Incubator babies, “stonings” & Amnesty International’s dirty propaganda war

by Aion Essence, 25 September 2010


Although strategists typically prefer the term, ‘information warfare’, it is little disputed that ‘the battle for the hearts and minds’ of a population can be every bit as important as any actual military conquest upon the field. Arguably the most crucial aspect in the above equation rests with the winning over of the ‘hearts and minds’ of the folks back home. In this spirit, one might regrettably ascertain that we have been ‘at war’ now for a very long time. It could even be put forth that we are witnessing one of the more brazen continuous public smear campaigns on record.

For the many who perhaps still remain wholly unaware, I am referring of course to the ongoing disinformation campaign waged against the more important Islamic countries of the ‘Middle East’, and especially that targeting Iran.

Occasionally a diligent few do manage to uncover portions of the uncontaminated ‘truth’ though.

It was well over three years ago that the LA Times, the Boston Globe, and then ABC News, all reported on the CIA’s plans to engage and undermine the Iranian government using a ‘black ops’ program of “propaganda, misinformation, and financial manipulation”. After consulting intelligence community insiders, it was even learned that it had been President Bush (Jr.) himself who had given the go-ahead for the ’secret op’ which was to act in concert with covert military support. The latter assault presumably would involve sectarian military groups like Jundullah, and perhaps the MEK or PEJK, to effectuate internal pressure using more typical Guerrilla warfare tactics. But little was detailed explicitly about how the CIA-facilitated propaganda drive portion of the plan was to work, and through which auspices, or ‘independent’ entities, the deception would be implemented.

This important reporting on a large-scale, classic disinformation campaign, however, received scant attention from additional media outlets and soon disappeared from public view.

Whether due more to the successful suppression of follow-up stories, or instead to an especially pernicious case of ’short memories’ amongst those that managed to hear of the plan, it should nevertheless be noted that very few have correlated its obviously greater significance. For in recent months there has indeed been no shortage of spectacularly sordid tales that are supposedly emanating from Iran. It might even be considered that the great bulk of these exceptionally lurid ‘news reports’ could well have their common origins in just such a purposefully engineered campaign.

But our story really should commence much further back. At least two decades earlier in fact.


All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

It was October 1990, just a couple of months before the outbreak of ‘Operation Desert Storm’. U.S. President George H.W. Bush and his staff were going over invasion plans and preparing orders, should subsequent peace efforts fail, that would send the best-equipped military machine in history into battle against an embarrassingly third-rate army (well, possibly once first-rate by Mid-East standards, but a force just coming off a very long and brutal campaign against Iran).

There was one small piece of doubt hanging on the top command’s minds, however. Would the American people readily stand by and support this military incursion?

Opinion polls showed that while the electorate overwhelmingly supported a defense of U.S. ‘interests’ in the region, they may indeed question a war that appeared to be without provocation, and may in fact be unwarranted.

There had been a few quarrels, of course. The decade-old charge that Iraq was potentially desirous of nuclear weapons, for one. This was particularly a concern for Israel, the U.S.’s presumptive ‘ally’ in the region. However, there having been at least a dozen other nations that might have held nuclear aspirations at the time, this alone was not a very persuasive argument.

More at the forefront of everyone’s minds though, was the even older question of Kuwait, the miniature Arab emirate that Iraq had just recently ‘re-taken’ in August of that year.

Once part of the province of Basra, Kuwait had been separated from the territory of Iraq by the British (which had ‘won’ both entities from the Turks), following the end of the first World War. The idea at the time was to try to keep a wholly British-dependent colony separate at the top of the oil-rich Persian Gulf, should the Iraqis eventually gain their freedom. As perhaps expected, the Iraqis began demanding the return of Kuwait from nearly the very moment of their own independence in 1933.

Regionally speaking, there were plenty of models for ‘repatriation’ too, even in more recent times. Israel’s incursion into, and seizure of, the Sinai, for example (or more enduringly, it’s ‘theft’ of the West Bank and Gaza). There were also Syria’s incursions into Lebanon and the Golan Heights (followed by Israel’s re-occupation of the same territory), as well as Egypt’s re-retrieval of the Sinai. Any one of these could have been used to support the precedent of, and therefore the justification for, the reclamation of ‘lost’ territory in the region.

Additionally, in the Iraqi government’s eyes, Kuwait had recently been conducting an ‘economic war’ against Iraq, due both to Kuwait’s seemingly malicious feeding off of Iraq’s debt crisis as well as apparently outright cheating on oil deals which further undercut Iraq’s economy.

Iraq felt it must do something. And apparently the U.S. was ready to give them a nod and a wink to undertake just ‘that’.

The weekend before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Saddam Hussein that the dispute between the two nations was entirely an Arab affair, and that the U.S. had no desire to get involved. In addition, many Iraqi officials had come to perceive that the U.S. would never attack their old friends anyway.

It should be remembered that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, had been working very closely with the Americans throughout the previous decade, at least covertly, and had received considerable aid and support, despite a public embargo for part of that time. The Americans too, had apparently given the final ‘go-ahead’ for Iraq to initiate its war against Iran, as the Vance memo would seem to suggest (the UK had made similar such gestures). It was postulated that Iraq, at the very least, should seek to cleave off the oil-rich fields of the Shatt al-Arab delta (if not the entirety of Khuzestan province).

The American’s reasoning for the partnership, was part financial (potentially gaining increased access to Iranian oil), part reciprocital (punishing Iran for the overthrow of the Shah, and the ‘Hostage Crisis’), and part defensive (preventing Iran from emerging triumphant and therefore stronger). Inevitably though, from this came the undeniable appearance that Saddam Hussein and his government were given a virtual carte blanche toward the ends of regional re-positioning.

Returning to the 1990 dilemma, though, certain doubters in Congress (and perhaps even a couple in Bush Sr.’s cabinet) felt that the Kuwait issue on its own was just not that big enough of a reason to unleash a military assault upon Iraq. And most assuredly, the American people would probably be even harder to convince that such an effort were worth the bother.


90’s Tears (by ? and the Mysterious)

But then we get the ‘Incubator Baby’ story.

A tearful 15-year old ‘Kuwaiti’ girl tells the story, before the U.S. Congressional Caucus on Human Rights, that gun-wielding Iraqi Arab soldiers had removed Kuwaiti Arab babies from their incubators and left them on the floor of a Kuwait City hospital to die. The transcripts of the shocking testimony were sent to most major news outlet throughout the West. The video-tapes of the hearing were ‘leaked’ to several TV stations. Op-ed columnists had a field day.

The horrifying tale was repeated again and again, ad nauseum, by the U.S. press in particular, and referred to by virtually every major American politician.

Yet was this young teen’s story even true? It was Amnesty International who then stepped forward and unilaterally proclaimed the tale to be genuine and unquestionable. How did they know? Well because, they uh, … oh heck, just ‘believe’ the girl, already!

Amnesty even helped with the accompanying media kit, officially supplied by the ‘Citizens for a Free Kuwait’ (a combined Kuwaiti-government-in-exile and Hill & Knowlton firm creation).

But who was this girl really?

It turns out that the she was the daughter of one of the Emirs of Kuwait and a member of the Kuwaiti ruling family. And this Emir was also, the uh, Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.

The girl, known only by her first name and fictive position (’Nurse Nayirah’), had been previously coached by a team from Hill & Knowlton (then the world’s largest PR firm). The one who introduced her to the Congressional caucus was none other than the ultra-Zionist Representative from California, Tom Lantos, who conveniently neglected to reveal the connection.

Lantos’ group, the ‘Congressional Caucus for Human Rights’, itself was not even legally affiliated with Congress. On the contrary, it was actually a wholly independent self-appointed collective of various politicians, lobbyists, and public relations figures. The group’s equally non-arbitrative, non-authoritative sister entity, the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, kept it’s offices inside the Hill & Knowlton building.)

Needless to say, the girl’s testimony turned out to be completely false. Not only was Nayirah not even a nurse anywhere and almost assuredly was not in Kuwait when the Iraqis invaded, but it was later determined that the hospital in question had not one incubator removed, nor were there any actual reports of infant deaths at any Kuwait hospitals.

Nevertheless, ‘The War’ was on.

Even a last-ditch effort by the Iraqis to negotiate a peaceful withdrawal and spare them the slaughter of their retreating columns of soldiers and oil-field workers had been tossed out by the Americans. The U.S.-led coalition would now show no mercy.

Yet the important smaller story, almost overlooked, is that Amnesty International, and specifically its London headquarters, had been one of the primary promoters and indeed, perpetrators of the whole charade. It was Amnesty International in fact, that had brazenly raised the tempo of the rhetoric within the case, referring to ‘babies being thrown onto the floor’ in their campaign literature.

[In the interests of full-disclosure here, I should state that, I was actually a proud card-carrying donor to Amnesty myself at the time. My own sentiments concerning this case might only be described as: 'Astonished' and even 'Incredulous'.]

Yet to this day, Amnesty still has not published a single retraction or an apology for their role in the deception.

This wasn’t an instance of them somehow being ‘hornswoggled’ either. Certain members of their American office had repeatedly tried to address HQ’s ‘reckless’ behavior and seemingly shameless sensationalism. But every time they voiced their concerns about the possible veracity of the claims, AI’s hierarchy shut them out without review. Following the eventual revelation that the tale was nothing more than a well-played hoax, and calls rose for an interior investigation at Amnesty, HQ again stamped them down and closed the doors on them.

As a former board member of their USA chapter, observed:

“Absolutely nothing happened. There was never an investigation, there was total stonewalling coming out of London. They refused ever to admit that they did anything wrong. There has never been an explanation, there has never been an apology. It’s down the memory hole like 1984 and Orwell. My conclusion was that a high-level official of Amnesty International at that time, whom I will not name, was a British intelligence agent.”

“When I am dealing with people who want to work with Amnesty in London, I just tell them, ‘Look, just understand, they’re penetrated by intelligence agents, U.K., maybe U.S., I don’t know, but you certainly can’t trust them.’”

Hold that thought people.

We must now jump ahead a couple of decades and examine a wholly calculated new progression of saber-rattling against the other sizable Middle-East entity who just happens to have our ‘good friends’ in Israel all consternated now as well. We should also pay very special attention to what Amnesty’s role in this recent sequence of ‘reports’ happens to be.


The Roar is On, Once Again

Like many people raised in the 1960’s and 70’s, my own early awareness of ‘Stoning’ had more to do with Bob Dylan’s, or perhaps Jimi Hendrix’s, intended use of the verb.

Even for those who have thoroughly studied the Old Testament (Tanakh), the original meaning is not all that easy to conjure or imagine within a present-day setting. [For what it's worth, 'stoning' as a punishment does not appear in the Qu'ran]

Hurling heavy objects at another living person for the purpose of teaching them a ‘lesson’ seems simply, well, ‘Neanderthalic’. Hence it’s nearly perfect application, or appropriation, for, uh, asymmetrical, er, propaganda.

Whaddya think, Drewery?

Drewery Dyke is listed as one of the more valuable assets, I mean employees, at Amnesty International’s London HQ, ostensibly working there since 1999. According to his very brief biography, he was born and raised in Winnipeg (Manitoba province), Canada. After that, very little personal information is available.

The first mention of him within the context of being an employee for Amnesty is in a report issued in 2006. That paper interestingly concerned itself with addressing instances of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Mr. Dyke is credited as discussing conditions in Ghazni, Afghanistan in December of 2005. ['Terror' being somewhat in the eye of the beholder, it should be important to note that Ghazni, Afghanistan, while never far removed from the fighting between the 'insurgents' (people who lived there) vs. the 'liberators' (people who didn't live there), became 'ground-zero' in 2006 for a major U.S. led, post-invasion 'counter-insurgency'.] The rest of the this particular report covered instances of ‘terrorism’ around the globe that had especially assaulted ‘human rights’. Singled out specifically were New York, NY, USA (Sept. 2001), Washington DC, USA (Sept. 2001), Bali, Indonesia (October 2002), Casablanca, Morocco (May 2003), Istanbul, Turkey (Sept 2003), Madrid, Spain (March 2004), London, UK (July 2005); Amman, Jordan (November 2005), Dahab, Egypt (April 2006), and Mumbai, India (July 2006). It should be noted that all of the above incidents had been previously (conveniently?) blamed on ‘Al Qaeda’ or its affiliates, at least initially.

From that point on, Mr. Dyke ascended quickly enough within the privileged corridors of Amnesty’s UK headquarters. He served for awhile as a principal information gatherer, investigator, and writer for their Middle East and North African division. Shortly thereafter he was put in charge of Iranian affairs, all by his lonesome.

Accordingly, for the past three plus years he has been tasked with the everyday directing or authoring of all reports on human rights infractions in Iran. In that time, ’stoning’ has conspicuously gone from the providence of the strictly mythical to consistently front-page news, especially within the last year and a half. [It should be pointed out too, that many of the most malicious, and scathingly fictional, articles about 'stoning', have been released through The Guardian (UK), where, quite coincidentally, Mr. Dyke has also appeared as a writer.]

So how or why, has there come to be such the dramatic and alarming rash of stories on ’stoning’, of all things? Have the ‘mullahs in Eye-ran’ completely fallen off the wagon, as the nice chaps at Faux News would have us believe? Is it simply a brutal symptom of the degeneration of humanity to a consciousness point perhaps parallel to that of our most ancient ancestors? Collectively are we really descending so far down the abyss, that we may well be approaching Endtime Prophecy™ silliness, after all? Or is something else going on here that we should perhaps be aware of?

One of Drewery’s primary, ‘contributors’ has been Mohammed Mostafaei.

Mohammad Mostafaei (alternatively Mostafavi), is the especially zealous ‘human rights lawyer’ who has forwarded many of the Iranian ’stoning’ stories on to Amnesty International, including the now infamous Sakineh Ashtiani case.

Even more recently (and just before he was chased out of Iran), Mostafaei helped bring to light the awful charge that a gay man, oops I mean a straight man who they just erroneously thought was gay [it's more appealing to the conservative mindset to frame it that way, y'know], was about to be ’stoned’ to death.

Indeed, Mohammed Mostafaei, has certainly made a bit of an international name for himself in recent months, especially in connection with reputed ’stonings’. [Apparently, hangings just don't have the sensationalist appeal that they once did.] Interesting though only a couple years ago, ’stoning’ apparently wasn’t really even in his vocabulary.

Mr. Dyke’s other primary ‘liaison’ has been one Javid Houtan Kian.

Kian more or less took over for Mostafaei after M.M. was enticed to flee the country, apparently for trying to sensationalize his cases (which may or not have been his cases anyway as we shall find out).

And it has been Kian, rather than Mostafaei, who has noticeably ramped up the most recent round of ’stoning’ allegations. Kian, whether to his credit or not, has furiously extrapolated on all available sentences that he has had ‘at his disposal’, and now he gets to carry through Mostafaei’s allegations as well.

It is no accident too, that many of the more publicly spectacular affairs have centered around the city of Tabriz, for that is where both Mostafaei and Kian have been concentrating their efforts.

Tabriz is the capital of East Azerbaijan province, which itself is situated in the northwest of Iran, the nation’s left ’shoulder’, if you will. Also known as Tavrezh (Tauris), it is a city of some 1 ½ million people. It is also truly in the far corner of the country. Tabriz in fact, is only about 50 miles from the Armenian border, 75 miles or so from the border of Azerbaijian (the country, not the Iranian province), and about 75 miles as well from the border with Turkey. Geographically speaking, a good comparative analogy might be Seattle, Washington in the United States, or perhaps even more appropriately, St. Petersburg, Russia, with it’s proximity to Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic States.

Not surprisingly, because of it’s close position to more Western leaning countries, Tabriz served as the center of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution which occurred early in the 1900’s, and brought about a change in government at that time, removing old Persia from dominion.

At several points historically, following periods of unrest and incursions, Tabriz was even made the nominal capital of Iran, especially under various Turkic federations. It was also the eventual capital of the Safavid dynasty which imposed the Shia ‘twelver’ belief as the state religion. Ethnically speaking, the conquering groups from the northwest have ranged from the primarily Turkish, to loose confederations of Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Azeris and even a few Greeks.

The U.S., it might be noted, has military outposts or access to bases in Kyurdamir (Azerbaijian), Incirlik (Turkey), Vaziani (Georgia) and also the use of Armenian airfields (specifically for the ‘War on Terror’) whenever it needs. All of these installations except Incirlik are within 200 miles of Tabriz. Now keeping with the Seattle-as-Tabriz scenario, imagine if you will that Russia [or better yet, Iran?] had access to bases in Vancouver (BC), Calgary (Alberta), the San Juan Islands (BC), and say, just for fun, also off the coast of Oregon.

If the West were again to invade Iran, you can bet Tabriz (Tavrezh) would in all likelihood be made, once more, the interim capital.


No Stone Unturned

Nearly all of the cases hailed by Amnesty, and their conspirators, as ’stonings’ that are about to take place, or have already been ‘concluded’, have not surprisingly, been rather thoroughly refuted by sources and observers closer to the scene. Not one single case in fact, that was purported to have been carried out by the Iranian judiciary in recent years and ended in a defendant’s death, has actually been truly independently verified by anyone.

Findings instead based largely on forged ‘evidence’ and hearsay alone shouldn’t even be permitted to so thoroughly inundate the media and affect the global public arena as much as we’ve shockingly seen, yet they have. Repeatedly. Unfortunately, as long as the foxes that have been positioned into guarding the henhouses are also allowed to do the vetting of the ‘rooster reports’, then the masses will continue to be bullied into imagining whatever the ‘foxes’ so desire. In our case, that atrocities like ’stoning’ are somehow rampantly taking place throughout the Islamic world.

Sadly, truly independent analyses of the situation have had very little luck breaking through the mainstream media embargoes. In the meantime, the unrelenting propaganda that continues to be poured out for the eminently maudlin, ‘bleeding hearts’ of the world, will have largely succeeded in fulfilling its purpose. The requisite heavy-hitting short term damage to a country’s reputation will invariably lead to a point of irreconcilable hostility and sure promise of military action.

[Again, in the interest of full disclosure, I myself don't savor at all the notion of 'stoning' another living being, or for that matter, utilising any form of punishment that is gratuitously violent. It disgusts me in fact. But then again, I'm fairly well opposed to the taking of life or even of purposefully inflicting injury upon others, regardless of the circumstances. ]

Yet a country with the largest penal system in the world, and perennially one of the biggest ‘capital punishers’ itself, arrogantly admonishing another, smaller, country about how they might conduct their own disciplinary affairs, is in itself exceedingly contemptuous.

What the West has especially seized upon here though is the conceptual ‘anathema’ of state-sanctioned punishment being issued to offenders of marital fidelity. To be sure, if adultery were given felony status in the West for instance, our movie and music industries might themselves seize to exist (and daytime TV too, for that matter). On a base level therefore, the greatest sense of righteous disgust seems to be reserved for a nation that would dare tell its citizens that they can’t enjoy a little ’side nooky’.

But is Iran really so fulsomely depriving its people?

Like it or not, the criminalisation of adultery serves one primary purpose: to drastically curtail promiscuity and restrict what is considered to be the moral degeneration of society. What is often not fully explained in the West is that the actual concept of adultery in Iran is rather different from how it is normally perceived here in the West .

Throughout Iran, for instance, there exists a legally proscribed avenue for allowed romantic and sexual relations outside of permanent wedlock. It is a concept known as Sigheh, or temporary marriage, whereby interested partners can agree to a ‘trial coupling’ with a fixed time limit, assuming that they are not otherwise married. The agreement doesn’t necessarily have to be witnessed, and may even be verbal in nature, so long as there are defined parameters of time involved and perhaps a dowry (particularly if the would-be bride is a virgin and is thus made to lose her ‘honor’). Theoretically anyway, if a couple wanted to pair-off, either for a fortnight, or for a longer-term relationship, they could do so, as long as they adhere to whatever ‘contract’ they have agreed upon.

Additionally, when a permanent marriage does reach a point of lovelessness, and when agreed to by both parties, a divorce may be achieved as long as the couple attempts a trial separation first. There are two general types of separation offered, the first being a ‘reconcilable divorce’ where the parties feel they just more-or-less need a time-out from one another. During this period, extramarital affairs are illegal and therefore to be considered adultery. The other type of separation that can be sought is ‘irreconcilable divorce’, and legally either party may pursue sexual relations with others during this time. If the formerly married couple can’t agree on whether or not they should seek reconcilable or irreconcilable divorce, it is merely considered a writ of incompatability which is being sought and the legal restrictions can either mimic that of a reconcilable divorce, or of a irreconcilable one, depending.

In practical terms, therefore, all of this public prattle about forced marriages and loveless romance in Iran, is largely just ignorant, reactionary puffery.

So what then constitutes adultery within the Iranian definition? Well, it is usually limited to one of two situations. Either just reckless promiscuity with multiple partners on multiple occasions, or else one or both of the parties that engage in sexual relations happen (s) to still be married to other individuals. As far as making adultery a first-degree felony though, in practice that is almost entirely limited to its simultaneous occurrence alongside another felony such as murder, flagrant ’serial’ prostitution, or much less commonly, extortion. Unsurprisingly, all of the cases that have reached Western ears fall into one of the above categories and by far the bulk of them are connected with concurrent incidents of murder.

Interestingly too, the Iranian penal code carries three different penalties for perpetrators of adultery.

The first group, the most severe class of adulterers (including whence committed as an instance of incest or rape), are given a sentence of death [Article 82].

The second category, consisting mostly of your middle-of-the-road instances of intentional adultery involving willing adult participants, are met with a sentence of stoning [Article 83]. The third subgroup, largely participants who were not fully aware of the implications of the act(s), and/or unmarried minors, are sentenced to lashings.

Anybody else notice the strikingly deviational terminology used to differentiate the classes of adultery at play here?

In the West, it is automatically assumed that the sentence of ’stoning’ is one of automatic death. It says so in the Torah in fact. It is also referenced as such elsewhere in the Tanakh, and in the Talmud. It’s what has been cleverly imaged for us as well by a certain recent Hollywood film.

In the oldest version of this form of capital punishment, an offender is made to leap or fall off a cliff and if they somehow manage to survive the fall, they are then the ignoble recipient of a well-placed boulder thrust upon them from above. In later versions, they are subjected to large stones hurled at them strongly, quickly and with the utmost finality.

However, nothing of the sort is used when meting out sentences in Iran. Quite the contrary in fact. The stones offered as punishment are instead tiny by comparison, usually four, five or six to a palm. We’re talking about so-called ‘heavy objects’ not much more than an inch in diameter. And this is supposed to somehow be considered automatically lethal?

After spending many weeks trying to decode as much detailed information as possible, I was not able to find one truly verifiable instance of state-sponsored death-by-stoning in recent years in Iran. I did find however, that there were more than a couple occasions of vigilante-style justice that resulted in someone’s death (using truly sizable objects I might add), as well as a couple of cases of state-ordained stonings a few years ago where the ‘victims’ climbed out of their holes whilst having the lapides rain down on them.

As the Secretary General of the Iranian Human Rights Committee, Mohammad Javad Larijani himself had to state the obvious (and perhaps somewhat indignantly) when explaining to an outside reporter, “stoning is in lower level than execution because in stoning the defendant has a chance to survive”.

However even quibbling over the exact circumstances in which stoning shall theoretically be administered doesn’t accurately reflect the reality that in recent years the practice (excluding vigilante situations) has been completely curtailed. Even the articles of the Penal Code quoted above herald from the draft passed back in 1991.

In 2002 however, the head of the Judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi ruled that stoning was henceforth illegal and ordered it banned. Despite this a couple of lower courts still gave out initial ’stoning’ sentences in cases based on the older law, only to be rebuked by the high court.

In 2005, Iranian Judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad declared that “Stoning has been dropped from the penal code for a long time, and in the Islamic republic, we do not see such punishments being carried out”. He explained that even if such sentences were issued by renegade lower courts, they were ultimately overruled by higher courts and that “no such verdicts have been carried out”. The spokesman then publicly lambasted the West’s nascent propaganda attacks on Iran by stating that “bringing up the issues of stoning and the execution of under-18s comes from outside the country and is aimed at distorting the image of the Islamic republic”.

Even more recently, in 2008, Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi reiterated that “in the latest version of the Islamic penal codes bill, which has undergone several modifications, such punishments are not mentioned”, and that any prior sentences of stoning had been suspended.

Nevertheless that hasn’t prevented many organisations (including Amnesty) and online sites from easing up on their barrage. Contrarily, we’ve seen an increasing rise in spurious ’stoning’ articles ever since then. [Despite their vulgar protestations to the contrary, the U.S./UK/Israel's worst fear may well be a modernization of Iran and an easing of some of the more distasteful restrictions. Why? Think about it. It would potentially give them far greater power politically, socially, and economically throughout the world.]

Many of the reputed instances of ‘death by stoning’ that have been ambitiously littanied off for us by various ‘concerned’ NGOs and websites, with little accompanying evidence and almost never any references, will often read like the two following examples:

• A woman named M. [Avi?]; Age = Unknown; Lawyer = Unknown; Location = [somewhere in Iran]

• A woman with a family name of Hashemite lineage; Age = Unknown; Lawyer = Unknown; Location = Mashdad, Iran

The remainder of the cases, where some identifying characteristics are spelled out, have proven to be little more than fully emotionally frothed sensationalisms, and nearly always dependent on only one (often suspect) ’source’ for their confirmation. Such cases are then given caricature-like treatments and accompanied by highly emotional ’stoning’ images artificially grafted from either the recent Hollywood film, one very stylised (& old) case from Afghanistan, or from visceral mock-ups created at various public protests in the UK and elsewhere.

Let’s look a little more closely, though, at the more frequently cited, and supposedly sufficiently sourced, ‘examples’.


* Sakinah Mohammadi Ashtiani ; — ; Tabriz, Iran.

By far the most famous case. Every news outlet in the Western world, and many elsewhere, have repeated this woman’s mournful story. Just for desiring a lover after her husband’s death, she was sentenced to be ‘STONED’! How unspeakably insidious!

Um, well, at least that’s how the story has been endlessly repeated.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani has been in prison, and basically on death row, since 2005, yet it was only a few months ago that the ’stoning-for-adultery’ charge was brought forth and trumpeted for the world to hear.

As with practically everything else that the mainstream press selectively chooses to pick up and ‘portray’, however, there is a whole ‘nother side to the story. Deplorably though, Amnesty either didn’t care to look into the matter further, or far more likely, purposefully disregarded the rest of the story and only took the partial truth that enhanced the message they required.

Following the release of an apparently fabricated ‘Twitter’ page which purported to be a public plea on behalf of Ashtiani by her children (never mind that the supposed son signed with his mother’s last name, not the legal last name of his father’s, which he actually uses!), Amnesty then initiated contact with the man who claimed to be Ashtiani’s lawyer, the aforementioned Mr. Mostafaei. Strangely however, Ms. Ashtiani insists that she never asked him to be her lawyer and she thought he was just an ever-persistent rights activist (’or something’). She later claims that the two of them never even met. Mostafaei vapidly responds with ‘well, we did talk a number of times on the phone’ and then retorts with ‘and we did so meet!’

Amnesty nevertheless makes the story their number one worldwide ‘URGENT ACTION!’ case. Newspapers, television channels and online blogs all start furiously transmitting the hopelessly sordid tale of an adulteress about to be ’stoned’. [What truly fortuitous 'copy', if you think about it]

The subsequent condemnation is swiftly heard from around the globe. Try as they might to issue denials, the Iranian government just ends up sounding defensively reactionary, and all too after-the-fact. ‘A tragedy may well be averted’. [Or will it? If given all of the details, one can't help but think that the real tragedy is still unfolding and it's not at all emanating from the corner that everyone imagines.]

How many readers know, for instance, that Ashtiani was actually tried and found guilty of murder in the death of Ebrahim Ghader Zadeh, her husband, five years ago! According to signed affidavits, she conspired with a chap named Isa Taheri, whom she’d taken up an affair with a few months prior, to have her husband murdered. According to her own confession, submitted way back in November of 2005, she plotted with Taheri to carry out the deed (via electrocution).

Her lawyers [we'll get to who they really are shortly], attempted to have her plead that the murder itself was carried out solely by her boyfriend Taheri. The authorities, however, discovered that four separate parts of the husband’s body had received electrical applications, and this meant that in all likelihood somebody else was there to assist.. It was also discovered that the body had been heavily drugged beforehand. These facts implicated Ashtiani as directly having a ‘hand’ in her husband’s murder, and she then shortly admitted to having injected him with drugs and with helping supply electricity.

A later defense suggestion that the husband at one time may have been abusive, was not accepted by the judicial council because he and Ashtiani had been seeking an ‘incompatability’ decree and the two had actually been separated for a few months. The irony is that if the ‘incompatability’ writ was in fact pursued, Ashtiani most likely would never have been charged with adultery had the murder not taken place! [Talk about your really dumb, and, at essence, evil, personal decisions.]

Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that not once has Ashtiani officially denied complicity (despite what The Guardian and other rags are cynically ad-libbing).

Ashtiani and Taheri were both sentenced to death [no, not 'by stoning'], and Ashtiani was later found guilty of committing adultery again with yet another fellow, in a separate trial. She was found guilty in that case too, though it hardly ultimately matters, when compared with the capital punishment verdict in the murder case.

In Iran however, there exists an interesting legal feature of ‘forgiveness’, whereby the next of kin, or the injured party themselves, may if they’re so inclined, waive the right to full retribution, thereby lessening the sentence upon the guilty party, as long as some sort of payment is made to the victim’s family (blood money). The victim’s next of kin in this case, the son of the man murdered, also of course happened to be the son of Sakineh.

Adjjad Ghader Zadeh, the couple’s eldest, declined to seek full retribution against Taheri, in return for a half-sum, allowing Taheri to only be sentenced to 10 years in prison, rather than be given what would have otherwise been an automatic death penalty. Adjjad of course attempted to apply the same legal caveat to his mother’s case, but because of the obvious complication of her being a family member anyway (and therefore unable to be both the provider, and the recipient, of any such payment of family ‘blood money’), Adjjad was unable to do so.

It was at this point that some of the family members (others have been far more condemnative of Ashtiani) turned to a local Iranian legal rights group for assistance [no, not Amnesty International as AI arrogantly claims]. Since then, the case has remained in limbo. The Iranian judiciary has refused to budge on the guilty verdict in the murder charge, while at the same time denying outright the contemptuous claims of ’stoning’ as a punishment. They have also chosen to neither, as of yet, go ahead with an execution, nor commute her sentence. This places Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani essentially on ‘death row’ for the time being, and into the foreseeable future.

We need to consider as well though this woman’s supposed “attorneys”, and their apparent (possibly even intentional) mishandling and ’spinning’ of the case. The most egregious claims of incompetence and fraud against the ‘attorneys’ were not made by the Iranian judiciary however, but by local observers and even Ms. Mohammadi Ashtiani herself. The first ‘lawyer’ of whom we speak is of course Mohammad Mostafaei (variantly spelled Mostafavi).

Some have raised the possibility that it was Mostafavi himself that kept raising the issue of ‘adultery’ to the authorities, even though he was simultaneously claiming that she was innocent of those charges.

“It’s true that Ms. Mohammadi have hand at murder, but at case of adultery charge is been innocent”

He then states that two of five of the attending justices, had agreed with him, and so her life should be conditionally spared.

However, being innocent of an adultery charge does not in itself re-adjust a previous murder conviction. Simply denying a role in a secondary crime does not vacate a felony murder ruling. She had been found guilty of complicity in her husband’s murder. His fighting to free her from the adultery charge, but not the murder charge seems like a peculiar defense. He seemed to be maneuvering her into a position where the charge of adultery alone would become the focus.

For the Western press, however, Mostafaei started switching around the details, and declared that the only thing Ashtiani was guilty of was indeed the adultery charge. He then provocatively, and falsely, states that she had been found innocent of the murder charge.

Whether at the behest of Drewery Dyke or another entity, or it’s just his own invention, Mostafaei then vulgarly goes along with the damnative (and slanderous) claim that the Iranian judiciary will now ’stone’ her to death. After Moustafaei is ‘compelled’ to give up his practice and flee to the West because of these absurdities, he is replaced by someone possibly even more treacherous (and transparent).

Ms. Ashtiani claims she has yet to even speak to Javid Houtan Kian, and refuses to do so, but Mr. Kian nevertheless insists he has been her legal ‘attorney’.

Javid Kian then goes out of his way to suggest that the murder charge against her was after the fact, and that it had only been recently faked. [A simple check of old Iranian newspapers will prove this absurd]. He then goes on to boisterously echo and reinforce all the past idiocy about the dropping, then the reinstating, of the murder charge, and noxiously repeats the tired lies about the ‘verdict of stoning’.

[If she had in fact been found innocent of murder and given a reprieve as Mostafaei and Kian have suggested, she would not have been kept on death row for the last five years! There is only one possible explanation for that, and it is that the murder conviction was indeed upheld all along, just as the Iranian judiciary has always maintained. For pete's sake, even Mostafaei had earlier admitted to this fact. - see above-]

It may come as a surprise, however, that if one actually reads the court documents, or the more recently released federal comments on the case, they will find that the actual lawyers in the case are neither Mostafavi or Kian. The legal attorney for Ms. Ashtiani is one Akbar Zare, with either Sohrab Samangan or Habib Asadi assisting him, depending on the situation.

Since Mostafaei had to flee to Europe after his later shenanigans, and now Kian cynically exaggerates some of the same old preposterous claims, I’m guessing the latter will also not remain in Iran for much longer (or perhaps is not even in Iran at present?). He may in fact be there just long enough to facilitate the intended and potentially irreversible harm to the reputation of the Iranian judiciary system, and to the nation as a whole. That could ultimately be exactly what his ‘handlers’ are counting on though. [Que nada, Drewery?]

As it stands now, the Iranian judiciary continues to hold Ms. Ashtiani, and while they have clearly stated that ’stoning’ as a form of punishment will never occur (despite the obscene disinformation in the Western media, thanks in large part, once again, to Amnesty), there still exists, technically, the possibility of the carrying out of an execution. [See the Theresa Lewis case below for similarities.]

[ 'stoning' satisfactorily disproven, though death sentence possibly remains. ]


* Taraneh Mousavi ; July, 2009 ; Iran.

One of the cases fairly satisfactorily busted-open as a complete hoax.

This was another that Amnesty International jumped all over, partially perhaps because it was reputed to have occurred simultaneously with the crackdown on the ‘green revolution’. A strikingly beautiful [that never hurts the ol' PR, eh?], young ‘beautician’ is grabbed aside by the IRGC while attending a commemorative rally for one of the leaders of the 1979 Revolution who died in 1981 (which if you think about it, itself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense).

She was supposedly garbed in high-heels and overly ostentatious, revealing Western dress. She was seized either at an outdoor rally where she had been fierily exhorting the crowd or else while solemnly observing a memorial inside the local mosque [take your pick]. She was then escorted to a jailhouse and held for some two weeks (in some reports, the notorious Evin prison in Tehran) where she is repeatedly raped. Variously she is also reported to have been merely confined to a hospital for observation, but then suddenly disappears. A note is supposedly passed to her family that warns them that she has suffered injuries to her vagina and anus and her life is in danger. [The whole thing reads like a brutally sadistic, yet thoroughly sophomoric, psycho-fantasy letter written by an especially troubled young teenager.]

A couple of online sites later end up cynically interjecting the active term ’stoning’ into the case, even though none of the the more controlled ‘faux’ reports do so.

Well, after this case succeeded in making headlines in the West (at least due in part to Amnesty’s persistent efforts and statements), the family of Taraneh is eventually notified in Iran and they come forward and say that no, she’s alive and well and living in Vancouver, B.C., and has been there for quite a few months. ‘In fact, we talked to her just this morning (the previous night, Vancouver time) and we can call her again if you want’. Which they proceed to do on live TV, even though it’s quite early in the morning in Vancouver.

‘00:01:40 SISTER: Hi Taraneh.

00:01:43 TARANEH: Hello Maryam, what’s the matter?

00:01:47 SISTER: Don’t worry, but some people published your photo on some websites.

00:01:51 SISTER: They say that your body was burnt… ‘

00:01:54 {attempts at situation-deflecting, light-hearted laughter from her sister and mother}

00:01:56 {Taraneh evidently disconnects the call}

Busted! Her own family unwittingly catches her up in the hoax!

Some who have still wanted to believe the original kidnapping/rape/murder story have suggested that the Iranian TV interview with the family and the phone call were both faked, and the ‘family’ were in fact paid actors. But if that were true, the person ‘playing the role of Taraneh’ would not have abruptly hung up, this person instead would have likely said (presumably reading from a script) ‘oh, no, i’m just fine, nothing to be worried about here, dear family!’ On the other hand, it makes absolutely no sense for an ‘actor’ to suddenly cut short a conversation before their big damning finale can be delivered.

On the contrary, nothing at all would be accomplished by indulging in such a hasty act, and a cloud of suspicion might only permeate the scene (as it has). Instead, the line simply goes dead (obviously from the Vancouver-side).

If Taraneh had innocently and accidentally hung up, they would have re-established the connection and finished the interview shortly thereafter. Ditto if it had been an operator connection error, or wireless disturbance. Remember too, that the family was using a cell-phone and not a land-line, so there would have been no feasiblity (nor indeed reason) for the IRIB station employees or the Iranian authorities to mechanically interrupt the call.

The only remaining reason for the disconnection is that Taraneh felt that she somehow simply had to end the call. And the reason for that would of course be to try to prevent self-incrimination or guilt by implication, thus protecting any involvement that she or close confidants may have in the case. [If she had not been involved at any level, she almost certainly would have been highly stunned by the allegations to say the least, and more than likely would have wanted, or needed, to be given further details (after perhaps a slight pause).]

One other note. Drewery Dyke himself was personally contacted by a longtime American expert on Iran, Evan Siegel (who is by no means an apologist), and Dyke was warned that the Taraneh Mousavi case seemed to be little more than a bad hoax, and that Amnesty may well find its well-crafted image tarnished by such revelations. After a very cursory initial reply, speciously thanking Mr. Siegel for his concern, Drewery Dyke then refrained from all further interaction and effectively derailed any future communication.

[ Satisfactorily disproven.]


* Du’a Khalil Aswad ; April 2007 ; Bashiki, Iraq.

This is the horrible, grotesque, and infamous case, as seen on CNN and other western media outlets, of the actual, real, rushed stoning of a 17 year old Kurdish girl of Yazidi faith (a pre-Islamic vestigial religion that shares many resemblances to early Judaism). Very sickeningly, the young girl was grabbed by her father and thrown to the ground as a group of other men gathered around and gruesomely proceed to hurl sizable rocks on top of her. At least four of the conspirators in her death were later arrested by the Iraqi police and eventually issued death sentences themselves.

Despite taking place in Northwest Iraq, up near the Turkish border (and nowhere near Iran), the video of the girl’s horrific death can still be found on many online sites that often intentionally, and egregiously, suggest that the episode took place in Iran. It might be remarked that the sites that bestrew this nonsense, seem to exist solely for the purpose of bashing the current Iranian government, or occasionally the Islamic world in general as well (even though Yazidism is about as close to Islam as Zoroastrianism or Manicheism).

But back in ‘merica, who’s the wiser? ‘All those Middle Easterners look alike, don’t they?’

[ Both death and 'stoning' verified. ]


* Afsaneh Rahmani ; May, 2009 ; Shiraz, Iran.

Iran’s supreme court confirmed that a renegade local judiciary had given a ’stoning’ sentence at the end of 2008. The woman had earlier been found guilty of murdering her husband along with the help of her lover, an event which took place just outside of Shiraz.

The lower court ruling in this case was of course blocked by the Iranian Supreme Court, and the ’stoning’ verdict thrown out. Her death sentence was reportedly nevertheless carried out by hanging in May of 2009. This was called a miscarriage on the part of the local court and angrily condemned by the Fars province lawyer’s council, since neither her lawyers nor the Human Rights division had been notified of the planned execution ahead of time as is required by law. Additionally it was claimed that the victim’s family did not have a chance to petition for ‘blood money’ compensation instead of ‘full retribution’. All in all, apparently at least a partial miscarriage of justice. Some sites errantly refer to Rahmani as having instead been stoned.

[ Death apparently verified, but 'stoning' disproven. ]


* Ashraf Kalhori ; — ; Tehran, Iran.

Another case that Shadi Sadr attempted to claim for herself (see Gilan Mohammadi and Ghomali Eskandari entry below for more on her). And like so many of these, this also features a woman who was ostensibly involved in an adultery affair that culminated with the death of her husband. This is also another instance of Ayatollah Shahrodi’s edict of ‘barring stoning’ in Iran having been successfully implemented, and some credit him as personally having stepped in. Kalhori was thus released from under the umbrage of a purported stoning sentence though a myriad of online sites still insist that this ‘37 year old mother of four’ is ‘about to be stoned’. Ashraf Kalhori is currently carrying out the rest of her 15 year sentence in Evin prison, though her lawyer is now seeking a full acquittal and dismissal of all charges.

[ Satisfactorily disproven.]


* Atefeh Rajabi Sahaleh ; August 2004 ; Neka, Iran.

Atefeh Rajabi Sahaleh was a young female who had been apparently hanged, (but not ’stoned’ as a few online websites still erroneously claim). Her age in most reports is given as 16, but the judge in this case, for whatever reason, ascertained the birth certificate to be fraudulent and her true age would have been at least 22 (unlike the U.S., under Iranian law, no one under 18 can be executed, for any reason).

No doubt, Atefeh had had a very hard short life. Her father was a largely homeless drug addict, and her mother died early on in a car crash. She was turned over at age 5 to her elderly grandparents, who had limited means and largely left her on her own. After dropping out of school, she turned shortly to drugs and prostitution. As she matured, she collected several top local officials among her clients (including one of the police chiefs). These were later referred to in subsequent court proceedings as ‘rapes’ because of her age (just as it would be in the U.S.).

From the age of 13 on however, she had been arrested and charged multiple times for both prostitution and the possession/selling of drugs On these occasions, she was sentenced to the customary ‘lashings’ and then released.

Born into extreme poverty however, she tended to fall back into old patterns. But then ‘rumors’ began to spread around the community that Atefeh had possibly contracted HIV/AIDS and was perhaps ‘knowingly’ spreading it. That’s when things turned really serious for her.

A signed court affidavit indicated that a local clinic had confirmed the diagnosis several months previous (detractors have suggested that the clinic had not been set up to handle or care for HIV/AIDS victims and thus ‘may not have tested accurately’). Nevertheless, this certainly seemed to contribute to the nearly unheard of sentence of death for ‘crimes against marriage’ (despite what one hears in the western press).

However, there is still much more strangeness around this case.

Atefeh had been sentenced to hang ‘publicly’, but when relatives and a couple family friends showed up, they were told that she had already been executed and the local judge had handled it himself. When relatives then asked to see her burial plot, they were directed to a grave that not only was found to contain no body, but possibly was too small to even hold one. [Very bizarre.]

‘Gossip’ quickly began to spread about the judge in the case, Haji Rezai, who some claimed had greatly overstepped his judicial bounds and ruled extremely inappropriately. He was also accused, by Atefeh’s remaining relatives in particular, of taking advantage of his position to actually contribute to her delinquency. Astoundingly, Rezai himself was later arrested, and charged with rape, abuse of power, and manufacturing evidence. [Now how often does that happen to a judge anywhere?]

What’s even stranger, though, is that Haji Rezai last year came out with a book, entitled ‘Mirror’, which, although perhaps semi-fictional, is an account of a court justice who has been accused of taking a young prostitute for a girlfriend, and so then contrives a hanging. He continues to communicate with her through her ‘reflection’.

[ Death seemingly verified (?), but 'stoning' irrefutably disproven. ]


* Azam Khanjari ; — ; Tehran, Iran.

A slightly different twist on the tried and true.

Azam was initially arrested for the murder of a man she had previously slept with. She claimed that she was instead a victim of rape and that the other man had videotaped the act only to later use the footage to blackmail her. The husband, Masoud, although directly implicated in the killing, later plead not guilty and was sentenced to five years, but released after serving only three. Azam initially was also sentenced to five years. Online sites continued to claim that she would be stoned simply for the d’alliance, whether forced or not. She was later acquitted after evidence came up suggesting that the victim, Mahmoud, had indeed perpetrated similar extortion attempts with other women.

[ Satisfactorily disproven. ]


* Azar Bagheri ; — ; Tabriz, Iran.

Yet another case courtesy of Javid Kian. According to ‘Rumor Mill Inc.’, Azar was arrested when she was 14, and has been languishing in prison ever since, awaiting her execution for ’stoning’. Why? Well, Kian doesn’t really tell us that either, but it seems to have to do with another extortion plot involving ‘fake adultery’. According to him she has nearly been ’stoned’ to death six different times. Recently the judiciary handed down a final sentence “of lashings”. But as Mr. Kian shamelessly cries ‘if the lashings decision is in fact struck down, she might still be ’stoned’ to death!’ (Uh-huh).

[ Satisfactorily disproven.]


* Ebrahim Hamidi ; — ; Tabriz, Iran.

This is the case that features the ‘imminent execution’ of a man for sodomy and thus for ‘being gay’ even though (wait for it) he’s not gay! Okay …

Mohammad Mostafaei called it a shocking outrage. And of course Amnesty quickly followed suit.

But seriously, what’s really going on here ?

Well, Ebrahim Hamidi and three other men apparently jumped and beat up a fourth guy, and er, sexually assaulted him (but none of them are gay). [Well, in some places this would have been called a 'rape' but whatever].

The other three then turned state’s evidence and all testified against Hamidi, saying that he had been the instigator and primary offender and they all sort of just begrudgingly went along with it.

So where does this now leave off ?

It’s somewhat unclear. While sodomy can, in extreme circumstances, be met with a hanging sentence (for instance forced sodomy, or rape, such as this), the accused party is usually just given lashings and sent home, or possibly incarcerated for awhile, then lashed and sent home.

Of course, this also being 2010, Amnesty International, along with Mostafaei, the rest of the Western press, and now various Gay Rights groups worldwide, all warn that Hamidi will be ’stoned’ to death at any moment.

[Too early to tell, but most likely overblown.]


* Hajieh Esmailvand ; — ; Tabriz, Iran.

As the ‘proactive’ online propaganda entities (masquerading as rights groups) frame it, Hajieh was raped, then beaten, then forced to wrongly confess to adultery, then sentenced to ‘death-by-stoning’.

It is also explained that because she was ethnically Azeri she therefore couldn’t understand Persian and so was made to give a false confession (the same tactic was used in the public ’send-up’ of the Sakineh Ashtiani case). At that point their story ends, leaving the impression that Ms. Esmailvand suffered a horrifying death. [How awful! How dreadful!]

The truth is pretty much exactly the opposite, however.

Firstly the number of Azeris who can’t understand Persian are roughly approximate to the number of Welshmen who can’t understand English. That’s right, there really aren’t any. Persian has been the national language now for centuries. Literacy in Persian is another matter, and there are a good few, especially out in the hinterlands, who are unable to read or write with a satisfactory secondary school equivalency.

Nevertheless, the facts in this case belie any transient ‘misunderstanding’ on her part. In 1999 her husband was murdered, reputedly by a man who was a ‘friend’ of Hajieh. She was arrested and charged as an accomplice. Although many may have suspected privately that an affair had taken place, she was convicted only of being an accomplice to the murder. Hajieh Esmailvand was sentenced to five years in prison. She was released in 2006 without incident.

[ Irrefutably disproven. ]


* Iran Eskandari ; — ; Ahvaz, Iran.

Ditto. Ibid. (etc.)

Eskandari and a neighbor’s son reportedly killed her husband after he had attacked them. She later admitted to having an affair with the son. Somewhat surprisingly she was only sentenced to five years in prison for being an accomplice. Several websites insist that she will be stoned after that sentence is served.

[ Satisfactorily disproven. ]


* Khayrieh Valania ; — ; Ahvaz, Iran.

Yet another instance of a woman having an affair with another man and then her husband winds up murdered, and the two are then charged with both murder and adultery. She was sentenced to death (hanging) for being an accomplice in the murder although she claims it was actually her lover who committed the act. Some claim that if the review board agrees with her, she will then be stoned for the adultery charge alone.

[ Too early to tell but most likely overblown. ]


* Kobra Babaei ; — ; Tabriz, Iran

Another trumped up case from the desk of Javid Kian, after he took over for Mostafaei in this case as well. Kobra Babei was supposedly sentenced to death by ’stoning’ for her role in an extortion plot undertaken by her husband. Ludicrous? Yes, thoroughly. The cloying public appeals by Kian and Amnesty International all hyped the absurd and never even touched on the real reasons for her apprehension.

Even two weeks ago they were still using the line: “she can be stoned any day now!”

Kobra Babaei was released from prison a couple of weeks ago.

[ Irrefutably disproven. ]


* Kobra Najjar ; — ; Tabriz, Iran.

Another Kobra from Tabriz. This is an older case featuring a prostitute (’forced into the trade by her heroin addict husband’) who asked one of her ‘johns’ to murder her husband. Apparently she arranged for the her husband to escort her the home where the murder would take place by telling him that she ‘had a very good client that night but needed a ride’. Najjar was sentenced to fifteen years in prison as an accomplice. Despite the edict barring stoning, several online groups insist that she was sentenced to only eight years in prison and that since she’s been in prison for nearly ten years, it’s evidence that they might be getting ready to ’stone her’. However, in Iran, an accomplice-to-murder sentence is either five or fifteen years, depending on the severity.

[ Too early to tell, but most likely completely overblown.]


* Maryam Ayubi ; July, 2001; Tehran, Iran.

Yet another instance of a woman charged with murder in the death of her husband and also with adultery, her co-conspirator in the case being Ayubi’s male lover. What’s typical though is that her apparent complicity in the act of murder is conveniently left out of nearly all of the Western reports. Out of a dozen some mentions by Amnesty International, only one (released a year after her apparent death) noted that Ayubi’s sentence had reflected a guilty verdict for murder as well as that of the much hyped adultery. According to both Amnesty and the Christian Science Monitor, this execution-by-stoning took place in 2001, in the middle of the Evin prison courtyard in Tehran. The Iranian judiciary denies however that she was ’stoned’.

There are problems with this case as well though, since originally the Iranian district court had claimed to have sentenced her to 15 years in prison. Later reports from sources inside Iran then stipulated that she was to be stoned followed by a 15 year sentence. Initially, Amnesty switched the reading around saying that she was given a 15 year sentence, to be followed by stoning. Western outlets later suggested that the 15 year sentence was merely conditional, based upon her surviving a stoning attack.

[ ? ? ? ]


* Maryam Ghorbanzadeh ; — ; Tabriz, Iran.

Almost identical to the Sakineh Ahtiani case. This case was recently taken over by Javid Kian as well, and suffers perhaps similarly from Kian’s more extravagant claims. Maryam Ghorbanzadeh either was or wasn’t found guilty of murdering her husband along with another, depending on who you talk to.

Among Kian’s counterclaims are that Ghorbanzadeh was locked in her own home for months at a time by her husband, yet somehow managed to get out every now and again enough to become involved in an affair with a lover. She then gets pregnant by her lover. Her husband is then murdered.

Kian insists that Ghorbanzadeh had no role in her actual husband’s murder, and that it was some third fellow who actually killed him. She and her boyfriend apparently made an honest-to-goodness ’sextape’ prior to the death of her husband [hello Enquirer? TMZ?] and according to Kian that had been the sole basis for the prosecution’s attempt to implicate her in her husband’s murder. Of course, the prosecution has simply insisted that the sextape only provided evidence of an ‘extra-marital affair’ between the two, and that the state’s evidence for murder charges against her is based wholly on separate factors.

Kian then claims that she was forced to have an abortion so that the prosecution could proceed with her execution [at six months?]. Kian also insists that she was to be ’stoned’ for the mere crime of adultery. He then changes this to ‘well, she was going to be ’stoned’ but due to the outcry over the Ashtiani case’, that decision has now been revoked.

[ 'Stoning' satisfactorily disproven, though death sentence possibly remains. ]


* Mohammad Reza Hadadi ; — ; Shiraz, Iran.

A more recent case, this was also initially trumpeted by Mohammad Mostafaei as another example of injustice about to be carried out. Mohammad Hadadi was purportedly convicted of murder at the age of 15, but since the execution of minors is prohibited by Iranian law, he was simply sentenced to life in prison instead. However, apparently due to poor intelligence on the case, Mostafavi issued warnings that he was about to be executed anyways. Once again this was transmitted to the Western press in the form of Urgent Action! releases (some even farcically claiming death by ’stoning’). Neither proved to be true, and much to Mostafaei’s credit he ended up issuing a statement last December pointing out that the whole thing had in fact, been a hoax. Apparently an entry had been forged that merely pertained to Hadadi’s being questioned regarding his sister’s apparent suicide.

Despite this, many online websites and various western publications are still, to this day, trumpeting Mohammad Hadadi’s impending execution (now by hanging). [ Poor lad.]

Anything to keep up the pressure though, eh?

[ Irrefutably disproven. ]


* Parisa Akbari ; — ; Shiraz, Iran.

A young woman who was reputedly sentenced to ‘death by stoning’ for being an active prostitute. Apparently it was she and her husband who actually ran the brothel where they and several others were arrested. Initially she confessed to adultery. She recanted and claimed that the couple had only been forced into the profession because of poverty. Although this sort of ’serial adultery’ can be met with a death sentence, Parisa Akbari was instead given lashings and released from prison in 2006 after serving only two years. Her husband, Najaf, was sentenced to exile in another city.

[ Irrefutably disproven. ]


* Shamameh Malek Ghorbany ; — ; Urmia, Iran.

This could be the poster case. A man who is reputedly having an affair with a friend’s wife is attacked by the jealous husband and the brother-in-laws. The man dies while in the woman’s house. The woman is variously made either a victim (apparently her brothers may have attacked her too), or an accomplice to the murder (she later claimed that she wasn’t having an affair and she admitted to adultery only to save her brothers and husband from the death penalty). After a court in Kurdistan initially sentenced her to ’stoning’, that decision was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2006. Some websites still list this case as being one that reflects an ‘imminent stoning’.

[ Satisfactorily disproven. ]


* Shiva Nazar Ahari ; — ; Tehran, Iran.

A civil rights activist who has been repeatedly arrested at demonstrations and observances, including the infamous, and massive protest, in commemoration of Ayatollah Montazeri following his death. On at least one occasion she was placed in solitary confinement for about a month. However, here in the glorious West (“freedom of the press”), the reports have become more gratuitously spectacular. One suggests that she was actually placed in a tiny cage. Another astoundingly claims that she was arrested merely for observing a candlelight memorial for 9/11. Still others suggest that she was sentenced to death, and may even be ’stoned’ (none of which seems to hold much water). However let’s hear it from Shiva herself, shall we?

All in all, it doesn’t sound much different from many such similar cases in the U.S. or Canada from the past few decades. [can you say: G20?]

[ Satisfactorily disproven. ]


* Soghra Mola’i ; — ; Kajar, Iran

It goes like this: a woman’s reportedly abusive husband is killed by her lover. She runs away with the boyfriend. She is sentenced to 15 years in prison and inclined to believe that she will be stoned too. Apparently there is some question however as to how innocent she actually claims and whether or not she was actively involved in the killing. She now says it was all his doing and that she ran away with him only because she was worried about staying behind. Her sentence was later struck down completely.

[ Satisfactorily disproven.]


* Zahra Rezai ; — ; Tehran, Iran.

After her husband, Majid, is found murdered, Zahra and another man, Hussein, are arrested for the crime. It turns out that Zahra was pregnant with the other man’s child and confessed to their involvement. However, after pleading that her husband wouldn’t give her a divorce and yet was only attracted to men and undesiring of her (and she later claims physically unable to perform his marital duties), she and Hussein were left with no other alternative but to ‘dispatch’ of him, which apparently Hussein undertook.

Initially they were both given death sentences, but this was later overturned and Zahra’s sentence was reduced to 15 years in prison, partially perhaps because she had just given birth and with two other children at home (which the authorities ordered testing on to determine next of kin and custody).

[ Satisfactorily disproven.]


* Abbas Hajizadeh and Mahboubeh Mohammadi ; May, 2006 ; Mashdad, Iran

Still another case that involved two ‘adulterers’ who killed the woman’s former husband. As one might now expect, initial reports conveniently failed to address the couple’s murder conviction and merely framed the story as ‘lovers to be stoned’. It should be noted too, that Mahboubeh was officially also given a 15 year jail sentence. Abbas, the boyfriend, is sometimes incorrectly stated to be a female.

What is additionally strange about the case is that the two were reputedly stoned ‘under cover of night’ in a cemetery in Mashdad. There were no outside observers and the only people present were supposedly IRGC and Bassij members who performed the executions. Iranian judiciary officials have of course denied the event ever took place, so we are left with people on the outside assuming that it did versus the state apparatus which dismisses the notion. Is it possible the two were hanged instead of stoned? Yes. Is it possible that something else entirely took place? Most definitely.

One other interesting fact is that Mashdad cemetery (at night) was also the place and setting for the reputed stoning of three men a couple of years ago, one of whom successfully escaped (and fled back to Afghanistan?), while the other two were never identified aside from possible first names. This last reputed ’stoning’ occurrence is also hotly disputed by the Iranian Judiciary.

[ Deaths possibly occurred (??) but too little information to determine the exact nature of the event.]


* Azar Kabiri and Zohreh Kabiri; — ; Karaj, Iran

These were two sisters that were purportedly to be ’stoned’ after the husband of one of them caught them in bed with another man (he had apparently secretly videotaped them).

Even though they were arrested in 2007 and sentenced to lashings, Zohreh the wife of the man who spied on them was also given a small prison term. Apparently, this part of the sentence was misunderstood and Amnesty and other groups voiced the probability that she would be ’stoned to death’. In fact, Zohreh was released from prison early and Amnesty was made to shift gears and claim that the stoning sentence had been overturned. Of course, Amnesty also speciously gave themselves credit for this ‘verdict’.

[ Both death and 'stoning' irrefutably disproven. ]


* Gilan Mohammadi and Ghomali Eskandari ; — ; Esfahan, Iran.

One more case of adulterers that ‘are about to be stoned’ as Amnesty stoically proclaimed. Their case was ‘discovered’ in 2008. Amnesty states initially that they had been arrested and charged in either 2005 or 2006. This estimate of initial imprisonment AI later moved back to 2003.

Very revealingly, it was divulged that “in January 2009 human rights defenders and lawyers Mohammad Mostafaie and Shadi Sadr attempted to become their legal representatives but were prevented from doing so by several prison and judicial officials.”

This was right about the time that Mostafaei began running around northern and western Iran like the proverbial chicken, looking for examples of ‘impending execution by stoning’, and attempting to ‘take on’ cases that he apparently had no legal claim to. At least, that is, until he was chased out of the country, and Javid Kian took his stead.

It might be noted too that Shadi Sadr is an extremely active ‘hitghlighter’ of stoning cases and has created or contributed to a couple of websites specifically devoted to the issue. Like Mostafaei and fellow sensationaliser, Mina Ahadi, she was ‘compelled’ to leave the country. Nevertheless, despite Sadr and Mostafaei’s attempted co-option of the case, Mohammadi and Eskandari did just fine with their original, local attorney, Ruhollah Mohammadi. They were both acquitted and released without incident in early October, 2009.

[Irrefutably disproven.]


* Jafar Kiani and Mokarrameh Ebrahimi; July, 2007 ; Takestan district, Iran.

The ’stoning’ of Jafar Kiani allegedly took place outside of a small village in Takestan district (between Qazvin and Hamadan) in early July, 2007, apparently performed in secret by a vigilante group allied with the local court. Reports claimed Mr. Kiani was first taken to one site and then later to another ostensibly to prevent interference but also more than likely to prevent the identification of the perpetrators. The implements thought to be used in the carrying out of ‘the sentence’ however are gigantic, far larger than the legally allowed size, and the photographic ‘evidence’ somewhat unconvincing, which n turn calls into question the veracity of the ‘execution’.

As the story goes, Kiani and his ‘partner’ Mokarrameh Ebrahimi, had fled their original villages and families, and even changed their identities, after some family member had gone missing. Ebrahimi, arrested and sentenced herself at the same time as Kiani, was later released from prison after serving eleven years of a fifteen year sentence..

The ’stoning’ verdicts had previously been halted by the head of the judiciary committee Ayatollah Shahroudi, who stepped in and ’stayed’ the execution only 24 hours before it was originally said to occur. He then called the earlier writ an unfortunate misinterpretation by the lower court judge in the case. Human Rights Secretary General Larijani referred to it not only as a ‘mistake on the judge’s part [but] a violation’. The most extreme inference possible would be that the act itself was carried out, but by a group operating rather outside of the Iranian legal system.

One other note: the aforementioned Shadi Sadr has stridently claimed to be the lawyer/spokesperson for Ebrahimi, when in fact legally that individual is Saeed Iqbal.

[ Semi-verified (??) for Kiani but disproven completely for Ebrahimi.]


* Fatemeh [Surname unknown] ; — ; Tehran, Iran.

Hokay, one more time. Fatemeh and a reputed boyfriend are charged with her husband’s murder. The way Fatemeh tells it, the husband and the other man got into a scuffle. After her husband was knocked unconscious, Fatemeh attempted merely to tie him up and restrain him until the police arrived. While binding his hands and feet, she somehow inadvertently stretched the rope around his neck as well. The husband died of strangulation. [Oopsie.]

Fatemeh’s friend was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for being an accomplice. Because she was the one who actually placed the rope around his neck, she was sentenced to death (hanging). She is now on death row awaiting a review of her case. Outsiders warn she is in imminent danger of being stoned.

[ Too early to tell but most likely overblown. ]


* Somayyeh [Saeida] ; 2008 ; Zahedan, Iran.

Radio Farda reported an attempted extralegal stoning by the family of a 14 yr old girl named Somayyeh (alternatively given as Saeida). This took place in Zahedan (Sistan & Baluchistan province), Iran in early 2008, and became a locally publicized honor killing. After the father and another man initially hurled some stones at her, Muhammad Sharif then chased his daughter down and shot her to death.

Apparently Mr. Sharif had abused his daughter for years and took offense when she started exhibiting ’suspicious’ behavior at school. His wife (and the girl’s mother) turned him in and he was arrested and booked on homicide charges.

[ Death independently verified, but 'stoning' disproven. ]


* Amina (?) ; 2005 ; Badakhshan province, Afghanistan.

No last name given, and no other details.

Amina was also the first name of a woman in Nigeria in a widely publicised 2002 case, who had been given a stoning sentence only to later actually be freed.

This case from Afghanistan is sometimes erroneously listed as having occurred instead in eastern Iran.

[ Unverified ]

One final little item to offer up here, if only because it perfectly exemplifies Amnesty’s endlessly sanctimonious ‘liberating’ [scourging?] of the truth. This tidbit comes from an overview of Iranian cases, issued just last year, that were ‘imminent stonings’: “An unnamed man and woman are also believed to be held under sentence of stoning in Tabriz Prison. Amnesty International does not have full details of their cases, but fears that they could be executed at any time.”

So there you have it. Insinuations of diabolical behavior and character, conveniently vague and cleverly timed. Note in particular the purported location. My guess is that AI is waiting for the facts to, ahem, ‘materialize’.

Then again, looking to Amnesty to exclusively play the role of international notary in human rights cases inherently allows for a third party manipulation of the information. By selecting what they choose to disseminate to the press, if they so desire, Amnesty is able to heavily filter what eventually then makes it to the public’s eyes and ears, and full blame perhaps shouldn’t then be placed on the media alone. The complicity in this intentional obfuscation obviously often resonates much further up the line.

[For those that recall the Ted Geisel story of 'Horton Hears a Who', picture Amnesty International in the role of Horton the elephant, for indeed Amnesty has managed to successfully maneuver itself into just such a position. Following the climax at the end of the tale, all of Horton's neighbors are finally given to believe that Horton indeed has these tiny friends that no one else could hear or see. But now transmute the story a bit into a present day mode of reality. If Horton saved many lives in 'Whoville' before, he may now be in a position to do so again and would also be given the credibility that should make that task much easier. Horton might then be recognised as the sole translator and empowerer for the disenfranchised. An extraordinarily powerful position in fact, especially if someone wished to harvest that power, and use it for personal gain, perhaps in a usurper role. But suppose if someone were able to successfully 'play' Horton. Would his audience satisfactorily remain none the wiser? More than likely. And what if the usurper or Horton himself turned particularly nefarious?]


What’s Good for the Gander ?

Okay, let’s pause for a moment and consider a reversal of roles shall we?

See, back here in the U.S., there are a LOT of atrocious murders, several every day of the week, as anyone who watches local or cable news will testify.

In fact, America’s culture of perverse societal violence has made it rather world famous in this regard. You have your dunkings & drownings, spousal stabbings, baby bludgeonings, political ‘hits’, corporate conspiracies, gang-bang drive-bys, school & office massacres, the occasional occasions of vigilante violence out in ‘the sticks’, and heck even the regular old serial killer or two. [D²]

And oh, did I mention? Many, many, instances of shooting deaths.

The element of sensationalistic macabre (or ‘criminal intrigue’ as it’s known to the Nancy Grace crowd) plays itself out nightly on the ‘tube’s’ non-news programs as well. From deferential docudramas that gratuitously revisit old horrors, to gore-glorifying Hollywood super thrillers, crime culture, with all of its lurid violence, has become virtually intertwined into the fabric of American society. And yet, we as a nation, are to complain about how another country or culture goes about punishing or reforming a few of their offenders?

Additionally, the United States Military Machine, at the behest of the President, and occasionally Congress, has killed literally millions of people in just the last few decades alone, primarily through its national invasions across the globe. Needless to say, many of those permanently eliminated through this country’s ‘police actions’ and military interventions were in fact fully ‘innocent’ civilian ‘non-combatants. [If not most.]

Nice President Obama has now also approved a new law that gives him the power, literally, of life and death. By the stroke of a pen, any American can now be removed from this world. No trial. No jury. No lawyer. No conclusive evidence even needed, or determined. Just the President’s say so.

Depending on the particular state involved, there are also plenty of government-sanctioned (and yes, mandated) executions in America, where the accused luckily do have access to a trial, or at least a semblance of one.

In some years in fact there have been quite a few of these capital punishment ‘follow-throughs’.

Over the last five years alone more than 200 such state-sanctioned executions in the U.S. were carried out. Since 1990, 18 juvenile defenders have been executed in the U.S., more than any other country in the world. In that same time span, 6 were executed in Iran, all 17 years old (which had been the previous ‘legal’ age, until that was amended to 18 years in 2003).

Above we looked at some 25 to 30 individual cases in Iran, primarily of women who at one time or another in the last decade were potentially on ‘death row’. These cases have been singled out by the Western media (and rights groups) as being conclusive proof of the barbarity of the ‘Iranian regime’.

There are some 74 million people in Iran, and we are left to focus on approximately two dozen cases. Anyone want to take a hankering as to how many women sit on death row back here in Los Estados Extremos? I’ll give you a hint. The number stands at around 50 for any given year. Sure, ‘we’ use poison, aka ‘lethal injection’ as the favorite form of dispatch, instead of more primitive forms like ‘hanging’ or ’stoning’, but ultimately do you think it makes that much of a difference to defendant? Either way they will soon cease to exist.

Why, in just a couple short weeks, back here in Yankee Doodle-land, an ‘at risk’ female is scheduled to be put to death, down Virgin-iay way.

Theresa Lewis apparently had asked two men to kill her husband for the insurance money. There is some debate though, over whether or not she even planned the thing and how involved she exactly was, since by the prosecution’s own admission she was not tied to the scene of the crime herself.

According to one of the actual killers (who himself only received a life sentence), she wasn’t even the one who ‘conceived’ the plot. Nope he now says it ’twas he.

It should be mentioned too, that there has been some discussion among professionals about whether or not Theresa might be conidered a ‘mentally handicapped’ individual. [Personally I think anyone that kills or abets the taking of life, is mentally deranged. It's a no-contest kinda thing.]

But oh yes, speaking of affairs, adultery seems to have been a contributing factor as well. She evidently ‘hooked up’ with one of the two men, and it may have been this act in particular that helped seal a guilty verdict and thus usher in the sentence of death. [Sound at all familiar?]

But has there been an international outcry and condemnation by various NGOs, Celebrities and Heads of State for Theresa Lewis?

Did the religious zealots, social conservatives, or bleeding hearts in Iran (or any other country) get so upset as to call for street protests or letter-writing campaigns or stepped-up sanctions or perhaps even military action against the shamefully unjust nation known as the ol’ U.S. of A.?

Has there been any mention of the Theresa Lewis case at all by Amnesty International?

That would be a firm negative on all three counts.

Then just last year an Arizona woman was charged with solicitation of oral sex and given a two-year prison sentence. After only a few days though, Marcia Powell then died, amidst her own excrement and 107° heat, after being kept in an outdoor ‘holding’ cage and refused access to even a lavatory.

It doesn’t quite have the scintillating factor of a ’stoning’ but hey it’s ‘Justice … American style’.

And oh yeah, despite a certain amount of notoriety given to the case amongst the regular press, Amnesty once again refused to even comment on it. And they had previously been well notified that the practice of moving prisoners to these outdoor holding cells unprotected from the elements is commonplace in several states.

Additionally, there’s the case of Aafia Siddiqui, a former Boston-area neuroscientist who, while visiting relatives in Pakistan in 2003 was seized off a Karachi street, along with her three young children. More specifically, her taxi was forced off the road by several vehicles as it was heading to the airport.

Her captors were suspected to be Pakistani military figures working for the U.S., but Pakistani military sources instead pointed the finger at third party agents working for the U.S. (contractors? CI A? FBI?). Nothing was heard from Aafia for five years until she happened to show up in an interrogation room at a U.S.-supervised ‘police’ compound in Ghazni, Afghanistan with a couple of rounds of gunshot in her belly. [hey I wonder if she got to know ol' Drewery while in town?]. She was summarily charged with trying to grab a gun from one of her many interrogators and/or flee.

It was later discovered that she had actually been held as a prisoner in Afghanistan, ever since her abduction in 2003, and moved around from various detention centers, though evidently interred primarily at Bagram Air Force base, where she became known as the ‘grey lady of Bagram’.

Her relatives and her attorney have charged the U.S. military, or agents working for them, not only with her kidnapping, but also with beating, torturing and raping her repeatedly for five years.

She was briefly reunited with her eldest son who just happened to also be ‘hanging around’ Bagram.

Her youngest child, an infant, sadly, was apparently murdered by the family’s abductors during their ‘capture’. A third child, a daughter, was missing until just this April, when a now-11 year old girl was dropped off outside a relative’s house in Karachi. Nobody recognised her, and the only language the girl now spoke was American English, but she said her name was Maryum. DNA tests have seemed to confirm that she is indeed the missing daughter.

Her eldest son, who is now staying with relatives in Pakistan, described their initial captors as being ethnically both Pakistani and American, but it was American soldiers in uniform, who quarantined and interrogated him, over the following years, until he was eventually sent to a children’s prison, also in Afghanistan.

Aafia Siddiqui herself, was then transferred to a prison stateside in Brooklyn, New York, in 2008, where she has been serving ever since. She was convicted of the attempted murder of American servicemen, despite nearly all of the evidence being rather transparently manufactured and after-the-fact. Even though not one serviceman was injured, nor even proof that she discharged a gun, Aafia was just given EIGHTY-SIX years in the slammer, most of which you can bet will be in the form of solitary sequestration. That folks is effectively a life sentence, even if she gets ‘time off’ at some point for good behavior.

Now, maybe you’re wondering if the good folks at Amnesty International have been as outraged about this as a few independent rights activists are?

The answer is, no, not hardly.

Despite the notoriety of the case, Amnesty has been extraordinarily silent. Over several years, including all the time that Aafia went missing, they gave only a couple of passing references to her case. No ‘URGENT ACTION!’ memos. No press conferences. No public excoriating of the ‘Bush/Obama regimes’.

Amnesty did promise to send an ‘observer’ to her hearing in February. But did anyone from that ‘esteemed’ organisation even show up? Not according to her attorney. [But mebbe they wuz just hiding behind a curtain and no one could quite see them.]

Then again, they’re not the only ones to take sides in the war of propaganda.

Most of the mainstream media, if they mention Aafia’s case at all, routinely employ the words ‘Al Qaeda suspect’ and ‘terrorist’ in connection with her name, if it indeed ever even comes up.

The ‘publicly authored’ Wikipedia entry on her is very nearly an exercise in agitprop fiction as well, and attempts to circumscribe a good deal of guilt through heavily contrived association. The entry brashly claims that the Americans made her an Al Qaeda suspect after she had entered a second ‘marriage’ to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew. Logic that is appreciably baffling since such a marriage (which her family denies utterly) could only chronologically have taken place after she had already been kidnapped from Pakistan.

Not even the ‘photo’ displayed on the wiki site is really even of her. It’s instead a heavily altered composite, what the FBI had created for their ‘wanted poster’, using parts of an old driver’s license photo along with other images that they managed to gather or create (while she was custody). Incidentally both the creation of the poster and U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft’s subsequent proclamation that Aafia was ‘the world’s most wanted female terrorist’, occurred a year after she had already been taken off the streets and remanded into U.S. custody. [Talk about contriving your villains.]

But why just grab some dual national, a female with children at that, off the street, and then interrogate and torture her for five years (or alternatively, as some have postulated, force her to submit to intelligence work for a portion of that time)? The claims that she had been an Al Qaeda terrorist were obviously false, especially after all mention of those charges had been auspiciously dropped before her case even went to trial. [And it's not as if the U.S. didn't have plenty of time to try to get that information out of her, either.]

There is some telling evidence however that she may have indeed been privy to some very revelatory classified evidence gained prior to her family’s abduction in 2003. Ms. Siddiqui loudly proclaimed in the courtroom, that she had acquired information on the U.S.-based, non-Muslim, group that had actually committed the 9/11 atrocity and that she desperately needed to warn ‘nice’ President Obama of future attacks that had been planned.

Nice President Obama obliged her, right?

Um, yeah, nice thought.

Well, we’re all doing our part in this ‘war on/of terror’, right?


A Bird (Stool Pigeon ?) on the Wire

One more Iranian case that should be addressed, if only because it successfully manages to utterly blur the lines of victim, perpetrator, and informant, is that of a now Western journalist, who ‘covered’ the “Green Revolution” [that was not], and was then arrested for his efforts.

This gentleman is one Maziar Bahari, a former Iranian, who became a successful journalist and filmmaker after moving first to England and then to Canada.

After fleeing from Iran in 1983 to evade their military draft (and from having to fight on the front lines against Iraq), Bahari initially wound up in the UK and began working for the BBC. After a few years engaged as a Western-based reporter and filing stories on Iran, Bahari then began directing his own films, most of them documentaries that supplied a ‘message’. His first film, ‘The Voyage of the Saint Louis’, was a documentary on the ship filled with Jewish refugees of Nazi Germany which had been stunningly refused entry by Cuba (and by proxy, the U.S.) in 1939 and returned to Europe.

Some of his other works have include a story on the hardships faced by HIV-positive men in Iranian society, and another on a real-life serial killer in Iran.

Bahari then moved to Canada, gained a correspondent job for Newsweek, and started churning out more politically inspired stories on Iran.

Even though Bahari and his English wife maintained homes in London and Toronto, he was still producing films on Iran and acting in the capacity of Iranian correspondent for various Western publications, including Newsweek. [He hasn't always been known for the most, um, accurate interpretations of topical material, though.]

Just prior to the Iranian elections of a year ago (and the disturbances that immediately followed), Bahari was again sent off to Tehran in the role of lead ‘correspondent for Newsweek. However, when he seemed to perhaps take a more active part in the creation of the stories that he was reporting, the Iranian authorities decided to take him in and charged him with being a foreign spy and potential provocateur. According to Bahari, they had claimed that he was working as an agent for the CIA, MI6, Mossad and Newsweek, and had him sign a ‘false confession’ admitting so. [Well, we do know for sure at least one of these is true.]

The Iranians, very rightly should be concerned, though. It had been the CIA, with help from MI6, who overthrew the government of the popularly elected Mohammad Mossaddegh in 1953 and replaced him with a fascist (but Western-friendly) government, and shortly established the Shah as the figurative head of a pseudo-monarchy. How did they manage this? According to the CIA themselves, they worked through the two embassies to pay-off street thugs, rabble-rousers and fascist elements within the military, to create demonstrations and riots that would seem to show an undermining of support for Mossaddegh. [Sound familiar ?]. Also employed in this fabrication of a ‘popular uprising’ were journalists as well as a small number of clerics. Selected members of the military were then paid-off to arrest Mossadegh, and either imprison or execute many hundreds of his close supporters.

It was then the Mossad, with a bit of help from the CIA, who were next responsible for setting up and training the Shah’s notoriously brutal secret police, the SAVAK.

So was Bahari in fact aligned with entities other than Newsweek and the BBC?

It wouldn’t be surprising if there were other intelligence tie ins. Both Newsweek and the BBC have long and active roles in spook history.

The infamous Arnaud de Borchgrave was actually fired from Newsweek in the early 1980’s for keeping dossiers on other employees. Borchgrave, who later became editor-in-chief at the Unification Church-owned Washington Times, had also laundered the ‘Kenneth Joseph’ story just before the Iraq War in 2003. This silly tale about a peace activist who went to Iraq with intentions of being a human shield, only to change his mind once he saw how the Iraqis actually wanted an invasion, was later found to be a complete hoax. Ditto with the co-authored stories about Billy Carter cavorting with Middle Eastern terrorists just before the 1980 U.S. presidential elections. Borchgrave, by his own admittance, had intelligence connections not only in the U.S. but also with the British and Italian services.

He’s not the only one.

In the late 1990s and early 2000’s, ‘Operation Mass Appeal’ was used by British intelligence to produce disinformation within the media, especially in the implantation of artificial stories concerning Iraq, which were then to be picked up by reporters working for the BBC, Telegraph, Guardian and others.

A spinoff of ‘Operation Mass Appeal’ was ‘Operation Rockingham’, which very specifically targeted the dispensing of fallacious stories about weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) in Iraq.

The CIA’s forerunner to these, the more famous ‘Operation Mockingbird’ from the 1950’s, used much the same general modus operandi. Mockingbird had been implemented by way of contracting numerous publishers and their reporters to plant bogus stories in the media, both domestically and overseas, to help sway public opinion. The operation effectually aided the successful overthrows of the Arbenz government in Guatemala and the Mossadegh government in Iran, as well as attempt to produce positive spin for the decidedly negative outcomes of a couple notable failures.

There’s also this report from none other than the legendary Carl Bernstein :

“At Newsweek, Agency sources reported, the CIA engaged the services of several foreign correspondents and stringers under arrangements approved by senior editors at the magazine.”

And :

“When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes”

Possibly most damning though, Deborah Davis, the former NYT reporter, wrote a wonderful tell-all biography on Phil’s wife Katherine in 1979, titled “Katherine the Great”, which yielded a lot of great information. One quote which is particularly memorable features a conversation between an unnamed CIA operative and Philip Graham himself, concerning Operation Mockingbird :

“You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.”

[very quickly, two important asides: Phil Graham himself had been a member of the U.S. intelligence services shortly after he joined the military. Secondly, Newsweek's ownership has now since passed from Katherine Meyer Graham's family to that of Sidney and Jane Harman (yes, the strongly Zionist congresswoman who sits atop the House subcommittee on Intelligence & Information Sharing).]

Sadly though, there is probably no lack of ‘presstitutes’ ready to clandestinely sell out their reputations and offer themselves up to The Agency just for a few Franklins and a pat on the back. Just might noticeably help their careers even.

Not to get too sidetracked, one of the western ‘correspondents’ whom Maziar Bahari admitted passing ‘intelligence’ information to was none other than Jason Jones. Probably most well-known for his occasional appearances as a political ‘reporter’ for The Daily Show, very interestingly, Jones was also one of the producers of ‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’

‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’ was a Hollywood-budgeted movie, purportedly based on a ’stoning’ incident that may or may not have occurred in Iran some thirty years ago. There’s no evidence that it actually ever did take place, only apparently hearsay testimony reported to a traveling author who also happened to be a Bahai activist. Filmed in Jordan, and produced entirely by Americans of non-Iranian descent, the film was roundly criticised even by many ex-patriots living abroad, as being purposefully confrontational, and overwhelmingly inaccurate in its portrayal of Iranian society. It was released simultaneously with the post-election ‘popular uprising’ of a year ago.

Additionally, the rest of the movie’s production team consisted almost exclusively of the upper management of MPower, an ‘activist’ Christian media organisation.

So what does a film producer’s role actually involve? Well it can literally be anything that noticeably furthers along the completion of the project as a whole. Much of the time however it translates as somebody who either acts as a conduit for financing (the bagman), or gathers together ‘the talent’ and sets up the proper connections (often international) that need to be made.

It would seem that Jason Jones himself, is not wholly unfamiliar with the world of propaganda.

So what kind of information did Bahari pass to Jones? Well, according to Maziar, “I met with Jason Jones and his producer in a hotel where I was editing a documentary, and I gave them a list of people they could talk with.”

Okay.

Now let’s entertain some very important insight from Carl Bernstein, once more:

“The peculiar nature of the job of the foreign correspondent is ideal for such [Intelligence] work: he is accorded unusual access by his host country, permitted to travel in areas often off-limits to other Americans, spends much of his time cultivating sources in governments, academic institutions, the military establishment and the scientific communities. He has the opportunity to form long-term personal relationships with sources and—perhaps more than any other category of American operative—is in a position to make correct judgments about the susceptibility and availability of foreign nationals for recruitment as spies.”

Bahari was locked up for about four months and then kicked out of Iran. However, he claims that the IRGC tortured him as well and it was only through the clandestine intercession of the spirit of Leonard Cohen that he was ’saved’. [yes, that would be the famous Jewish folk singer, who, um, is still alive.]

Insipidly, in just April of this year, Amnesty International issued a press release, stating that Bahari’s life once again was in danger. They claim that someone in his family had received a possible death threat on his behalf, from someone who may or may not have been an Iranian official.

Reading the actual supposed threat though, one is instantly given the notion that it is vague at best, and more tellingly, fairly anonymous :

“I’m calling from the court… Tell Maziar that he shouldn’t think we don’t have access to him because he is not in Iran … The situation is getting dangerous now. Anything can happen without advance notice.”

That’s the ‘death threat’. A conveniently spliced and edited statement that reads more like a traffic violation.

On the other hand, if one were an Iranian court official who might want to send a strong warning, they should have made sure that the intended audience knew who was telling them this, and then back it up with some forceful wording. Hiding behind a guise of dubious affiliation succeeds only in transmitting a rather lukewarm and unconvincing ‘taunt’.

However, if one were only interested in creating the illusion that a threat had been made, for the benefit of gaining attention from third parties, then it would be better if only an ephemeral impression had been made that they were a court official. Anonymity should be especially valued in this regard.

Amnesty’s press release, though brief, was asininely malleable with what they chose to illustrate as fact. “Maziar Bahari was detained as a prisoner of conscience [untrue, he was detained for spying ] after the disputed presidential election in June 2009 but left the country after his release. … He has lived abroad since his release and has spoken out against the ongoing human rights violations in Iran, and called for the release of prisoners, particularly journalists. In an article in Newsweek after his release, he said that he was warned not to speak of his detention.”

Again this disingenuously makes it sound as if he had been in Iran up until his release, although he’d actually left Iran in 1983, and lived abroad ever since, only to periodically return in the capacity of foreign correspondent and filmmaker.

Even more ludicrous though was Amnesty’s issuance of the memo under the category: URGENT ACTION!, and instructing readers to promptly send letters to Ayatollah Khamanei to stop whomever(?) it was that was submitting these tepid, quasi-threats against him. The likely Iranian response to any letters received, would have likely been, ‘Are YOU Kidding ?!?’

No, dear Amnesty member/donor/reader/press publicist, the crux of the blatant propaganda missive is not to call for ‘protection’ for Mr. Baheri, nor is it even to petition the Iranian government regarding ‘human rights’, it is simply to keep you firmly gripped with a sense of incredulity and outrage at ‘that horribly tyrannical Iranian regime’. Those emotions will indeed come in quite handy, for any invasion of Iran that they might need public support for. [Thank you for doing your part.]


Weaving the Tawdry Tapestry Tighter

And now we have the latest round of purposeful disinformation emanating from the largely “Liberal” media in the West. ['Neo-Liberal' perhaps? 'Neo-Zionist'? 'Neo- Orwellian'? It's multiple choice and there is no wrong answer.]

There were three new releases in the past few weeks, each possibly more preposterous, and obviously fabricated, examples of journalistic ‘privilege’, than what we’d occasioned to see prior.

The first two instances again feature Sakineh Ashtiani.

In an appallingly absurd piece of pseudo-Journalism, The Guardian (UK) claims that they managed to get an ‘exclusive’ interview with Ashtiani, apparently smuggled out of her jail cell. Since they can’t use Mostafaei/Mostafavi as a source anymore (he is now ‘chilling’ in Norway), the interview was conveniently conducted ‘through an intermediary who cannot be named for security reasons’. The interviewer themself, now chooses to remain anonymous. [Taking investigative journalism cues from 'Vicky Pollard' now, are we?]

Of course, it would make ever greater sense for the intermediary and the interviewer to actually be one and the same entity. Logistically speaking anyway, it should surely make any operation much easier.

But how does one exactly go about conducting a threeway secret prison interview, though? Cloak oneself in a Purdah and parachute into the prison? Pay a couple guards off, maybe one to protect and the other to translate? Tape a tiny condensed two-way microphone onto a spider and coax it to crawl into her cell?

Or just sit back in your London office and say you did.

Preeminent among especially notable past Guardian writers who might entertain to push through such an endeavor? Well, there’s Drewery Dyke for one. Obviously however, other eager ‘facilitators’ exist on the Guardian staff as well.

But why else would the interviewer themself now hasten to remain anonymous? The public insinuation by The Guardian would seem to be a worry that their informant would be exposed, which is understandable. But the individual who interviewed the informant? Why their sudden anonymity?

There are only a handful of options:

1.They are paying off a guard or prison official to give them (dirty) information, and obviously can’t divulge either the guard/officer’s identity nor the relationship with the interviewer. The glaring difficulty with this possibility is that some of the things Ashtiani is reputed to have said are just absurd to begin with (’don’t let them stone me in front of my son’) and bear no relationship to reality.

2.The interviewer is Houtan Kian and there is no intermediary. The problem with this scenario as we’ve already discussed however is that Kian, despite what is printed in the western press, is not even getting close to Ashtiani, since he’s not her lawyer to begin with and the Iranian judiciary is fully aware of this.

3.The intermediary is Kian (who is left to fabricate Ashtiani’s ‘dialog’) while the interviewer is Dyke and Drewery realizes that he can’t afford to implicate himself that closely in the intelligence ‘doctoring’.

4.The entire story (including interviewer/intermediary) is an utter fabrication.

The story itself, though, brings up all the old, sordid, and now thoroughly renounced, charges of ’stoning’, and of her even being found innocent of the initial murder charge. To reiterate once again, the Iranian judiciary has firmly insisted that ’stoning’ will not be part of any sentence, since it is itself a fully illegal act; and two, that Ashtiani was originally found guilty of the murder of her husband, not innocent, and although the second adultery charge was tacked on a short-while later, that was due to the fact that it was a separate (though largely inconsequential) case.

Amnesty, and select members of the Western media, and whatever agencies are behind the curtain, are now cynically depending on their pseudo-attorney-in-place, Houtan Kian to preposterously claim that there is no proof of her murder conviction, and, ‘oh hey look, the files on the earlier convictions are completely missing!’ [No you jackass, they are simply not letting you get anywhere near the files.]

In addition to this, The Guardian sensationally, and shamelessly, then outright invents the line that Ashtiani cried out “Don’t let them stone me in front of my son”, with all the journalistic integrity of a Weekly World News report on ‘Alien Elvis Babies’. [Pathetic.]

Once again they are cynically playing on the Western public’s own abyssmal lack of knowledge concerning Iranian culture, and unqualified, abject fears of the same. The inescapable reality however is that in other capital punishment cases, it has never been incumbent upon family members of the sentenced to be required to be on the premises as observers. This is an absolute fabrication of The Guardian. The truth is just the opposite, in fact.

Like the U.S., most executions in Iran have not been made public, and are instead attended only by a very small handful of legal and medical officials. Although there were several public hangings in Iran in the recent past, primarily in outlying provinces (and possibly one or two ’stonings’ by renegade lower courts), the Iranian judiciary formally banned all such public executions in 2008. Even in earlier times though, family members of the accused were never required to attend such an event, although they might have also not been prevented from showing up.

To reiterate once more, the Iranians have already said they have no intention of ’stoning’ anyone, and even during Sakineh’s most recent ‘admission of guilt’ on Iranian TV, not once is the possibility of ’stoning’ ever brought up. It is little more than an absurdity perpetuated by her two pseudo-’lawyers’, and/or whoever their handler is, or are.

Nevertheless, The Guardian grotesquely ends it’s recent report with the following declaration:

“Twelve women and three men have also been sentenced to death by ’stoning’ in Iran.”

[“The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.” - Joseph Goebbels]

And so we get the next preposterous report from The Guardian (UK), again referring to the Ashtiani case. They’ve seemingly been able to finally bring her son, Adjjad, around to their side (or, conversely, are just ‘borrowing’ his name). They’ve now effectively involved him in the ridiculous observation that she is about to be ‘lashed’ for the simple crime of having her images (that aren’t her) appearing in Western publications ‘without her headscarf on’, and her hair exposed. [WTF? Who is writing this material now? C-/D+ grade Secondary Schoolers? Drunk monkeys in Vegas? Drewery dear, tell your people that they've got to get better copy-producers than this.]

Ashtiani is safely ensconced in her prison cell, and has been for five years. I assure you, the Iranians are QUITE AWARE of this. How is she supposed to go out and have a wardrobe change/hair done? Or even sneak cameras into her cell to have ‘discreet’ pictures taken?

And the idiotic idea that the Iranians punish people just for having someone else misrepresent them somewhere off in a foreign land, is, well, fancifully absurd.

Luckily, even Mohammad Mostafaei has come out and rejected this latest bit of nonsense, and is now calling out a former Iranian Communist Party activist, Mina Ahadi, as being the sponsor of this latest fabrication. And only a few days ago, Ashtiani herself made another video appearance to deny the charges that she’d been lashed for an errant (and misattributed) photographic image.

But once again the utter B.S. is not really for the Iranian’s consumption, it’s for Mr. & Mrs. Sleepy Sheep back home in the U.S./UK. And whoever else that might be dimwitted enough to get lulled in.

The whole farcical episode is not unlike watching some old Italian Soap Opera with the English subtitles that appear on the screen being lifted instead from a bad ‘Spaghetti Western’.

Apparently, they just assume that no one in the West will bother to take the time to do any research.

More sickeningly though, most viewers of the mainstream media fundamentally just don’t really care. Even if their fatuous apathy and ignorance contribute to the extirmination of potentially thousands of innocent lives in the months to come.

The third newer tale was transmitted just a couple weeks ago via Afghanistan.

Evidently, two young lovers were ’stoned’ to death in northern Kunduz Province after they had planned to elope against their family’s wishes and arranged marriages. What a horribly awful story. They killed Romeo & Juliet, by GAWD!

Even the ‘renegade’ marionette himself, President Hamid Karzai, along with the region’s governor, had to come out and publicly say how appalled they both were at this occurrence of stoning, the ‘first of it’s kind in Afghanistan in years’.

But let’s look a little closer at this story too.

Who were the victims?

25 year old Khayyam and 19 year old Siddiqa. That’s it, no last names.

['How convenient'.]

You see, unlike Iran, whose society is largely closed to westerners and the foreign press, Afghanistan is not so much (at least since the invasion). Every Tom, Dick & Harriet from the BBC to CNN to Al Jazeera should be trying to get an interview with the victim’s families/conspirators.

Ah, but with no last names, that possibility is made unimaginably more difficult.

The northern Kunduz province, in fact, is one area in the nation that doesn’t even possess that many Taliban. Only about a quarter of the population is even Pashtun, who otherwise make up the overwhelming bulk of the Taliban fighters. The rest are Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen (the so-called Northern Alliance), none of whom is especially fond of the Taliban.

But from whom did the story supposedly originate?

A “40 year old farmer and Taliban sympathizer” in Kunduz province, named Nadir Khan.

Whether he is a Taliban sympathizer or even a farmer is in fact suspect though, because what is revealingly unstated is that Nadir Khan is also in the employ of a group called A.I.M.S.

What is AIMS? It is an information collecting agency. It stands for ‘Afghanistan Information Management Services’. They work with, um, “various NGO’s and agencies”.

It should be mentioned though that AIMS actually started as the ‘Project Management Information System (ProMIS)’ in 1997, “to undertake analysis and planning for operational activities as well as common programming for Afghan rehabilitation and development activities”.

Hmmmmm, Afghan ‘rehabilitation’ in 1997?

Oh yes, I guess I should remind everyone that Afghanistan was not invaded by U.S./NATO Forces until late 2001. Turns out that yes, ProMIS was actually set up in Islamabad (Pakistan) with ‘permission’ from the ISI and the Pakistani military, and jointly facilitated by the U.S. Departments of State & Defense.

Okay if you’re still not getting the connection, AIMS has an amazing number of employees who seemingly ‘moonlight’ at other jobs, especially for the Dept. of Defense (the U.S.). The ‘Pentagon’ in fact would seem to have dozens of such ‘double-duty’ staffers all working hard at AIMS. It is the goodhearted folk at AIMS, in fact, who have helped supply the U.S. military with much of their maps and field data, some of which were then also supplied to interested parties in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks ‘Afghan War Diary’ release.

A local Taliban spokesman in the region, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, quickly condemned the ’stoning’, stating that “the Taliban had no hand in this”, if it in fact even occurred in the first place. He then went on to state that examples such as this ‘are merely propaganda designed to defame the Taliban’.

But the Western intelligence, oops I mean, media, can always find its more agreeable talking heads when it needs to. Enter one ‘Zabiullah Mujahid’.

This second (quote, unquote), “Taliban spokesman” who happened to claim the ’stoning’ was ‘justified’, is little more than a conscious usurpation, or perhaps more correctly, a purloined identity, utilised by Western intelligence. ‘Zabiullah Mujahid’ in recent months has become a sort of local synthesis of the more infamous ‘Abu Omar al-Baghdadi’ and ‘Azzam al-Amriki’ type characters, at least in a propagandistic capacity.

His persona was based originally upon an actual Taliban liaison of the same name who may or may not even still be alive. A few years ago, at least one other ‘Zabiullah’ began to make ‘appearances’ as a spokesman. In this past year or two, the numbers of Zabiullahs have jumped considerably.

Ironically, sometimes as many as three different ‘Zabiullah Mujuahids’ will talk to the press concerning a particular story (and more or less simultaneously), all the while each claiming the others are the impostors. The ‘interview’ is nearly always done by phone and on only one known occasion, has (a) Zabiullah ever relented to doing a filmed interview. [This one video-taping, with a CNN 'reporter', features a smallish, somewhat stocky looking 'Zabiullah' seated with his back to the camera, a western hotel-like towel draped over the back of his head and neck.]

Whichever Zabiullah does the talking though, the information is frequently inaccurate. When a German convoy is hit by a roadside bomb, ‘Zabiullah’ calls in and declares Taliban responsibility for the ’suicide car bomber-driver’. [Huh?] When a top Taliban commander (Mullah Dadullah) is reported killed, one Zabiullah called in to say that he couldn’t be sure because the Taliban had dismissed Dadullah several months previously for insubordination. Another denied the report outright, while yet another called in to claim ‘vengeance will be ours’.

Classic disinformation. And yet, who remains the western media’s favorite ‘Taliban’ source for confirmation? Zabiullah Mujahid.

Not wanting to go too far ‘out of bounds’, I am nonetheless more than prepared to speculate that at least one of the Zabiullahs probably does not actually work for, or represent, the Taliban.

So did Khayyam and Siddiqa ever actually exist? It’s possible, but again some may understandably have considerable doubts. Amnesty International certainly says they did, at least until they were ’stoned’ to death. Amnesty’s page devoted to the case features a video link to MSNBC’s Hardball Q& A session with an Amnesty International spokesman. So there you have it. There’s the proof. Case closed. All summed up in a nice little fetid package. After all, Amnesty would never lie. Would they?

[It's interesting though how their desperately proactive spokesperson's willfully ingratiating gaze, is remarkably identical to that of the 15 year old Kuwaiti girl mentioned at the top of this article. Albeit without the tears of course.]

It should be noted though there has not been a single follow up piece issued in the weeks since the NY & LA Times both ran the original contrivation.

There could well be one piece of veracity hidden in the midst of the first (and only) report, though.

Ol’ Nadir Khan, I suppose, might really be a farmer after all (in addition to whatever other role he occupies). Nadir might well have a patch of ‘tomatoes’ somewhere.

Perhaps we should go ask ol’ Drewery?

Even though Iran is his now acknowledged forte, Drewery Dyke also has spent some time in Afghanistan helping gather information on local water use policies there.

So, he was clambering around the back hills of Afghanistan not too long ago, looking for, um, circumstances of water theft?.Okay, so big deal, right.

Water resource management policies, however, for those who may be unaware, are an extremely important, and touchy, security concern of the military intelligence sector. A recent U.S. Marine Intelligence report on potential global ‘hot spots’ again targeted water resource access, and state policies governing such, as one of the leading indicators of possible future disturbances. In fact, renewable water supplies have been an ever increasing concern, for nearly every successive year in the last two decades. Many forecasters in fact, have pointed to fresh water as being one of the single most important global resources in coming years, almost certainly surpassing that of gold or petrol (especially as alternative forms of energy are created).

So what is one of Amnesty International’s top human rights campaigners doing then taking time off to research and write rather ‘dry’ reports about water allocation? And for whom?

Exactly when it was that Dyke happened to conduct his research is not mentioned. But, as we noted earlier, Drewery had at the very least been in Afghanistan while in the employ of Amnesty in late 2005. Was he in fact moonlighting for someone (or something) else around this time?

Drewery’s analysis was released in 2008 as part of a comprehensive report on Global ‘Corruption’ by a little known agency called the ‘Transparency Institute’. [The group's support network reads like a Who's Who of all your big Western NGO's that serve as economic facilitators for global resource re-distribution (um, for the chaps back home). Fairly ironically, many of these groups also serve as intelligence-gathering networks for decidedly un-transparent agencies: The World Bank, US AID, Australia AID, Canada AID, the Centre for Private Enterprise, UK's Dept. for Int.'l Development, the European Investment Bank, the Gates Foundation, etc. … well, there's your transparency.]

Interestingly too, over half of the publication is devoted solely to the subject of water resource allocation.

So what sort of field operative would normally undertake an ambitious hydrological survey in the Afghanistan war zone? Well, one would think that normally that might be the providence of ProMIS/A.I.M.S. employees. After all, that’s one of the very reasons the agency was supposedly set up. But in reality this sort of research of a truly rehabilitative and structural nature was also left for a couple of other NGOs to take care of. The first organisation, called the Provincial Rehabilitation Team (PRT) first set up shop in Ghazni province in early 2005 and was ambitiously, if temporarily, involved there. The bulk of the PRT’s work had apparently been completed by the middle of 2005. It’s members, along with the obligatory military personnel, included several select ‘infrastructure experts’ from stateside, ranging from USAID to the USDA to the State Department.

Interestingly, an International Trade Policy document from 2006 reports that it was U.S. military agents, who had been in Ghazni a few months prior, initiating a ‘hearts and minds project’ and talking to the locals about the need to participate in local water projects and then gave them the cash to facilitate. “The money, intended for bridges, wells, drinking water, irrigation systems and other infrastructure projects, was supposed to convince the local Afghans that the foreign presence would benefit their country in general and themselves in particular.”

This ‘hearts and minds project’, as they called it, was later rather cynically coalesced into a military push called ‘Operation Mountain Fury’ executed later in 2006.

It turns out however, that earlier in 2005, it was the Ghazni PRT who had first interviewed the locals about hydrological concerns, though they too used the same approach and phraseology (’hearts and minds’) for their campaign. Strangely when interviewed, PRT representatives asked that their names not be divulged.

On the surface, it would definitely seemappear that Mr. Dyke has been working for entities other than Amnesty International. One might even confidently assume that there would be additional dual ‘agents’ involved as well.


The Hand that Feeds

It should be reiterated once more that NGO’s like Amnesty aren’t the only ones that help supply propaganda fodder. Some of the biggest chores of such disinformation are, of course, thrust upon the shoulders of our own beloved media giants.

Quite obviously, I doubt very much that Amnesty International, as an organisation, has decided to take it upon themselves to attempt the unilateral destabilisation of any one nation. Ditto with certain larger media alliances.

However, it’s also equally apparent that certain members of these organisations are, at the very least, actively going along with such a misinformation program. It’s not at all an accident that a few of the principals at these once esteemed institutions have become some of the more important public conduits of such purposeful ‘psychological’ warfare. It’s brilliant strategy really, when you think about it, if utterly deplorable in its intended repercussions.

But who is it really then, that’s behind all of this? Well, one should easily suspect the usual cadre of neer-do-wells that are, for good reason, generally are bandied about. That might of course include the CIA and the MI6, with perhaps a little occasional help from the Mossad. But does anyone actually have any convincing proof?

The short answer is YES, thanks especially to a small handful of very adept investigative journalists who have isolated some of the more essential tracings behind these specific operations.

All the way back in May of 2006, the Los Angeles Times divulged that the Pentagon had set up a work-group called the Directorate for Iran. This task force was headed by one Abram Shulsky, the former head of the Office for Special Plans (for Iraq), and utilised many of the same elements and principals in its staffing as had the particularly heinous OSP.

Journalist Peter Symonds accurately noted that the OSP was the especially notorious group “which played a major role in concocting the lies about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq”.

Farah Stockman of the Boston Globe then discovered that a separate Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG) had been set up by the Bush administration specifically to direct ‘regime change’ in Iran and Syria. The first in a series of articles, beginning in January of 2007, described how top officials of the White House brought together agents from the CIA, the State Department and the Treasury Department not only for the management of covert military operations inside of Iran, but also for “building international outrage toward Iran” by feeding disinformation into daily news cycles. A special subgroup of the ISOG in particular sought to foster ‘democracy programs’, “focusing on the State Department’s effort to provide secret financial assistance to dissidents and reformist organizations”.

The steering committee of the ISOG was headed up by such perennially villainous characters as Elliot Abrams (who helped implement the Iran/Contra affair of the 1980’s) and Michael Doran (neo-con strategist & former Israeli), as well as current Ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, and even Elizabeth Cheney. It was purportedly Cheney who directly oversaw the dissemination of State Department funds to opposition political groups in Iran, which just happened to gain a 10-fold increase in U.S. financial support between 2006 and 2008.

This was three years ago, folks. Two years before the appearance of the (ephemeral) “Green Revolution”. And roughly contemporaneous with the escalation of ’stoning’ reports coming down from such highly-regarded, ‘unimpugnable’ authorities like The Guardian and yes, Amnesty International.

Reports which, while not only largely unfounded, have now achieved veritable ‘onslaught’ status.

A few months later, also in 2007, ABC’s Brian Ross reported that then President George W. Bush himself had given the CIA clearance to implement the ‘black ops’ portion of the operation. The acknowledged motive being to destabilize Iran using “propaganda, misinformation, and financial manipulation”.

In 2008, Andrew Cockburn then divulged that Bush had just issued a second, fully regional and wider-encompassing ‘presidential finding’, allowing for even more funds to be divied amongst covert operations, both violent and non.

Seymour Hersh pointed out that several top democrats, including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, had also been involved in the highly classified ‘presidential finding’.

As Hersh also auspiciously noted, “Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field.” Hersh suggested that the plan would attempt to especially utilize ethnic minorities as a way to inflame tensions.

We certainly have seen that as well both in the cynical exploitation of Azeris in the Northwest, thanks to the Mostafaei/Kian nexus, as well as in the arming of Baluchis in the Southeast which have created violent hit-and-run style insurgency situations.

Some of the other recently highlighted human rights tales have notably targeted Kurdish, Bakhtiari, Hazara and even Judeo-Shirazi audiences.

Even though the ISOG was retired after its initial recommendations and planning, most of the intelligence apparatus, from the Pentagon to the State Department, is still very much in place and operationally in play. And not to mention that the ISOG was just one of several concurrent groups serving the overriding principle of Iranian ‘regime change’.

Additionally, and quite incriminatingly, there has been absolutely no evidence that President Obama, or his CIA director Leon Panetta, has ever rescinded or curtailed either Bush directive. Endorsement and execution of the Bush/Cheney/Abrams-contrived destabilisation plan has effectively therefore been fully continued by Obama, and both administrations are now inescapably complicit.

Has this sort of deliberate undermining been occurring across ‘the pond’ as well? You bet it has.

In 2006, the great veteran journalist, John Pilger, wrote in the New Statesman that “We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the secret intelligence service. In what was called ‘Operation Mass Appeal‘, MI6 agents planted stories about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction – such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All these stories were fake.”.

In 2007, senior members of the British American Security Information Council, identified certain anti-Iranian stories appearing in The Observer, The Guardian, and The Telegraph as acknowledged intelligence plants, usually undertaken by the MI6, something David Leigh (former comments Editor at the Guardian as well as Assistant Editor at The Observer), and former Brit intelligence agents David Shayler and Richard Tomlinson have all previously confirmed.

Before we take leave of the Intel-op hoax machine though, it might be wise to reflect upon some of the past disinformation that helped set up the massacres of millions of people and the destruction of nations.

Perhaps one even remembers the ’special’ circumstances surrounding the brave reporting that emanated from the danger zone in “Saudi Arabia”, back in ‘90/’91? You know, that which shortly followed the Dirty Tears affair, then the Desert Storm ‘Blitzkrieg’, and the subsequent media hysteria that gripped much of the entire world as Saddam’s bombs were supposedly raining from the skies?

If you don’t, here’s CNN’s Charles Jaco to present you with a formidable reminder :

“When a research team from the communications department of the University of Massachusetts surveyed public opinion and correlated it with knowledge of basic facts about US policy in the [MidEast] region, they drew some sobering conclusions: The more television people watched, the fewer facts they knew; and the less people knew in terms of basic facts, the more likely they were to back the [President's] administration.”

- authors Martin Lee and Norman Solomon in ‘Unreliable Sources’


FOR AN UP CLOSE & PERSONAL LOOK AT WHO SOME OF THE ‘PROTAGONISTS’ INVOLVED ARE, PLEASE SEE BELOW :

Drewery Dyke

Mohammad Mostafavi/Mostafaei

Maziar Bahari

Mina Ahadi

[No available images for Javid Houtan Kian]


“Privileged journalists, scholars and artists, writers and thespians, who sometimes speak about ‘freedom of speech’, are as silent as a dark West End theatre. What are they waiting for? The declaration of another thousand year Reich, or a mushroom cloud in the Middle East, or both?”

John Pilger “Iran: a War is Coming”

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