Senior Editor and a 3L at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She’s stationed in Washington during her Semester in DC. This week I attended a talk hosted by Georgetown University entitled “Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Türkiye: At the Epicenter of Conflict in the [...]

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) on Monday accused the US of orchestrating a covert campaign to interfere with the upcoming Russian presidential election, set to take place on Mar. 15-17. The spy agency claims the administration of US President Joe Biden has ordered a group of American NGOs to stifle voter turnout in a bid [...]