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An Iranian dissident living in Turkey says an Iranian court has handed her a one-year prison term for joining anti-government protests in Iran last year, when she says authorities detained and tortured her into making a false confession and tried to enlist her in a kidnap plot.

Speaking to VOA Persian from Turkey on October 28, 32-year-old Fatemeh Khoshrou said the Iranian judiciary sent her a digital notification of her one-year sentence on October 22. The notice, which she shared with VOA, said a Revolutionary Court in her western Iranian hometown of Khorramabad had issued the verdict after a trial in absentia on October 5.

The document showed that Khoshrou was convicted of multiple charges related to her involvement in the November 2019 nationwide street protests that were sparked by the Iranian government's sharp increase in subsidized gas prices. She was found guilty of disrupting public order by taking part in illegal gatherings, leading riots, collaborating with hostile groups and sending footage of illegal gatherings to hostile actors based in Turkey.

Khoshrou said she had been living in Turkey when she traveled to Khorramabad to visit her family in November 2019 and joined the protests that had spread to the city. She said authorities arrested her on November 16 and interrogated her at several locations for more than 60 days until freeing her on a $23,000 bail in mid-January.

The dissident said Iranian security forces had searched her father's home after her November 2019 arrest and seized her Iranian passport and Turkish residence card, preventing her from leaving Iran for months following her release. She said she finally returned to Turkey on August 22, shortly after Iranian authorities returned her travel documents to her.

In her first public comments about her November to January detention, Khoshrou said she was interrogated at Khorramabad prison and at a section of Tehran's Evin prison operated by the intelligence unit of Iran's top military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Khoshrou said her interrogators beat her repeatedly and threatened to arrest her family members unless she accepted their demands. She said they placed her in front of a camera multiple times to record forced confessions of crimes related to the protests and demanded that she help them to kidnap a man from Turkey in return for being allowed to go back there.

The dissident said the Iranian agents wanted her to lure the man to the Turkish-Iranian border as part of the alleged kidnapping plot.

"They tortured me so much mentally and physically that I accepted whatever they said," Khoshrou told VOA.

There has been no comment from Iranian officials about Khoshrou's case in state media in recent months.

VOA has withheld publication of details about the man whom Khoshrou said is the target of the Iranian agents out of concern for his safety.

It was not clear if Iranian authorities allowed Khoshrou to return to Turkey in August with the expectation that she would help them to abduct the man and return him to Iran. Since her return, the dissident said she has refused to cooperate with such a plot.

Khoshrou also said she has been given 20 days from receiving notice of her one-year sentence to file an appeal.

Iranian security forces killed hundreds of people in the November 2019 protests and arrested thousands more in a violent crackdown on the mostly peaceful demonstrations.

This article originated in VOA's Persian Service.Click herefor the original Persian version of the story.

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Turkey-Based Iranian Dissident Says Iran Sentenced Her to Prison for Protesting in 2019 - Voice of America

Accusations of sexual assault against one of Iran's most celebrated visual artists are making waves in Toronto's Iranian community with many saying they represent a critical moment not only in the burgeoning #MeToo movement inside Iran, but alsoan opportunityforcommunity leaders abroad to take a stand against a culture of impunity they say has too long shielded perpetrators at all levels of power.

Last month, The New York Times released a report detailing multiple allegations of sexual harassment, assault and misconduct against Aydin Aghdashloo, 80, a prominent Iranian contemporary painter.

The report cites interviews with some 13 women, including former students whose accusations the paper says date back three decades. Nineteen of the 45 people interviewed, the storysays, described him as the "Harvey Weinstein of Iran."

The allegations remain unproven and have not been tested in court.

In an email to CBC News, Aghdashloo's lawyer said the artist could not provide comment at this time, but "we will be further rebutting the many inaccuracies in the NYT's article in the near future."

Still, news of the allegations is prompting many in Toronto's Iranian community to speak out, calling for organizers of what's known as the world's largest celebration of Iranian art and culture to cut ties with Aghdashloo.

Aghdashloo has been featured repeatedly over the years at the Tirgan Festival, held in Toronto every two years, showcasing hundreds of artists, performances and speakers.

"Tirgan has a very positive track record in the community," Toronto-based entrepreneur Mahshid Yassaei, 34, told CBC News.

"This is a turning point for Tirgan to really tell the story of what kind of organization it is. Is it an organization that's built for the community and by the community, or is it an organization that's turning into a corporation that's just thinking about profit?"

Yassaei is one of some 850 people who have signed a petition launched by a group of Iranian artists, activists, academics and members of the community calling on the festival's organizers to "stop giving predators a platform."

In particular, the petition takes aim at festival CEO Mehrdad Ariannejad, who earlier this year partnered with former CBC star radio host Jian Ghomeshi to create Roqe Media, where the two serve as directors.

Ghomeshi was acquitted of sexual assault and choking after a high-profile trial in 2016. The venture was first reported on by Canadian newsite and podcast networkCanadaland earlier this year.

In a written statement to CBC News Ariannejad said:"The decision to start Roqe with Jian Ghomeshi was not one that I made lightly," adding the company has never had ties to Tirgan.

"Jian might have made mistakes but I believe that people should be given a second chance. I don't believe in cancel culture," Ariannejad said in part.

As for his personal values, Ariannejad said he has dedicated "a considerable portion" of his volunteer activities to women's rights and gender equality, and has always "strongly condemned acts of sexual violence and harassment and will continue to work hard for these values."

The Tirgan Festival said it "strongly condemns all acts of sexual misconduct" and has a "zero-tolerance policy" on harassment and discrimination.

"We too are concerned by the news surrounding Iran's Me Too movement and will be closely monitoring the developments," the organization said in a statement to CBC News. The festival saidit has always been its policy "to stay away from contentious matters" so as to "foster a safe and welcoming environment for our visitors."

Asked specifically if it would cease its collaborations with Aghdashloo, the organization would not say.

"We will continue to uphold this policy and remain committed to never acting as a forum for those who are guilty of sexual misconduct," it said.

Though the allegations against him remain unproven, some say if Tirgan continues to give Aghdashloo a platform, it will erode their confidence in the festival.

"I will have second thoughts of supporting the festival, which is quite honestly the only [such] festival happening outside of Iran," Samira Banihashemi told CBC News.

She's not alone.

"Myself and part of the community were expecting Tirgan and community leaders to express their sense of empathy with the victims and [as long as] the cases are open, they would suspend their work with Aghdashloo," said Mahmoud Azimaee, a Toronto-based Iranian activist.

For Banihashemi, who previously worked in production at the Tirgan Festival, news of the allegations against Aghdashloo go beyond the festival itself, however.

"We've never seen the momentum that we're seeing today," the 35-year-old said.

"This is starting a very important conversation about the idea of consent and what it means to say no, and also the fact that the perpetrators can very well be prominent and respected members of the society,"Banihashemiadded.

"These assaults are not necessarily about sex, but about exerting power."

Artist and art educator Azadeh Pirazimian, 40, grew up in Iran, where she says sexual harassment was a part of daily life only she didn't have the vocabulary to call it out.

"Honestly, it was an everyday event for me," she said, describing a regular pattern of unwanted remarks, being touched without consent and being told she was somehow responsible for the advances of men, often strangers.

"Before coming to Canada and learning so many things about this topic I just knew the 'rape' word," said Pirazimian. In Iran, she said, "there are no categories like sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual violence."

And while the #MeToo movement in Iran has gathered steam over the past few months, Ontario Tech University professor Serena Sohrab says she hopes more attention will be paid to the experiences of a group she referes to as "second-hand victims" women who have made the difficult choice not to engage in the workforce in Iran to avoid the reality of daily sexual harassment.

"I'm a hard-headed feminist, and as a woman who has lived in a patriarchal society there is nothing that I want more than equality for women," Sohrab told CBC News.

But regarding the case of Aghdashloo, she urges caution, saying that while the allegations against him are serious, it's important not to jump to conclusions as long as the case remains open.

"If we close our eyes to those standards for people that are in power and people that we want to be connected to I think we're definitely encouraging behaviour that we don't want to see in the world," she told CBC News.

And as morewomen in Iran come forward with their own experiences of sexual violence, she hopes their stories will also send another message: that this should not be normal.

"I want the next generation to be really shocked, really surprised to hear that these behaviours still exist," she said.

"And I think our reactionto these behaviours today isgoing to define how the next generation is going to live their lives."

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Iran's #MeToo movement makes waves in Toronto as calls mount for festival to cut ties with celebrated artist - CBC.ca

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Iranian regimes anti-riot forces (file photo)

Iran is facing a third wave of coronavirus infections, according to the regimes Health Ministry. The mullahs Ministry of Health has acknowledged a series of record-breaking single-day death tolls since the middle of October, even when using the regimes engineered statistics.

The daily increases have raised Irans official death total to nearly 36,000. The official figure will continue to display only a fraction of the truth. According to the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which has been tracking the epidemic via its intelligence resources, the actual death toll is now over 142,000. This figure disrupts the notion of a third wave and instead suggests that the first wave of Irans infections never really ceased, because the regime never took meaningful action to address it.

The MEKs account is based on the hospital and mortuary records, as well as eyewitness testimony and records from Irans National Emergency Organization which indicate that domestic outbreaks were underway more than a month before regime authorities officially acknowledged them. But when faced with criticism, the regimes President Hassan Rouhani blatantly demanded credit for the admission, bogusly stating that the regime did not delay one day in revealing the public health threat.

In fact, the regimes sham parliamentary elections apparently provided the regime with incentive to finally own up to its early failures to contain the disease. The regimes sham parliamentary election met an unprecedented nationwide boycott, even though the regimes authorities extended voting hours on the day of the election after urging everyone to participate as a religious and patriotic duty. But just days removed from the acknowledgement of a coronavirus outbreak, those same authorities were ultimately forced to blame the low turnout on health concerns, not political disaffection.

It was vitally important for the regime to promote this narrative, given that the election took place only about a month after student protests that condemned Tehran for attempting to cover up an incident in which a commercial airliner was struck by a missile belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Perhaps even more significantly, that protest in turn took place less than two months after a nationwide anti-regime uprising during which the IRGC opened fire on crowds, killing over 1,500 peaceful, pro-democracy protesters.

The uprising itself was a sign of a growing public desire for regime change, as well as the increasing influence of the MEK, and its leading role during the uprising. Less than two years earlier, during another uprising in January 2018, mullahs Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei acknowledged that the MEK had played a major role in planning the demonstrations and popularizing slogans like death to the dictator.

The legacy of these uprisings certainly contributed to the low voter turnout last February, but the regime quickly seized upon the Covid-19 pandemic to muddy the waters on this issue. Afterwards, without undertaking any measures to seriously confront the crisis, the regime was also free to leverage it against the threat of further public demonstrations.

In the midst of the third wave it has become clear all over again that Tehran is keen to absolve itself of responsibility for slowing the spread, and to place it squarely on the people. The government has not acknowledged any of its own failings as reasons for the rising death tolls, but has proclaimed that ordinary citizens are not abiding by health experts recommendations. It has done this even in the absence of large-scale protests of the sort that defined the past two years. It is easy to imagine how the regimes authorities would demonize such demonstrations in the presence of a worsening outbreak.

If the outbreak had already begun before the end of 2019, why wait until six weeks into 2020 before citing the outbreak as incentive for disaffected Iranians to stay home? Its because January marked an all-important 40th anniversary celebration of the founding of the regime and authorities had gone to great lengths to organize public displays intended to counter the message of the mass protests.

State television cameras were trained on parades and gatherings that marked that anniversary, and the numbers of participants were reportedly padded by mandating attendance for government employees while providing free travel and other incentives to poor, rural families to travel into Tehran and other major cities.

Afterwards, acknowledging the coronavirus became not only an option but an imperative for the regime, as it promised to help stall the resumption of those protests. But of course, the regime couldnt very well acknowledge the full extent of the outbreak, especially in the wake of its stage-managed anniversary gatherings. Doing so would have revealed that authorities not only failed to contain an emerging public health threat but actually amplified that threat with super-spreader events that encouraged nationwide travel.

The very existence of those events goes a long way toward explaining and further legitimizing the MEKs death toll estimates. And as the Resistance continues to spread awareness of those estimates among a population that has already participated in multiple nationwide uprisings, the threat of further protest only continues to grow. This in turn explains why the regime has just now begun to acknowledge higher infection rates and death tolls. The worse the public health crisis appears, the easier it is for authorities to discourage political gatherings. In addition, the situation is worsened, is because of the regimes inaction.

Furthermore, the worse the crisis appears, the easier it is for some of those authorities to justify across-the-board crackdowns under the guise of preventing the spread of infection. Accordingly, responsibility for Irans coronavirus response has long been vested not in the Health Ministry but in the IRGC the very same force that killed 1,500 protesters at this time last year.

On October 31, Brigadier General Hossein Salami boasted to Iranian state media that a door-to-door operation will go underway in search of the coronavirus carriers. Naturally, the IRGC will be turning that operation into a series of instances of intimidation and unwarranted property searches. Indeed, this is exactly what should be expected, especially in light of the recent increase in reports of the IRGC attacking, humiliating, and even killing citizens on the streets of Iranian cities.

This phenomenon surely reflects growing concerns among regime authorities about the threat of renewed public unrest. And today, that threat comes not only from unresolved issues related to the past two years uprisings, but also from the regimes mismanagement of the very same public health crisis it has been trying to exploit to keep people from re-raising those issues.

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Iran's Regime Ramps up Coronavirus Warnings to Match Escalating Threat of Public Unrest - NCRI - National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Top officials in Iran say the upcoming U.S. election doesnt matter, but nearly everyone else there seems to be holding their breath.

The race for the White House could mean another four years of President Donald Trumps maximum pressure campaign. Or it could bring Joe Biden, who has raised the possibility of the U.S. returning to Irans 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

In the upper levels of Irans Islamic Republic, overseen by 81-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, anti-Americanism is as deeply entrenched as at any time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with presidents from both parties seen as equally repugnant.

America has a deep-rooted enmity against the Iranian nation and whether Trump is elected or Biden, it will not have any impact on the U.S. main policy to strike the Iranian nation, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said in September, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

But noticeably, Khamenei himself hasnt commented on the election, even as public interest has soared. State-run radio rebroadcast a BBC Farsi-language service simulcast of the presidential debates live even as Iran continues to target journalists for the British broadcaster.

That interest allegedly includes Irans security apparatus as well. U.S. officials accuse the Islamic Republic of sending emails to voters seeking to intimidate them into voting for Trump. It may have been an attempt to link the president to apparent election interference in order to sow chaos, like Russias interference in Americas 2016 election. Tehran denies being involved.

The Iranian public is paying attention. The state-owned polling center ISPA said this month that 55% of people believe the outcome of the election will affect Iran a lot. Over half expected Trump would win, while a fifth said Biden. ISPA said it surveyed over 1,600 people by telephone, and did not provide a margin of error.

Trumps re-election would mean the extension of his pressure campaign, including sanctions on Khamenei and other senior officials. Some of the sanctions are largely symbolic Khamenei has only once traveled to America and doesnt hold any U.S. bank accounts but others have devastated the economy and sent the local currency into freefall. As a hedge, Iranians have poured money into foreign currency, real estate, precious metals and the stock market which hit a record high in August.

Trump on the campaign trail has hit on that and his decision to launch a drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in January a move that led Tehran to launch a retaliatory ballistic missile strike, wounding dozens of American troops.

To cheers, Trump has described the general, Qassem Soleimani, as the worlds No. 1 terrorist, likely due to him being blamed for the improvised explosive devices that maimed U.S. troops in Iraq and for supporting Syrias President Bashar Assad. Many Iranians revered Solemani for fighting against the Islamic State group and in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and millions flooded the streets for his funeral processions.

The first call I get when we win will be from the head of Iran, lets make a deal. Their economy is crashing, Trump told a campaign rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Monday. They will call and I want them to do well, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon.

Biden has left open the possibility of returning to the nuclear deal, in which Tehran agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. The other signatories Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China have remained committed to the agreement and allowed a U.N. arms embargo to expire as part of the deal, despite a White House push to keep it in place.

After Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and restored crippling sanctions, Iran began publicly abandoning the agreements limits on enrichment. It now has at least 2,105 kilograms (2.32 tons) of low-enriched uranium, according to a September report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Experts typically say 1,050 kilograms (1.15 tons) of low-enriched uranium is enough material to be re-enriched for one nuclear weapon.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and still allows IAEA inspectors to monitor its atomic sites. But experts say the breakout time needed for Iran to build one nuclear weapon if it chooses to do so has dropped from one year under the deal to as little as three months.

Iran in the past also has threatened to abandon a nuclear nonproliferation treaty or expel international inspectors. It recently began construction at an underground nuclear site, likely building a new centrifuge assembly plant after a reported sabotage attack there earlier this year.

America First has made America alone, Biden said at a televised ABC town hall this month, playing on a longtime Trump slogan. You have Iran closer to having enough nuclear material to build a bomb.

What a return to the deal means, however, is in question. Bidens campaign website says he would use hard-nosed diplomacy and support from our allies to strengthen and extend it. One criticism of the accord was its narrow focus on the nuclear program, despite concerns by the U.S., Israel and its Gulf Arab allies over Irans ballistic missile program and its presence in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Iran maintains that its ballistic missile program is vital for deterring potential attacks and non-negotiable. It is also unlikely to cease its military activities in Syria and Iraq, where it spent considerable blood and treasure in the war against the Islamic State group.

But ensuring the survival of the Islamic Republic, particularly amid the coronavirus pandemic, may require the same flexibility that saw Iran agree to negotiations with the U.S. in the first place. Iran will hold a presidential election in June, but any decision to re-engage with Washington would have to be made by the supreme leader.

Khameneis revolutionary path actually leads to America that is, by seeking a stable, safe, and meticulously measured relationship with the United States, he believes he can guarantee the survival of both the regime and its revolutionary content and orientation, wrote Mehdi Khalaji, a Qom-trained Shiite theologian who is an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Tehrans objective is therefore a scandalous paradox: Deal with America to remain anti-American.

___

EDITORS NOTE Jon Gambrell, the news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the world since joining the AP in 2006. Follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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Analysis: Iran frets over US vote it insists doesn't matter - Associated Press

Four more years of President Trump would almost certainly kill the Iran nuclear deal but the election of Joe Biden wouldnt necessarily save it.

The big picture: Rescuing the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is near the top of Biden's foreign policy priority list. He says he'd re-enter the deal once Iran returns to compliance, and use it as the basis on which to negotiate a broader and longer-lasting deal with Iran.

Breaking it down: Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018, restoring U.S. sanctions and piling on new ones under a maximum pressure campaign that has devastated the Iranian economy.

The European signatories to the deal France, Germany and the U.K. have been desperately trying to save it.

But the Trump administration is attempting to finish off the deal, in part by adding a thicket of sanctions that Biden might find politically painful to remove.

Iran's domestic politics may prove more challenging still. The "reformist" administration of President Hassan Rouhani has been badly burned, and hardliners are expected to take over following presidential elections next June.

Where things stand: There are obstacles demands that Iran might make, our own politics, the more complicated relationship that the U.S. now has with Russia and China so this is not going to be smooth sailing," Malley says.

It took Iran about six months to come into compliance with the JCPOA the first time says Ernest Moniz, the former energy secretary who played a key role in negotiating that deal.

That means the earliest Iran could return to compliance would be right around the time its next administration takes office.

Moniz says a revitalized JCPOA would provide the world with confidence that Iran is not building a nuclear weapons program its original purpose but would be insufficient.

In future negotiations, Moniz adds, "regional concerns will have to be more front and center."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the loudest and most influential critics of the 2015 deal.

The Trump administration has demanded Iran negotiate on all of those fronts as part of any deal and claims it will be forced to if Trump is re-elected.

What to watch: Biden envisions almost precisely the opposite path to a broader deal with Iran, but acknowledges there's no guarantee Iran will even return to compliance with the JCPOA.

Go deeper: Biden's allies-first approach to China

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How Biden might tackle the Iran deal - Axios