Russian FM Due In Tehran To Boost Energy Cooperation
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due in Iran on Wednesday for an official visit, Tass news agency quoted Russia's ambassador in Vienna as saying.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due in Iran on Wednesday for an official visit, Tass news agency quoted Russia's ambassador in Vienna as saying.
According to Iran’s government news agency IRNA, the visit is aimed at boosting trade and energy cooperation as the two countries grapple with Western economic sanctions.
Lavrov is scheduled to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Thursday and discuss expanding cooperation with the Eurasian region and the Caucasus, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said.
An exchange of opinion on a number of pressing international issues, including the Vienna talks to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as well as the developments in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Transcaucasus, Yemen and the Caspian Sea area will be discussed, the Russian ministry’s spokeswoman said.
Enjoying huge oil and gas reserves, the two countries are hit by sanctions that limit their ability to export their output. Last month, Moscow said Russia and Iran had discussed swapping supplies for oil and gas as well as setting up a logistics hub.
Earlier in June, Iran and Russia reached an initial agreement for launching a joint shipbuilding venture in the Caspian Sea region.
In January, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi visited Moscow, where he presented his counterpart Vladimir Putin with draft documents on a 20-year strategic cooperation that would cement collaboration.
The visit took place in an atmosphere of heightened public debate over the Raisi administration's emphasis to reach a 20-year deal with Russia similar to the 25-year cooperation pact with Beijing signed in March which became operational earlier in the year.
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Informed sources have told Iran International how the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) has been subjecting detained ecologists to physical and psychological torture.
The ecologists and environmentalists detained since 2018 have been accused of spying for foreign governments.
One of the sources who spoke to Shahed Alavi in his investigation, said IRGC interrogators had secretly filmed Tara Tahbaz, the daughter of one of the accused prisoners, Morad Tahbaz, at a café in New York and shown it to him in prison in 2018, threatening to kill Tara if her father did not agree to accept the scripted ‘confessions’ prepared by his interrogators. They also contacted Tara and made threats against her.
Dozens of the staff and activists of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF), including Tahbaz, were arrested by the IRGC in 2018 and charged with espionage and acting against national security.
Tahbaz who has Iranian, British, and American citizenship is serving a ten-year sentence on espionage charges. Many believe he is being held as a hostage to be used as leverage against the US.
Iranian authorities made a deal with the United Kingdom government in March to free two UK nationals held in Iran -- namely aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliff, businessman Anoosheh Ashuri, and Tahbaz -- but returned Tahbaz to prison after two days, using his American nationality as an excuse.
Torturing others to pressure a prisoner
Sepideh Kashani, one of the defendants in the case, was also subjected to severe psychological torture. Sources told Iran International that the IRGC arrested her sister and filmed her being interrogated in a prison uniform solely for the purpose of showing the footage to Kashani to make her confess according to their script.
Kashani’s husband and co-defendant Houman Jokar, was brutally beaten and then paraded in front of her covered in blood. Jokar sustained serious injuries, including a broken head and injuries to his face when his glasses were smashed onto his face.
In copies of her letters to authorities that another defendant, Sepideh Bayani,managed to leak to BBC Persian from the notorious Evin Prison in February 2020, she said her interrogators tortured and threatened her with sexual assault for over 1,200 hours during the eight months that she was held incommunicado.
Bayani said her tortures included listening to descriptions of others being tortured and executions for hours. Her interrogators also pretended on several occasions that they were going to inject her with paralyzing or lethal substances.
Nowhere to appeal
Eight of the accused -- including Tahbaz, Kashani, Jokar, and Bayani -- are currently serving a total of 58-years in prison. In a letter to then-Chief-Justice Ebrahim Raisi in 2019 and now Iran’s president, the families of the detainees urged him to stop the IRGC’s charges against them and the use of torture in forced confessions.
The founder of PWHF, Iranian-Canadian professor Kavous Seyed-Emami, who was also arrested died under suspicious circumstances in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran two days after his arrest. The accused who were tried behind closed doors often did not even have access to their court-appointed attorneys.
Based on interrogations by IRGC intelligence, judicial authorities claimed the accused had spied on military bases and activities in remote areas, including IRGC’s missile program, under the guise of monitoring wildlife and endangered species.
The IRGC made these claims despite the intelligence ministry’s admission that there was no evidence to support the charges. Isa Kalantari, head of the Department of Environment under President Hassan Rouhani, also confirmed lack of evidence to support such charges.
The IRGC has never presented any solid evidence for its claims. Two of the accused – Tahbaz and Niloufar Bayani – were forced under duress to make ‘confessesions’ against themselves and others but both retracted their confessions later.
