Ahmadinejad sworn in as Iran president: Via PressTV.ir .

After winning a hotly disputed election in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been sworn in for a second term in office as the country's president.

Ahmadinejad took his oath of office before the Parliament (Majlis) on Wednesday. He has two weeks to introduce his cabinet of ministers to Majlis for approval.

“I, as the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, swear before the holy Koran and the Iranian nation and God to be the guardian of the official religion, the Islamic Republic and the Constitution,” Ahmadinejad said at the ceremony.

More than 5,000 security and police forces gathered around the building of Majlis in central Tehran. Sniffer dogs were securing the area.
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Iran: Stop ‘Framing’ Government Critics: Via Human Rights Watch.

(New York) - Iranian authorities are coercing detained supporters of reform presidential candidates to implicate leading reformists in illegal acts, Human Rights Watch said today. Intelligence forces have also intensified pressure on the families of detainees to be silent about their cases.

Family members and recently released detainees have described to Human Rights Watch the coercion that is taking place. On July 15, 2009, Gholamhussein Mohseni Ejeie, Iran's minister of intelligence, told reporters that, "The confessions obtained from those arrested could be made public, should the Judiciary decide to air their remarks."

"It's appalling that the minister of intelligence is talking about publicizing confessions made by people held for weeks without access to lawyers," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The minister's statement underscores our fears that these so-called confessions are obtained under duress."
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Death in the dorms: Iranian students recall horror of police invasion: Via The Guardian(UK).

They came in the small hours, just as the dormitories were settling down for the night. Outside, Tehran was still in ferment, a city gripped by fury two days after a "stolen election". Inside the dorms on Amirabad Street, students were trying to sleep, though nerves were jangling; just hours earlier several had been beaten in front of the main gate to the university.

What happened next developed into one of the seminal events of Iran's post-election unrest: police broke locks and then bones as they rampaged through the dormitories, attacked dozens of students, carted off more than 100 and killed five. The authorities still deny the incursion took place. But the account pieced together from interviews with five of those present tells a different story.

"We were getting ready to go to sleep when we suddenly heard them breaking the locks to enter our rooms," said one of the 133 students arrested that night. "I'd seen them earlier beating students but I didn't imagine that they would come inside. It's even against Iranian law."
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'United for Neda' is artists' song for Iranian people: Via CNN.com .

(CNN) -- Spurred by the continuing political unrest in Iran, more than two dozen Iranian expatriate superstars are uniting to spread a musical message of non-violent resistance.
The entertainers, poets, thinkers and actors are harmonizing on the song "United for Neda," a call to action against human rights violations by the Iranian government against Iranians protesting the disputed outcome of recent presidential elections.

The song was inspired by the plight of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year old Iranian woman who was fatally shot on the streets of Tehran on June 20. The ordeal was recorded on cell phone video and received international attention when it hit the Internet.

"When I saw links to Neda being shot, it was so disturbing to me," said Iranian-British recording artist Mams Taylor, who wrote and produced the song.

"It hurt me, angered me and touched me at the same time, to think that these people are so courageous to go and seek their freedom," said Taylor.

While her death became a rallying point for justice, her name, "Neda," in Farsi means "the call/calling" or "voice" -- a voice many people say cannot be muted.
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Maziar Bahari Canadian scapegoat in Iran: Via The Globe and Mail(Canada).

Iran's jailing of Maziar Bahari, a journalist and filmmaker who lived in Canada for 10 years and became a Canadian citizen, carries echoes of a traumatic incident in Canadian-Iranian relations, the arrest and beating death in 2003 of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-born photojournalist from Montreal. There is little concrete that Canada can do that will actually have an impact, short of Prime Minister Stephen Harper making the case to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran. He should do so.

Nothing in the 42-year-old Mr. Bahari's background suggests a plotter or conspirator against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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