عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
World

Ahmadinejad Criticizes Khamenei's Positions on the Judiciary

Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (IRNA)
Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (IRNA)
TT
TT

Ahmadinejad Criticizes Khamenei's Positions on the Judiciary

Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (IRNA)
Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (IRNA)

In less than a week, for the second time, former Iranian president and member of the Expediency Council, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, harshly criticized senior officials with "absolute powers" who "despise" Iranian people. He implicitly criticized Ali Khamenei for "failing to respond" to questions on the judiciary. He also referred to the current political debate after "suicide" allegations of environmentalist Kavous Seyed Emami in Evin Prison, stressing that "people do not believe those claims" and criticizing "unjustified arrests".

Seyed-Emami was a defendant in a spying case and had committed suicide because of the weight of evidence against him, an Iranian news agency reported on Sunday.

Ahmadinejad headed his team of advisers to the Iranian court in Tehran on Wednesday morning to support his executive assistant Hamid Bakai during his fourth appearance in court within two months.

According to "Dolat Bahar" website, authorities prevented Ahmadinejad from attending the trial, after which he stood at the court's door to deliver a brief speech on current situations in Iran, criticizing mismanagement, especially that of the Iranian judiciary.

He said no governmental body was responding to complaints against the judiciary, including Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He wondered which official institution would be accepted and trusted by Iranian people.

Ahmadinejad promised the current situation would end for the benefit of the Iranian people, stressing that "injustice will not last anywhere in the world."

"We want to complain about the judiciary, whom should we refer to? There is no place accepted and trusted by the people, " Ahmadinejad added.

The head of the judiciary is the most prominent official chosen by the Iranian leader in accordance with his constitutional powers. Ahmadinejad's criticism of the judiciary chief has been repeatedly interpreted as criticism of Khamenei's policies.

So far, Khamenei has not addressed the dispute between Ahmadinejad and judiciary chief, Sadiq Larijani, but in December, he blamed former officials who turned into dissidents after they were heads of state in Iran.

A week ago, Ahmadinejad said in a statement posted on his website that brothers Ali and Sadiq Larijani, presiding the judiciary and the parliament, are seeking to attain the positions of supreme leader and president.

Ahmadinejad repeated in his last speech that Iranians had staged a revolution "in order to speak freely in defense of their rights, with the regime and governmental bodies defending the people's right."

He added that the 1979 revolution was for justice, and people's rights, indicating that it did not occur in order for some to have more than what they need, while others can't have the simplest necessities.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad's aide Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei tweeted on his account: "On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution, the prisons are clean, safe and comfortable, to an extent that if anyone went there, they would be happy. There is no difference between being a drug addict or a spy."

Mashaei also published an article on "Dolat Bahar" criticizing the judiciary's stance on the case of Seyed-Emami.

He said: "The judiciary is accused of murder unless proven otherwise."

MP Fatemeh Zolghadr stated that Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi, Tehran’s public prosecutor, ordered the arrest of Emami. She added: "Emami committed suicide after he asked to postpone an investigation session in prison."

Dolatabadi announced that Seyed-Emami had been arrested for espionage, which meant that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was responsible for his detention in Evin prison. He added that Emami was arrested because he was linked to a CIA officer who also stayed at his home. He accused him of spying on Iran's missile program.

“These individuals have been collecting classified information about the country’s strategic areas under the guise of carrying out scientific and environmental projects,” Dolatabadi said.

The Canadian government said on Tuesday it was “seriously concerned” with the circumstances surrounding the death of Emami who is an Iranian-Canadian dual citizen.

“We are seriously concerned by the situation surrounding the detention and death of Mr. Seyed-Emami,” Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said in a statement.

“We expect the Government of Iran to provide information and answers into the circumstances surrounding this tragedy. We will continue to use every means at Canada’s disposal to seek further information," she added.

Seyed-Emami was the managing director of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, an organization aimed at protecting Iran’s rare animals, and a US-trained scholar in sociology.

Iranian President's Special Assistant for Citizens' Rights Affairs Shahindokht Molaverdi announced that Rouhani had ordered a full report on recent incidents in Iranian prisons. She reiterated that all citizens have the right to a fair trial, according to ISNA.

Most Viewed

 
 
World

US Commemorates 9/11 Attacks with Victims in Focus, but Politics in View 

Flags and flowers are placed by the names of those killed during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the reflecting pools at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in New York. (AP)
Flags and flowers are placed by the names of those killed during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the reflecting pools at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in New York. (AP)
TT
TT

US Commemorates 9/11 Attacks with Victims in Focus, but Politics in View 

Flags and flowers are placed by the names of those killed during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the reflecting pools at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in New York. (AP)
Flags and flowers are placed by the names of those killed during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the reflecting pools at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in New York. (AP)

The US is remembering the lives taken and those reshaped by 9/11, marking an anniversary laced this year with presidential campaign politics.

Sept. 11 — the date when hijacked plane attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001 — falls in the thick of the presidential election season every four years, and it comes at an especially pointed moment this time.

Fresh off their first-ever debate Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are both expected to attend 9/11 observances at the World Trade Center in New York and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.

Then-senators and presidential campaign rivals John McCain and Barack Obama made a visible effort to put politics aside on the 2008 anniversary. They visited ground zero together to pay their respects and lay flowers in a reflecting pool at what was then still a pit.

It’s not yet clear whether Harris and Trump even will cross paths. If they do, it would be an extraordinary encounter at a somber ceremony hours after they faced off on the debate stage.

Regardless of the campaign calendar, organizers of anniversary ceremonies have long taken pains to try to keep the focus on victims. For years, politicians have been only observers at ground zero observances, with the microphone going instead to relatives who read victims’ names aloud.

“You’re around the people that are feeling the grief, feeling proud or sad — what it’s all about that day, and what these loved ones meant to you. It’s not political,” said Melissa Tarasiewicz, who lost her father, New York City firefighter Allan Tarasiewicz.

President Joe Biden, on the last Sept. 11 of his term and likely his half-century political career, is headed with Harris to the ceremonies in New York, in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon, the three sites where commercial jets crashed after al-Qaeda operatives took them over on Sept. 11, 2001.

Officials later concluded that the aircraft that crashed near rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was headed toward Washington. It went down after crew members and passengers tried to wrest control from the hijackers.

The attacks killed 2,977 people and left thousands of bereaved relatives and scarred survivors. The planes carved a gash in the Pentagon, the US military headquarters, and brought down the trade center's twin towers, which were among the world's tallest buildings.

The catastrophe also altered US foreign policy, domestic security practices and the mindset of many Americans who had not previously felt vulnerable to attacks by foreign extremists.

Effects rippled around the world and through generations as the US responded by leading a “Global War on Terrorism,” which included invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Those operations killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis and thousands of American troops, and Afghanistan became the site of the United States' longest war.

As the complex legacy of 9/11 continues to evolve, communities around the country have developed remembrance traditions that range from laying wreaths to displaying flags, from marches to police radio messages. Volunteer projects also mark the anniversary, which Congress has titled both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.

At ground zero, presidents and other officeholders read poems, parts of the Declaration of Independence and other texts during the first several anniversaries.

But that ended after the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum decided in 2012 to limit the ceremony to relatives reading victims’ names. Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg was board chairman at the time and still is.

Politicians and candidates still have been able to attend the event. Many do, especially New Yorkers who held office during the attacks, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was then a US senator.

She and Trump overlapped at the ground zero 9/11 remembrance in 2016, and it became a fraught chapter in the narrative of that year's presidential campaign.

Clinton, then the Democratic nominee, abruptly left the ceremony, stumbled while awaiting her motorcade and later disclosed that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia a couple of days earlier. The episode stirred fresh attention to her health, which Trump had been questioning for months.

To be sure, victims' family members occasionally send their own political messages at the ceremony, where readers generally make brief remarks after finishing their assigned set of names.

Some relatives have used the forum to bemoan Americans' divisions, exhort leaders to prioritize national security, acknowledge the casualties of the war on terror, complain that officials are politicizing 9/11 and even criticize individual officeholders.

But most readers stick to tributes and personal reflections. Increasingly they come from children and young adults who were born after the attacks killed a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle.

“Even though I never got to meet you, I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Annabella Sanchez said last year of her grandfather, Edward Joseph Papa. “We will always remember and honor you, every day.

“We love you, Grandpa Eddie.”