Families of Missing Mexican Students Ask Drug Trafficker for Information

MEXICO CITY – Some of the relatives of the 43 education students who disappeared in southern Mexico more than six months ago have asked the suspected leader of the Los Rojos drug cartel, Santiago Mazari Hernandez, to reveal what he knows about the case.

The request was made in a message written on a poster in Iguala, the city where the students went missing on Sept. 26.

The missing students’ relatives told the drug trafficker, who is the subject of an arrest warrant, that they were willing to meet with him.

The poster was a response to several banners, known as “narcomantas” in Mexico, that appeared a few weeks ago bearing messages from Mazari, who said he was not involved in the students’ disappearance and blamed the government for covering up the truth.

“We ask you to please help us find the whereabouts of our children because this bad government has not been serious with us. On the contrary, it has hurt us with its lies. We are poor people and they have trampled our dignity,” the poster said.

Bernabe Abrajan, the father of one of the missing students, told Efe the poster was legitimate and no response had been received from the cartel.

Dozens of suspects, including police officers and public officials, have been arrested in connection with the events in Iguala on the night of Sept. 26, when municipal police fired gunshots at students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School, a nearby teacher-training facility.

Six people died that night, 25 were wounded and 43 students were detained by police and then handed over to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.

Three suspects in the case – Patricio Reyes, Jhonatan Osorio and Agustin Garcia – confessed to having killed the students and burned their bodies.

Reyes, Osorio and Garcia told investigators they took the 43 students to the Cocula dump and set them on fire.

Former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said in a press conference on Jan. 27 that there was sufficient scientific evidence to conclude that the students were murdered and their bodies burned by Guerreros Unidos drug cartel members at the dump in Cocula, with the ashes dumped in the San Juan River.

The Guerreros Unidos gang mistook the students for members of the Los Rojos cartel, said Murillo Karam, who left office on Feb. 26

Sweden: Iranians protest regime’s executions and repression of women during football match

The friendly match in Stockholm between Sweden and Iran on Tuesday was an opportunity for the Iranian community in Sweden to challenge the legitimacy of the Iranian regime.

 

Zlatan Ibrahimović scored for Sweden during his team’s victory against Iran (3-1) in a stage marked by the presence of Iranians and Swedes hostile to the Iranian regime.

Many demonstrators protested outside Friends Arena in Solna before the game. The slogans turned against the oppression of women and the many executions of political prisoners.

According to AFP, the match between Sweden and Iran was played in a playful and political atmosphere, as members of the Iranian community in Sweden were demonstrating for the right of women to go to the stadium and featuring the flag before the Islamic Revolution.

The protestors carried green, white and red flags without the symbol of the clerical regime, which was instead was replaced by lion and sun symbols of Iran, which is considered the national flag by most Iranian dissidents. The protestors were there to express their opposition to the regime.

One Iranian protester told Swedish TV: “We have gathered here to show our opposition to repression in Iran and to show that Iranians all over the world condemn violations of human rights in Iran.”

Svenska Dagbladet reported that there were big protests outside the stadium in the city of Stockholm in which protesters chanted “Down with the terrorism regime in Iran.”

The Swedish news agency reported that one of the placards addressed to the Iranian regime criticized the numerous executions of political prisoners carried out in Iran, among them former football team captain Habib Khabiri.

Habib Khabiri was Iran's rising star. Some have compared him to US basketball star Kobe Bryant. He was called up to play for Iran when he was only 20. Habib scored a dramatic goal from 40 yards out during a December 1977 qualifier against Kuwait, according to Hassan Nayeb-Agha, a member of NCRI, who played for Iran at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.

After the revolution in 1979, he became the captain of the national team in 1980. Yet he was arrested in 1983 by the clerical regime for supporting the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), the main Iranian resistance movement.

Habib was executed alongside 40 other dissidents in July 1984. He was only 29 years old and was tortured before his execution. There has never been official acknowledgement of his execution.
Many Iranian sportsmen, including former members of the national soccer team, are among the 120,000 who have been executed for supporting the resistance and its aspiration to establish democracy and human rights over the past three decades.

Amnesty: Iran regime carried out highest number of reported executions in 2014

The latest report on the death penalty by Amnesty International indicates that 607 recorded executions have been carried out in 22 countries around the world in 2014, a reduction of almost 22 percent compared to the previous year.

The reported executions were carried out in Iran more than any country in the world.

In Iran the authorities officially announced 289 executions, but hundreds more were carried out which were not officially acknowledged, Amnesty report said.

Execution methods employed around the world included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.

Iran is among the countries highlighted by Amnesty International as having used the death penalty "as a tool to suppress political dissent".

At least 2,466 people in 55 countries are known to have been sentenced to death in 2014, according to the latest Amnesty International report on the death penalty.

This represents an increase of 28% compared with 2013, when 1,925 death sentences were recorded in 57 countries.

At least 19,094 people were believed to be under sentence of death worldwide at the end of 2014.

Mr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, reported on March 25 that some 1000 executions had been carried out during the past 15 months in Iran. Prior to that, on March 16, he told a news briefing in Geneva: "There is a lot of concern amongst the Iranian society that the nuclear file may be casting a shadow over the human rights discussion."

The U.N.'s special investigator added that the human rights situation and repression in Iran has worsened since Hassan Rouhani became president.

‘Iran nuclear talks to conclude without an agreement’

A week of nuclear talks between the six world powers and the Iranian regime in Lausanne will conclude without any agreement, but with a press statement on Wednesday, the Iranian regime’s top negotiator said in an interview.

Abbas Araqchi said: “There will be no agreement at the end of today, but we will announce the progress in a press statement,” state-run Tasnim news agency reported.

Araghchi said that "problems" remain in nuclear talks with world powers and that there can be no deal without a "framework for the removal of all sanctions", AFP reported.

In a live interview with state television from the talks in Switzerland, Araghchi said that "until we have solutions to all problems we cannot have a comprehensive agreement," naming sanctions and research and development as key stumbling blocks, the report said.

He said a joint statement on progress made in recent days would be issued later Wednesday in Lausanne, where the negotiations are taking place.

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Wednesday the Iran nuclear talks are not sufficiently advanced to ensure a quick conclusion.

Speaking to reporters after a regular French government meeting in Paris, Fabius said he was ready "whenever necessary" to return to the negotiating table in Lausanne, Switzerland.

International Donors Pledge $3.8 Billion for Victims of Syrian Conflict

KUWAIT CITY – The international community pledged on Tuesday a total of more than 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 billion) financial assistance to the victims of the Syrian crisis during the Kuwait III, the Third International Pledging Humanitarian Conference for Syria.

During the UN-backed conference held in Kuwait City, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that the United Nations would not allow criminals to go unpunished, while he expressed his general despair regarding the situation.

“I have only shame and deep anger and frustration at the international community’s impotence to stop the war,” he said.

The donations will be used in a transparent and responsible manner by UN humanitarian organizations and agencies, the UN secretary-general assured in the fundraiser’s final press conference.

Ban Ki-moon praised the amount of contributions raised during the conference, including the Kuwaiti donation upward of 465 million euros ($500 million) that kicked off the conference, and the 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in aid to Syria pledged by the European Union on behalf of its member states.

The Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, speaking to the audience at the conference’s commencement, reminded the invitees that only 90 percent of the commitments made during the 2012 conference had been fulfilled.

UN secretary-general also brought to light that both regime and opposition forces hinder the process of distributing aid to afflicted civilians, while he grieved the 69 rescue workers who were killed in Syria in 2014.

Other speakers at the fundraiser were equally somber about the Syrian crisis, as Valerie Amos, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, reminded that with each passing day the situation worsens in Syria.

In a press conference following the Kuwait III, the Third International Pledging Humanitarian Conference for Syria, Amos said that 12 million people are desperately in need of help inside Syria, and pointed out that four million refugees are in neighboring countries.

Amos equally stressed the need to support communities receiving refugees, referring also to the negative economic impacts resulting from high influxes of displaced refugees on host countries.

Syria is now entering its fifth consecutive year of loss and bloodshed, during which than 220,000 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed in Syria since the outbreak of the conflict in March 2011, according to the United Nations.

Captive Prosecutor Freed, 3 Terrorists Killed in Turkey

ISTANBUL – Three suspected armed assailants from the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, were killed by Turkish police in an operation to free the Turkish prosecutor who had been taken hostage at an Istanbul courthouse on Tuesday, according to the Turkish daily Sabah.

The publication noted that the hostage was injured, and was transferred to the hospital after being freed.

According to Turkish Hurriyet daily newspaper on Tuesday, the hostage is prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz, who is investigating the death of 14-year-old Berkin Elvan on March 11, 2014, 269 days after he was sent into a coma after being struck by a tear-gas canister during the Gezi Park protests, an incident which sparked a wave of indignation in the country.

A photo had been released earlier on Tuesday on social media showing a gun pointed at Kiraz’s head, with the flag of the Marxist, Leninist DHKP-C party hung in the background.

Mexican Authorities Close 3 Clinics Following Australian Woman’s Death

MEXICO CITY – Health officials closed three clinics and a hospital therapy center in Mexicali, the capital of the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California, in response to the death earlier this month of an Australian woman who underwent plastic surgery.

The medical facilities in the Valley of Mexicali were shut down after inspections discovered violations of the law, the Federal Commission for Health Risks Oversight, or Cofepris, said.

Eva Nicole Sarmonikas died on March 20 after undergoing liposuction on her abdomen and buttocks, the federal agency said.

Dr. Victor Manuel Ramirez Hernandez, who performed the procedures on the 28-year-old Australian woman, is under investigation by the Baja California Attorney General’s Office for possible negligence, the Cofepris said.

The medical facilities were cited for having expired medicines, poorly maintained and obsolete equipment, improperly handling biological waste and having undivided recovery areas, said the agency, part of the Health Secretariat.