Reply #1: The guy was convicted of possession of explosives and belonging to the PKK/MEK/PEJAK [View All]

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The PKK and allied Kurdish separatist groups have been blowing people up in northern Iran. These groups are allegedly acting as part of the Bush-Cheney Administration's covert programs to destabilize Iran. Regardless of the fairness of his trial, and the merits of the Kurdish nationalist cause, this is essential context not mentioned in your post.

This guy was most certainly not sentenced to death because he's a union activist or a teacher.

Here's the most complete account I could find in a short search. Note this is from a Kurdish nationalist website: http://ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2008/5/irankurdistan381.htm

Iran confirms death sentence for Kurdish teacher 28.5.2008


May 28, 2008

Tehran, — Iran has sentenced to death a Kurdish teacher for membership in a "terrorist" group and possession of explosives, the judiciary spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.

"Farzad Kamangar is accused of membership in a terrorist group and possession and carrying explosives. He was found guilty of 'Moharebeh' (being an enemy of god) and sentenced to death," Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters.

He added that Kamangar along with two other unnamed people were also sentenced to a 10-year jail term for the possession of explosives.

"The defendants have lodged an appeal and the case is being reviewed at the supreme court," he said.

New York-based rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) had said in February that Kamangar had been sentenced to death for links with the Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),www.ekurd.net which has fought a deadly insurgency against Turkey.

HRW called for the death sentence to be revoked and also alleged that Kamangar was tortured and subjected to an unfair trial.

Tuesday's announcement was the first time Iran has confirmed the death sentence.

According to rights groups, Kamangar, a teacher in the town of Kamyaran in Kurdistan province, had been arrested in July 2006.

Iran has been battling separatist Iranian rebels of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), which believed to be linked to the PKK, in its western Kurdish-populated areas over the last years. Since 2004 PJAK took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdistan province northwestern of Iran (Iranian Kurdistan, Eastern Kurdistan). Half the members of PJAK are women.

In April a local court in Kurdistan province upheld a death sentence for Kurdish activist, Hiva Botimar, convicted of having links with the PKK after the Supreme Court quashed the original hanging verdict.

In December, Iran charged two Kurdish women rights activists with taking part in "terrorist" actions and belonging to PJAK.

Since 1984 the Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. A large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK rebels.

The PKK demanded Turkey's recognition of the Kurds' identity in its constitution and of their language as a native language along with Turkish in the country's Kurdish areas, the party also demanded an end to ethnic discrimination in Turkish laws and constitution against Kurds, ranting them full political freedoms.

Turkey and Iran refuses to recognize its Kurdish population as a distinct minority.

Copyright, respective author or news agency, AFP | Agencies

Iranian Kurdistan

** Iranian Kurdistan (Kurdish: Kurdistana Îranê or Kurdistana Rojhilat (Eastern Kurdistan) or Rojhilatê Kurdistan (East of Kurdistan)) is an unofficial name for the parts of Iran inhabited by Kurds and has borders with Iraq and Turkey. It includes the greater parts of West Azerbaijan province, Kurdistan Province, Kermanshah Province, and Ilam Province.

Kurds form the majority of the population of this region with an estimated population of 4 million. The region is the eastern part of the greater cultural-geographical area called Kurdistan.

More about Iranian Kurdistan

PJAK
The present leader of the organisation is Haji Ahmadi. According to the Washington Times, half the members of PEJAK are women, many of them still in their teens, and one of the female members of the leadership council is Gulistan Dugan, a psychology graduate from the University of Tehran. This is due primarily to the fact that PEJAK is strongly supportive of women's rights. PEJAK believes that women must have a strong role in government and must be on an equal level with men in leadership positions.

More about PEJAK- Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan

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Kurd Net does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news information on this page

Here's more on covert US assistance to PKK/MEK/PEJAK: http://www.opednews.com/articles/U-S--Funding-Terror-Attack-by-Sherwood-Ross-080704-817.html

The recent surge of terrorist violence in Iran likely is being funded in part by the Bush administration with the support of Congress.

According to a report in the July 7-14 issue of The New Yorker magazine, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says the U.S. reportedly has been funding the Iranian dissident terrorist group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or M.E.K.; the Kurdish separatist Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK; and, according to some sources, the Jundallah, or Iranian People’s Resistance Movement.



“Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere,” retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner is quoted by Hersh as stating. “There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.” Gardiner has taught strategy at the National War College and is monitoring the violence in Iran.

The bloodshed in Iran likely has been underwritten by the U.S. Congress which last year acceded to a request from Bush “to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran,” Hersh writes, “designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.” Bush asked for $400 million for the work.

“The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Ara and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations,” Hersh added, noting that “Clandestine operations against Iran are not new” and U.S. Special Operations Forces “have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year.”

Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, Hersh noted, and the Iranian government conceded an explosion in the southern city of Shiraz had been a terrorist act. That blast killed a dozen people and injured more than 200. Hersh said it could not be learned if there was any specific U.S. involvement in that incident.

However, the M.E.K., which has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, in recent years “has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States,” Hersh writes, and some of the newly authorized covert fund money may well flow into their coffers. A Pentagon consultant who was not named told Hersh, “The (Bush) Administration is desperate for results.”

As for the Kurdish PJAK, reportedly getting U.S. covert funding, Hersh quotes Gardiner as noting there has been a marked increase in the number of their armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets. PJAK fighters last May attacked Revolutionary Guards and in June attacked Iranian border guards.

A former senior intelligence official indicated to Hersh that Vice President Cheney’s office “set up priorities for categories of targets (in Iran) and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.”

The official added, “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates.”

The official was also quoted as saying there had been a meeting in Cheney’s office and “The subject was how to create a casus belli (an event to justify a declaration of war) between Tehran and Washington.”

Hersh also wrote that Admiral William Fallon, who until recently headed the U.S. Central Command with oversight for Iraq and Afghanistan, “resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran.”

Retired Marine General John Sheehan, formerly commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, told Hersh that when Fallon “tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”

Hersh quoted a Pentagon consultant as stating, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”

In sum, while the Bush regime claims the Iranians are behind attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, (an assertion fraught with what the New York Times delicately called “significant uncertainties,”) there is no longer any question Bush is doing just that inside Iran; that Cheney is looking for a cause to start a war; and that the White House will fire any flag officer that dares to stand in its way. #