0701 GMT: Execution Watch. Three senior United Nations officials have appealed to Iran to halt 11 executions scheduled for today and to declare a moratorium on the death penalty.
"We urge the Iranian authorities to stop the executions of Saeed Sedeghi and 10 other individuals scheduled for Saturday, 13 October," said the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Ahmed Shaheed; on extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns; and on torture, Juan E. Mendez.
Sedeghi was sentenced to death on 2 June for drug-related offenses. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says he did not receive a fair trial and was subjected to torture.
Earlier this week, in his latest report on human rights violations in the Islamic Republic, Shaheed pointed to the high level of execution. Amnesty International said on Wednesday that it had counted at least 344 Iranian executions since the start of the year, including 135 executions that have not been formally announced.
The majority of those executed were convicted of drug trafficking.
0655 GMT: CyberWatch. Iran Media Report, in an overview of latest developments in Iranian culture and cyberspace, notes the censorship of the poet Mohammad Ali Sepanlou and the filtering of audio-visual extensions on the Internet:
0645 GMT: While the regime continue to black out economic news, including the state of the Iranian currency, it has been putting out signals over discussions with the "West" about Tehran's nuclear programme.
The challenge is putting those signals together: while the Supreme Leader was denouncing the "war-waging" enemy on Friday, his officials were indicating that they might like to sit down with the "power seekers".
We post an analysis, "The Diplomatic Dance Towards Renewed Nuclear Talks?"
Posted via email from lissping
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