Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery | World news. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who is described as 'the actual president of Iran' by allies of the country's supreme leader. Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).
Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds". The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached. Ahmadinejad's obsession with the hidden imam is well known. Iran Uses Force Against Protests as Region Erupts.
The size of the protests in Iran was unclear. Witness accounts and news reports from inside the country suggested that perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 demonstrators in several cities defied strong warnings and took to the streets. The unrest was an acute embarrassment for Iranian leaders, who had sought to portray the toppling of two secular rulers, in Tunisia and in Egypt, as a triumph of popular support for Islam in the Arab world. They had refused permission to Iranian opposition groups seeking to march in solidarity with the Egyptians, and warned journalists and photographers based in the country, with success, not to report on the protests. Iranian demonstrators portrayed the Arab insurrections as a different kind of triumph. “Mubarak, Ben Ali, now it’s time for Sayyid Ali!”
Iranian protesters chanted in Persian on videos posted online that appeared to be from Tehran, referring to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah . The crackdown came as the protests flared in Yemen and Bahrain. EU spurns offer of Iran nuclear sites tour. 7 January 2011Last updated at 07:18 ET Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant was built with Russian help The European Union plans to reject Iran's invitation for an EU ambassador to tour Iran's nuclear sites. The EU's foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, said it was the job of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to examine Iran's nuclear sites. Iran says it will open its nuclear facilities to envoys from several countries, including Russia and China, but not the US.
Many Western countries suspect Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only. "What I'll be saying is the role of the inspections of nuclear sites is for the IAEA and I do hope Iran will ensure that the IAEA is able to go and continue and fulfil its work," Baroness Ashton told Reuters news agency on Friday. Earlier the US State Department dismissed Iran's offer of an inspection tour by diplomats as a "clever ploy". Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi gets six-year sentence.
20 December 2010Last updated at 20:13 Jafar Panahi is a winner of many international film awards and a critic of Iran's strict Islamic law. The acclaimed Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to six years in prison, his lawyer says. Farideh Gheirat said Mr Panahi had been convicted of working against the Iranian system, the semi-official Isna news agency reported. She said her client had also been banned from making films, writing scripts and travelling abroad.
Another Iranian film-maker, Mohammad Rasulov, also received a six-year sentence on similar charges. "Mr Panahi has been sentenced to six years in jail on a charge of (participating) in a gathering and carrying out propaganda against the system," said Ms Gheirat. "He has also been banned from making films, writing any kind of scripts, travelling abroad and talking to local and foreign media for 20 years.
" She described the sentence as "heavy" and said her client would be appealing. Hunger strike.