Iraq's Pro-Iran Shia Coalition Wins Provincial Elections
Iraq's ruling Shia Coalition Framework (CF) has emerged triumphant in the recent provincial elections securing 101 out of 285 council seats in the December 18 vote.
Iraq's ruling Shia Coalition Framework (CF) has emerged triumphant in the recent provincial elections securing 101 out of 285 council seats in the December 18 vote.
The electoral success is seen as a strategic gain for Iran-aligned factions, consolidating their influence in anticipation of the parliamentary elections scheduled for 2025. The CF's success solidifies its control over Iraq's influential provincial councils, responsible for appointing regional governors and allocating budgets for critical sectors such as health, transport, and education.
The top list of the Shia alliance, claiming 43 seats, includes significant Iran-aligned military-political groups like the Badr Organization and Asaib Ahl al-Haq. The second list, led by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, secured 35 seats, while the third, with 23 seats, features moderate Shia leader Ammar al-Hakim and former Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi. Together, these allied lists will hold a commanding total of 101 seats in the provincial assemblies, surpassing all other blocs.
The number of eligible voters in this election was reported to be less than 17 million people, with around six thousand candidates.
Since the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, Iran has maintained significant involvement in Iraqi politics. Over a dozen Iraqi political parties are connected to Iran, receiving funding and training for paramilitary groups aligned with these parties. Some of these paramilitary groups, operating under the umbrella of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, have sworn allegiance to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Employing violence, the groups have sought to suppress opposition to Iranian influence and to push for the removal of the remaining US forces in Iraq.
Reiterating the official line that Sweden prosecuted and convicted Hamid Nouri on the basis of false allegation by the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), the official news website IRNA claimed that Sweden has violated Nouri’s human rights. The website reflecting the government's position alleged that Sweden tortured Nouri by keeping him in solitary confinement and “repeatedly moving him between detention centers”, and putting another prisoner with “serious mental issues” in his cell.
The Iranian foreign ministry has not yet reacted to the Stockholm Court of Appeals decision on Tuesday, which came after months of examining evidence and deliberation.
In a statement, 452 Iranian activists and members of victims’ families welcomed the court’s decision, calling it a “huge victory for the Iranian justice movement.” They believe it paves the way for bringing the regime and other violators of human rights to justice in the future.
“Let us remind that in the summer of 1988, Ebrahim Raisi, who is the president of the Islamic Republic with [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei’s firm support, was among the members of the death committee, of which Hamid Nouri was an agent,” the statement said.
Nouri, arrested upon arrival in Sweden in November 2019, was convicted by a Swedish court in July 2022 and sentenced to life for human rights violations as a prison official in the 1980s.
Plaintiffs in the case alleged that Hamid Nouri, 61, an assistant prosecutor and a member of the execution committee at Gohardasht Prison near Tehran, played a key role in the torture, execution, and secret burial of thousands of prisoners, including members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) and various Marxist groups, in the summer of 1988. In court, Nouri denied any connection with the executions.
Many, including UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions Agnes Callamard, called his arrest an "important first step towards justice for the 1988 massacre." This marks the first time someone has been charged in relation to the events that took place in 1988 in Iran and prosecuted in another country.
The execution of thousands of political prisoners, which occurred over a few weeks, is often considered one of the darkest secrets in the history of the Islamic Republic. Many victims, initially sentenced to prison, were executed when they refused to denounce their beliefs.
The regime clandestinely buried victims in unmarked, mass graves. Families were often informed months after the executions and kept unaware of the graves' locations. The regime has prohibited the erection of gravestones at these sites, and family members visiting the mass graves are frequently harassed. Security agents even uproot trees planted by family members to mark the graves.
The decision to purge political prisoners was taken at the highest level and was endorsed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini's chosen successor, Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri (1922-2009), who protested the massacre and called it a crime against humanity was demoted by Khomeini. Montazeri spent several years under house arrest after Khomeini's death in 1989 for criticizing the new successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and questioning his legitimacy.
International affairs and human rights deputy of the Iranian judiciary, Kazem Gharibabadi, in July accused Sweden of taking Nouri “hostage” and demanded his release while alleging that Sweden had no evidence against Nouri and was only defending the interests of MEK.
A Swedish EU diplomat, 33-year-old Johan Niels Floderus who was put on trial in December , and a 52-year-old Swedish-Iranian doctor, Ahmadreza Djalali (Jalali), are currently being held in Iran on charges of spying for Israel. Iranian authorities have several times threatened to execute Djalali, allegedly to force Sweden to release Nouri, and brought charges against Floderus that entail a death sentence.
“The Islamic regime has resorted to hijab to double its discrimination against women in an era when human equality, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, creed and religion, plays a pivotal role in progressive human discourse,” a statement published Monday by Zeitoun news website said.
“The cruel and violent measures to enforce the mandatory hijab have been disastrous not only for women, but also for their fathers, husbands, and brothers. In other words, Iranian men have also found it difficult to bear so much oppression of women,” said the statement six of the signatories of which are also prominent political and intellectual figures.
Most of the signatories, including prominent female Islamic scholar Sedigheh Vasmaghi, are known as “religious intellectuals” in Iranian politics, meaning they advocate a moderate view of Islam.
Vasmaghi, 63, recently removed her veil after decades and even challenged Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s hijab edict, arguing that there is no foundation in the Quran or the Sharia for such an edict.
Zahra Rahnavard, one of the leaders of Iran's Green Movement, is also among the signatories of the statement. Rahnavard and her husband Mir-Hossein Mousavi have been under house arrest since 2011. The seventy- eight-year-old academic and artist chose to wear the hijab before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and has still held on to it. Mousavi was prime minister in the early years of the Islamic Republic and both were committed supporters of the regime.
Prominent human rights lawyer and Sakharov Prize winner Nasrin Sotoudeh, 60, however, has for years fought against the compulsory hijab and defended other women who were prosecuted for protesting the mandatory hijab.
The statement also criticizes the regime for denying civil and human rights such as the right to work, study, benefit from social rights and services such as healthcare for not abiding by the hijab rules.
“These extreme beliefs and methods have imposed heavy costs on the country, particularly on Iranian women and girls, and caused the shedding of the blood of the likes of Mahsa and Armita,” the statement said.
The death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, 22, in September 2020 in the custody of morality police resulting from injuries she sustained during her arrest for what the authorities called “inadequate hijab” sparked widespread protests across Iran that went on for months and were heavily suppressed by the government.
Tens of thousands were arrested during the protests, at least 550 protesters including 68 children were killed, and thousands including hundreds that lost their eyes to birdshot bullets fired directly in their faces by security forces, sustained very serious injuries.
Armita Geravand, 16, who sustained a head injury after allegedly being assaulted by hijab enforcers in a metro car in Tehran also fell to the same fate after a month-long coma on October 28.
Fearing another round of protests, authorities forced Armita’s family to bury her as discreetly as possible. Nevertheless, dozens including Sotoudeh and Vasmaghi, two of the signatories of the present statement, attended the burial at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra.
Sotoudeh who had previously called Armita’s death a “state killing’ and attended the funeral without a headscarf in defiance of the regime was detained, and Vasmaghi was assaulted by four agents but was reportedly rescued by other people at the scene.
In a commentary entitled “Lesson Taught By the Trumpeter Sadegh” published by the reformist Etemad newspaper last week, reformist commentator Abbas Abdi warned the regime that insisting on imposing hijab by all means including violence would only cause a massive negative reaction from the public.
