Sweden Advises Citizens Against Travel To Iran
The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has advised citizens against non-essential travel to the Islamic Republic because of the security risks to foreigners.
The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has advised citizens against non-essential travel to the Islamic Republic because of the security risks to foreigners.
The statement by Stockholm was issued on Thursday after the Swedish prosecutors requested a life sentence for former Iranian prison guard, Hamid Noury (Nouri), on trial in Sweden for his role in the killings of thousands of prisoners in 1988.
Sweden is probably worried that Iran may detain Swedish citizens to have more bargaining chips for the release of Nouri, who was arrested in November 2019 while visiting Sweden and charged with war crimes for his role in the execution of up to 5,000 political prisoners. Sweden used the principal of universal jurisdiction to arrest and prosecute Noury, because the alleged crimes amounted to war crimes.
According to the ministry, this means travel advisory with the purpose of visiting or tourism will be valid until further notice and covers the whole country.
The statement said law enforcement’s activities and interpretation of the law may violate international norms in the Islamic Republic and foreign travelers can be arbitrarily detained and prosecuted without clear reasons.
A Swedish-Iran scientist Ahmad-Reza Djalai faces the death sentence in Iran after he was arrested on trumped-up charges of spying.
Sweden on March 10 deported back to Iran two alleged Iranian agentswho were arrested for links to a terrorist plot, instead of putting them on trial, since it does not want more tensions in its relations with Tehran.
Tasnim news website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard said that the new "Kheybar Shekan" solid-fuel missile with a range of close to 1,500 kilometers was displayed for the second time this month.
The word Kheybar refers to an attack by early Muslims in 628 AD led by Prophet Muhammad on Jews living in Khaybar (Arabic pronunciation of Kheybar). The word Shekan means destoryer and Kheybar Shekan means "destroyer of Kheybar".
The ballistic missile Emad, with a range of 1,700 km was also paraded, as anti-Israeli banners installed by state organs covered major streets in Tehran and other cities.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami said on Friday that Israel was creating conditions for its own destruction with its "evil actions".
"Stop your vicious deeds. You know well that we are people of action and reaction. Our responses are painful. You create conditions for your own destruction. We will not leave you alone. Wait [for us]," Salami said during Quds Day in Tehran.
"You know better than us what will befall you if you take evil action."
The Revolutionary Guard Intelligence Organzation chief Hossein Taeb, a cleric, referring to "resistence forces" and Palestinians said that "Quds…God willing, will be freed soon" and Iran knows that Israel is in fear. Zionists, he said, have reached "the edge of the abys."
Messagaes in similar state-organized events are also directed at the supporters of the régime and feed the coverage in media controlled by the government.
Taeb also said that the "supporter of the occupyer of Quds, Ameirca is not in a good state. The arrogant and dominating power of America is declining," he said, and added that American leaders are lost amid numerous domestic and foreign challenges. They cannot free themselves from the humiliating situation they face in West Asia, and other foreign powers who might want to fill America’s shoes should learn the leasson, Taeb said.
The head of IRGC intelligence went on to say that "We will not také away our gaze from the enemy," and will watch their every move.
The commander of IRGC’s extraterritoral Quds Force, Esmail Ghaani also told the crowd at he Tehran Friday Prayer that the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini always supported the Palestinians and the Islamic Republic in its four-decade history tried to follow his teachings to "liberate Palestine."
He then praised the Lebanese Hezbollah, created in the early 1980s with planning and support by Iran’s nascent régime. Ghaani warned that "children of the Islamic Republic are present all over the world," and have organized "resistence fronts" everywhere.
Tehran calls all militant forces and groups that follow its policies and receive support the "resistence front."
A group of residents of the village of Saravan in Iran’s northern Gilan province started a peaceful protest on Thursday, but after police intervention, protesters began throwing stones. Five officers were injured and several protesters arrested.
According to videos circulating inthe socialmedia police used guns and teargas during the clashes.
Furious at the failure of the local authorities to close the gigantic waste landfill, people had been blocking the entrance of the garbage dump for more than two weeks to stop trash trucks from reaching the site.
Piles of stinking rubbish at the Saravan site now tower some 90 meters (295 feet) high, and according to estimates the volume of the waste exceeds one million tons while about a thousand tons is added to it daily.
Waste from the provincial capital Rasht and seven other cities has been dumped there for nearly four decades.
Protesters say the landfill, reportedly due to close next year, is causing diseases and health problems, and demand the site be closed immediately.
According to reports, officials have been promising to solve this problem for years but none of their pledges have been fulfilled so far.
The spokesman for Gilan province's waste management office, Javad Shafi'i, told the state broadcaster that some $4 million had been allocated to resolve the issue, including funding a "fertilizer and incinerator plant".
A report by Tehran Times newspaper said that poor waste management is causing environmental damage of around $1.7 billion annually.
Recently, Iran has seen several demonstrations over government mismanagement of environmental issues like the country's water crisis or building factories in natural heritage sites.
Earlier in April, a group of residents held a protest rally in southwest Iran against a project to transfer water out of Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari province, causing water scarcity in their region.
During the protest in the provincial capital of Shahrekord, people carried placards and chanted slogans threatening to take up arms against the ‘mafia’ behind the redistribution project.
Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, a traditionally water-rich region in the Zagros mountains, has seen its water resources decline due to both drought and projects to irrigate other arid regions.
Iran has been suffering from drought for at least a decade and this year officials have been warning of a further decrease in precipitation.
Moreover, controversy over an environmentally dangerous petrochemical project continues in Iran as some government officials have defended it despite an earlier ban.
The petrochemical plant in Miankaleh, northern Iran is planned to be built next to a nature reserve, which galvanized opposition by activists and citizens in the past few weeks. President Ebrahim Raisi came out against the project earlier this month and Iran’s Judiciary issued an order to stop construction until further studies.
However, the governor of Mazandaran province and the Friday Prayer Imam of the region strongly defended the project. The government of former president Hassan Rouhani in an apparently hasty move approved the petrochemical project last year and it obtained the oil ministry’s permission in an unusually fast-tracked manner.
