Britain has accused Iranian authorities of abuse that “amounts to torture” of a dual national held by Iran for five years, while the United States has rejected an unsourced report that a prisoner swap had been agreed for Westerners held in Iran.
The renewed focus on Westerners held in Iran emerged a day after the parties to a 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran wrapped up a third round of tense talks on May 1 focused on bringing the United States and Iran back into full compliance with the deal.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on May 2 said that dual British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Iran since 2016, is being held “unlawfully” and “being treated in the most abusive” way.
“I think it amounts to torture the way she’s being treated, and there is a very clear, unequivocal obligation on the Iranians to release her,” Raab told BBC television on May 2.
Raab spoke by telephone with former charity worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe on April 28, days after her lawyer announced that she had been sentenced to another year in prison in Iran for spreading “propaganda against the system.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was already serving a five-year sentence for plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters, and rights groups deny.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has accused Tehran of holding Zaghari-Ratcliffe as a diplomatic ploy.
Iranian state TV on May 2 quoted an anonymous source as saying a deal had been agreed for the United Kingdom to pay hundreds of millions of pounds for the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The claims of a prisoner swap came in the hours before a nationally broadcast speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he made no mention of such a deal.
The U.S. State Department denied Iranian reports suggesting a deal including a prisoner swap had been made between Washington and Tehran.
“Reports that a prisoner swap deal has been reached are not true,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “As we have said, we always raise the cases of Americans detained or missing in Iran. We will not stop until we are able to reunite them with their families.”
The unsourced reports said four Iranians and “four American spies who have served part of their sentences” would be traded and $7 billion in frozen Iranian funds released.
Iran is known to be holding at least four Americans: father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi, environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, and entrepreneur Emad Shargi.
Hawks in Iran and the West have opposed U.S. President Joe Biden’s stated aim of rejoining the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal his predecessor Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 to reimpose sanctions on Iran.
With reporting by AP and AFP
Anger spilled onto the streets of Minsk and across Belarus on August 9, 2020, shortly after polls closed and a state-run exit survey pointed to a big victory for Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Protesters marched through the streets of the capital, many facing off against armed riot police who dealt with them brutally.
No election in Belarus under Lukashenka, in power since 1994, had been deemed free or fair by the West, and this one was no different, although the strongman was suddenly more vulnerable than he had been going into past votes. He was under fire for refusing to institute lockdown measures to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, which he dismissed as “mass hysteria.”
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
He was also facing a strong challenge from Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a political novice and last-minute fill-in candidate for her jailed husband, Syarhey Tsikhanouski. Her huge campaign rallies had fueled hopes, quickly dashed, that Lukashenka’s decades-long authoritarian rule was nearing an end.
Maryna Zolatava, editor in chief of the country’s most popular news website, the independent outlet Tut.by, was working the editorial desk that day when reports came in of unrest on the streets of Minsk after the polls closed.
“The recollections from August 9 are seared into my mind,” Zolatava told RFE/RL’s Belarus Service in a recent interview, describing the scene “when our reporters in the field began calling in to the editorial office to tell us what was happening in the city.”
“Explosions, gunfire…. I couldn’t believe the things the reporters were telling me,” she said. It was all remarkable, but we didn’t have time to reflect on what was happening.”
The protests, with crowds swelling to as many as 200,000 people in Minsk, have continued ever since, albeit with dwindling numbers. That has been put down to fatigue and the fear instilled by the Lukashenka government’s brutal crackdown. More than 30,000 Belarusians have been detained, and hundreds beaten on the streets and in custody.
Rights groups have documented some 1,000 cases of suspected torture. At least five people have been killed. Tsikhanouskaya was forced to flee to Lithuania after the vote amid threats to her and her family.
For the crackdown and alleged vote rigging, Lukashenka and his inner circle have been hit with sanctions by the United States, the European Union, and others, including Canada.
Lukashenka faces international isolation and is ever more reliant on support from larger, more powerful neighbor Russia, which commentators say is exploiting his weakness to squeeze out more concessions on a union treaty deal that critics say further erode what sovereignty it still possesses.
The practice of independent journalism, long dangerous work in tightly controlled Belarus, has become substantially riskier over the past year. And even journalists at state-run media weren’t safe: Dozens who voiced support for the opposition were thrown out of work and replaced by state TV journalists from Russia.
According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, 481 journalists were detained in 2020, twice as many than the previous six years combined.
Fear And Courage
Belarus slipped five places, to 158th, in Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) 2021 World Press Freedom Index. Three journalists were given hard prison time, including two facing two-year prison sentences.
“The authorities are trying to suppress all independent voices and to strike fear into the hearts of journalists,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “RSF hails the courage of those who continue to report on the crackdown in Belarus and calls on international organizations to take action to prevent such harassment and to secure the release of journalists jailed for doing their job.”
During the early days of postelection protests, journalists were not widely targeted by police, Zolatava said — but that changed quickly, and soon police were harassing even those with vests clearing identifying them as “press.”
“At the time I thought, ‘This can’t be!’ But it is, and it should not be so. The administrative arrests had started. It all seemed impossible — the fact that all this was happening was surreal.”
The risk of her reporters being beaten or snatched off the street by police began to weigh on Zolatava. “It wasn’t like that before. Now you’re under constant stress as you try to maintain a state of normality within your team. And you constantly think about how you can guarantee the safety of your people,” she said. “It has greatly changed the job. It doesn’t impact you physically, it’s more like constant psychological pressure. You really have to be prepared for it.”
Long targeted by the authorities for its hard-hitting reporting, Tut.by has found itself under even greater scrutiny over the past year. The Ministry of Information warned the news site over four articles before withholding its accreditation for three months starting on October 1.
Tut.by only registered as a media outlet in January 2019. Before that, it had operated without media credentials since the site’s founding in 2000.
Behind Bars
Despite the growing pressures, Zolatava said her reporting team remains largely intact. “Have people left due to security issues or political problems? Nothing like that has happened. In August, our work underwent huge changes. Everything that happened before and after that has hugely impacted all of our lives,” she said, adding that her reporters were detained 38 times by police in 2020.
One of them was Katsyaryna Barysevich. She was arrested on November 19 after writing an article about Raman Bandarenka, who died several days earlier following a beating by a group of masked assailants. Barysevich disputed the official claim that Bandarenka was drunk, citing medical findings that no alcohol had been detected in his blood.
The doctor who provided the lab results, Artsyom Sarokin, was arrested, tried, and convicted along with Barysevich, ultimately receiving a suspended two-year prison sentence and fine of 1,450 Belarusian rubles ($560) for disclosing medical information. Barysevich was handed a six-month prison term and fined 2,900 rubles ($1,130) for disclosing medical information and instigating a crime by pressuring a first responder to share information.
Katsyaryna Barysevich is seen inside a defendants’ cage during a court hearing in Minsk in February.
“Katsyaryna is in good spirits. Barysevich is someone deserving of admiration. Katya is the best,” Zolatava said. “It is definitely very distressing that she is in there [prison]. And it’s awful that we can’t change that.”
“We are doing our best. We are writing appeals, trying to draw the attention of the international community to the situation of Katsyaryna,” she said, thanking the Belarusian Association of Journalists and human rights activists for their efforts. “But almost five months have passed since November 19, and Katya is still behind bars. And it’s just awful. How can this be happening?”
Barysevich’s arrest and sentencing served as wake-up calls to editors at Tut.by, Zolatava aid. “After Katya’s arrest, we began to discuss our future more often and consult with lawyers. Although, in principle, her arrest did not affect the editorial policy; self-censorship did not increase. Katya did nothing illegal. She did her job, did it as it should be done,” she said.
On April 20, the Minsk City Court upheld Barysevich’s conviction and sentence. She is now scheduled to be released from prison on May 19.
‘Nightmarish Events’
While Barysevich’s was one the harshest sentences, two other Belarusians suffered an even worse fate. Katsyaryna Andreyeva and Darya Chultsova, reporters for Belsat, a Poland-based satellite TV station, were arrested on November 15 while covering a rally in Minsk to commemorate Bandarenka.
A court in Minsk on February 18 found Andreyeva and Chultsova guilty and sentenced them to two years in prison each, sparking international condemnation, with EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano denouncing it as a “shameful crackdown on media.”
Despite the dangers, more people than ever are turning to Tut.by for credible news coverage, although numbers are slipping as weariness creeps in, Zolatava said.
Visits to the site peaked in August, September, and October. By December, they began to dip and the downward trend continues, although there was a blip around March 25 and 27, when Tsikhanouskaya had called for a huge turnout coinciding with the anniversary of the founding in 1918 of the first free Belarusian republic.
“I think there is a fatigue factor with readers. A year ago, the coronavirus appeared, and the situation then was not completely normal. I think people were looking for something a bit lighter. The whole world is now stressed,” Zolatava said.
Maryna takes part in a march of solidarity of journalists in Minsk in September 2020.
Meanwhile, Lukashenka’s government is pushing ahead with more media restrictions. Changes to the country’s mass media law — passed by the rubber-stamp parliament earlier this month — would make it illegal for journalists to “discredit” the state, or livestream mass unauthorized gatherings, among other draconian measures. According to Human Rights Watch, at least seven reporters face trial.
Despite the bleak prospects and pangs of doubt, Zolatava says she is determined to continue her work at Tut.by. “There have been so many nightmarish events, so much that is unfair, that I’ve wondered whether it’s possible to continue the work. The injustice, the fact that so much is horribly illegal, and yet we are still working,” she said.
“On the other hand, what else can we do?” she continued. “We have to continue working so that all that has happened is not forgotten and remains a chapter of our history. So that people will know everything that happened.”
Written by Tony Wesolowsky based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service
More than 80 Russian journalists, writers, historians, and translators have issued an open letter in support of prominent defense attorney Ivan Pavlov, who was detained in Moscow on April 30 and accused of disclosing classified information about the ongoing investigation of former journalist Ivan Safronov.
“The persecution of Ivan Pavlov and the seizure of confidential case files is an act of terror directed not only at Pavlov but at the entire law community and an attempt to drive Pavlov out of the Ivan Safronov case,” the open letter published on May 2 said.
The signatories of the letter represent the Moscow PEN Club and the Free Speech Association.
Pavlov, 50, is one of Russia’s leading human rights lawyers and the head of the legal-aid foundation Team 29. Law enforcement officers searched the Team 29 office in St. Petersburg, the home of the group’s IT specialist, and the apartment of Pavlov’s wife.
Safronov is accused of treason and has been in pretrial detention since July 2020. Authorities say he gave classified information about Russian arms sales in the Middle East to the Czech Republic, an accusation that Safronov denies.
Pavlov has also been representing the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which was created by imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and which Russian authorities are pushing to have declared an “extremist” organization.
In a statement on April 30, Amnesty International described Pavlov as “one of the country’s most courageous lawyers” and said his detention was “a travesty of justice.”
Pavlov also defended physicist Viktor Kudryavtsev, who was also charged with treason. Kudryavtsev died of cancer on April 29 as his trial was pending.
Pavlov told journalists that the 14 months Kudryavtsev spent in pretrial detention had “completely damaged his health.” The case was “an example of how the secret services are literally killing Russian science in general,” he added.
Long persecuted by Iran’s Islamic regime, followers of the Baha’i faith in Tehran have now been told they must bury their dead upon the mass graves of political prisoners.
The Baha’i community in the Iranian capital has for years buried its dead in a special section of Tehran’s Khavaran cemetery, near the resting place for hundreds or even thousands of political prisoners who were victims of mass executions in the late 1980s.
Cemetery officials have in recent days reportedly told Baha’is that they are no longer allowed to bury their dead in that section of the cemetery.
Instead, they have been given two choices: they can bury their dead in the narrow space between existing Baha’i graves or use the area where the mass graves are located, says Simin Fahandej, the Baha’i International Community representative to the United Nations in Geneva.
Baha’is find the order unacceptable and want to be able to bury their dead with dignity and according to their religious rules. “With the destruction of many Baha’i cemeteries in the past four decades, Baha’is have experienced the pain caused by disrespect to the deceased and they don’t want others to experience the same pain,” Fahandej said in an interview with RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.
He added that this new pressure from the authorities is part of more than 40 years of state repression and discrimination that Baha’is have faced in Iran since the creation of the Islamic republic.
Victims’ families attend a remembrance ceremony in Khavaran cemetery in Tehran.
History Of Persecution
Baha’is — who number some 300,000 in Iran and have an estimated 5 million followers worldwide — have faced systematic persecution in Iran, where their faith is not officially recognized in the country’s constitution.
Since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, hundreds of Baha’is have been arrested and jailed for their beliefs. At least 200 have been executed or were arrested and never heard from again — that includes all the members of three National Spiritual Assemblies from 1980 to 1984.
Thousands more have been banned from higher education or had their property confiscated. The community has long had its cemeteries desecrated and its loved ones’ gravestones destroyed.
The latest restriction put on Baha’i burials in Tehran, where most of Iran’s Baha’is live, has also upset the families of the executed political prisoners. They even wrote in an open letter dated April 25 complaining that several new graves had appeared near the site of the mass burials at Khavaran.
“On Friday April 23, while visiting the nameless land of our loved ones, we saw something that was shocking to believe: graves were dug in the mass graves’ site of our loved ones and two Baha’is were also buried in those graves,” said the letter, which was signed by 79 family members of the executed political prisoners.
“It is our right to know the exact burial place of our loved ones,” the letter said, adding that “after being deprived of this right for 40 years, we demand that there won’t be any changes and invasion at this cemetery.”
They also urged the Iranian authorities to refrain from forcing Baha’is to bury their loved ones on the area where the mass graves are located. “Don’t rub salt in our old wounds,” said the letter, addressed to Iranian President Hassan Rohani and Tehran Mayor Piruz Hanachi.
‘Salt In Our Wounds’
In a separate statement, some of the children of the executed prisoners said they opposed “any changes” at Khavaran, calling on the Baha’is not to submit to the order telling them where to bury their dead. “This is not the first time that the Islamic republic has attempted to cover up the remains of its crimes,” the statement said.
Several photos of the purported new graves at Khavaran, including two that had signs and flowers laid on them, have been posted online. The images appeared also to show white lines drawn in the dirt apparently as marks for new graves. RFE/RL cannot verify the authenticity of the images. Reports suggest about 10 new graves have appeared recently at Khavaran’s mass graves’ section.
Amnesty International said in a statement on April 29 that the Iranian authorities had attempted for years to destroy the mass-grave sites of the victims of the 1988 prison executions “in a bid to eliminate crucial evidence of crimes against humanity, denying truth, justice, and reparations to the families of those forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret.”
“As well as causing further pain and anguish to the already persecuted Baha’i minority by depriving them of their rights to give their loves ones a dignified burial in line with their religious beliefs, Iran’s authorities are willfully destroying a crime scene,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
The executions of political prisoners were carried out in the last days of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, after the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that apostates and those who had taken up arms against the Islamic republic were “waging war against God” and should be sentenced to death.
The prisoners were sent to their deaths following very brief interrogations by a small group of state officials, dubbed by prisoners as “death commissions.”
The Iranian establishment has rarely acknowledged the executions while also enforcing a news blackout on the issue. They have also repeatedly harassed family members of the victims who seek answers about their loved ones.
The Baha’i faith is a monotheistic religion whose central figure is Sayyed Ali Muhammad Shirazi, better known as Bab, who was executed in Tabriz by the Persian authorities in 1850. Based on the teachings of Persian religious leader Bahaullah, it considers the founders of various faiths — including Buddha, Jesus Christ, and the Prophet Muhammad — as expressions of God.
The central tenet of Baha’is is to promote a “oneness of humankind” that treats people of different nationalities, races, and classes equally.
Elahe Ravanshad of RFE/RL’s Radio Farda contributed to this story
The state prosecutor spearheading a potentially devastating bid to brand Aleksei Navalny’s network of organizations “extremist” is no stranger to the Kremlin foe: In 2019, a report by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) alleged that the lawman’s family controlled undeclared property worth millions of dollars.
The plaintiff in the case under which the FBK, the Citizens’ Rights Defense Foundation (FPZG), and Navalny’s offices nationwide could be declared extremist is the head of the Moscow city prosecutor’s office, Denis Popov.
Popov’s signature also stands at the bottom of an April 26 order freezing the activities of Navalny’s network of regional branches pending the outcome of the Moscow City Court’s closed-door hearings. His office has also asked the court to do the same with the FBK and the FPZG.
The “extremism” case is not the first time Popov and Navalny have clashed. Popov, 48, was named Moscow prosecutor by President Vladimir Putin in September 2019. Previously, he served as chief prosecutor in the Siberian region of Khakasia and the North Caucasus republic of Daghestan.
Popov was the lead prosecutor in the so-called “Moscow case” in 2019, in which several would-be candidates for Moscow district council seats and their supporters were prosecuted for participating in peaceful protests.
‘Lawful Lawlessness’
Popov “personally initiates cases against oppositionists at the behest of the National Guard,” the FBK report published in November 2019 stated. “The Moscow prosecutor plays a very important role in the listing of all sorts of ‘foreign agents.’ Any lawlessness that you run into in Moscow can be declared lawful by Prosecutor Popov.”
Weeks before the report was published, Popov had filed a suit against the FBK and its leadership, including Navalny, seeking reimbursement of nearly 5 million rubles ($67,000) for costs Moscow purportedly incurred during two unsanctioned protests earlier that year. In particular, Popov tried unsuccessfully to seize Navalny’s modest Moscow apartment.
Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny at one of his many court hearings in recent years. (file photo)
The FBK report, which featured video and text, provided evidence it said linked Popov and his family to undeclared property in Russia and abroad.
The report found that a Montenegrin company controlled by Popov’s ex-wife, Irina Popova, owned a lakeside apartment complex and other real estate worth, according to a financial document filed in Montenegro in 2018, more than 3 million euros.
‘Money From Who-Knows-Where’
The company was created in 2009 and owned all the property at least as early as 2011, when the Popovs were still married.
“All these Montenegrin investments were planned and made by the family of a working prosecutor, bureaucrat, and guardian of the law,” Navalny’s report stated. “With money that came from who-knows-where.”
According to asset declarations filed in Russia during this period, Popov was earning 58,000 rubles ($1,900) a month and his wife was “unemployed.”
Irina Popova also allegedly purchased an apartment in Spain in 2010 for 645,000 euros. And she purportedly owns a fishing resort in southern Russia’s Astrakhan region.
After searching through social media, Navalny’s investigators unearthed and published photographs of the Popovs and their children at all of the properties they identified.
Navalny’s investigators also found a lavish home in the elite stretch of Moscow suburbs known as Rublyovka registered in the name of Popov’s elderly mother, Lyudmila Popova.
After Navalny’s report was published, two Moscow city council deputies, Communist Yelena Shuvalyova and Yabloko party member Maksim Kruglov, appealed to Putin to investigate the allegations against Popov.
In apparent response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured journalists that Popov’s declarations had been “subjected to serious scrutiny.” He added, however, that the presidential administration might take a second look if it was deemed necessary.
Like the rest of the FBK’s investigations into official corruption in Russia, no probe was launched into the findings about Popov.
In her 2014 book Putin’s Kleptocracy, the late American political scientist Karen Dawisha identified the perversion of the law enforcement system — and particularly the prosecutor’s office — as a key feature of Putin’s political model.
She found that “in the 10 years from 2002 to 2012, hundreds of thousands of businessmen were actually imprisoned, not just questioned or arrested, primarily as a result of rivals paying corrupt police, prosecutors, and judges to put away the competition.”
A journalist from Siberia who had to leave her native city of Kiselyovsk in the Siberian region of Kemerovo earlier this year after she was attacked says she has fled Russia fearing for her safety.
Natalya Zubkova, the chief editor of the News of Kiselyovsk website, told RFE/RL on April 26 that she moved to an unspecified country a week ago after police and an investigator from Kiselyovsk visited her at her new residence in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg to question her as “a witness” in a criminal case.
Zubkova said she refused to answer any questions and called her lawyer. According to her, the case might be an another move in ongoing attempts by Kiselyovsk authorities to take her daughter from her in retaliation for her articles criticizing authorities in the Kemerovo region for the “illegal widening of coal-mining territories” in the region.
In late February, Zubkova said an unknown attacker pushed her down with her face in snow as she was walking her dog. The man threatened the journalist and her daughters with further violence if “you open your mouth again.”
Several days after the attack, Zubkova fled Kiselyovsk for Yekaterinburg, hoping that authorities in her native region will leave her alone.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said on April 6 that it had sent an investigator to Yekaterinburg to question Zubkova in the case.
Zubkova told RFE/RL on April 26 that she will continue her journalistic activities, writing about the rights of Siberia’s indigenous ethnic groups, environmental damage from mining activities in the region, and corruption among officials in Kiselyovsk.
Last August, lawyer Anton Reutov physically attacked her in a courtroom during a hearing based on Zubkova’s report about alleged fraud involving Reutov that led to an elderly woman losing her apartment.
Zubkova said that following that incident she received several death threats.
In August 2019, Mayor Shkarabeinikov accused Zubkova of inciting social discord for interviewing Kiselyovsk residents who had asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to provide them with asylum after local authorities were unable to solve environmental problems they faced.
Police in Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, have arrested a man suspected of stabbing the sister of a member of the Russian parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, Artur Chilingarov.
The Investigative Committee said on April 26 that the 59-year-old suspect, whose identity was not disclosed, stabbed the 71-year-old woman, injuring her arm and head in the hall of an apartment block on April 20.
According to the statement, the woman was saved by a neighbor who scared off the attacker.
The suspect, who has a criminal record, was apprehended shortly after the attack. The motive for the attack remains unclear.
Chilingarov, 81, is also a well-known Russian polar explorer.
Aleksandr Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee, has ordered an investigation into the incident.
