Watchdog

The United States has called on Iran to immediately release jailed Baha’i leaders along with other prisoners of conscience.

Seven leaders of Iran’s Baha’i community were arrested by the Iranian authorities eight years ago and convicted of espionage and spreading propaganda against the clerical establishment.

They were reportedly sentenced to 20 years in prison. Their sentences were later reduced to 10 years.

“We join the international community in condemning their continued imprisonment and calling upon the Islamic Republic of Iran to release them immediately, along with all other prisoners of conscience in Iran,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a May 14 statement issued on the anniversary of the arrest of the Baha'i leaders.

The statement added: “We call upon Iranian authorities to uphold their own laws and meet their international obligations that guarantee freedom of expression, religion, opinion, and assembly for all citizens.”

Baha’is face state persecution in Iran, where their faith is not officially recognized.

Masked men whisked away the family of a Russian whistle-blower and then burned down their home in the North Caucasus region of Chechnya, according to media reports.

Ramazan Dzhalaldinov, who was not in Chechnya at the time, had recently complained to President Vladimir Putin about corruption in the region.

Dzhalaldinov, currently in the neighboring Russian region of Daghestan, said in a video on the website of the Chernovik newspaper on May 13 that masked men entered his house overnight and took his wife and three daughters away in a car, telling them that they were in danger.

The men, he said, then left them several kilometers away, saying that their house was in flames and warning them not to make any complaints.

When Dzhalaldinov's wife and daughters returned home by foot they found their house severely damaged by fire.

Dzhalaldinov, an ethnic Avar, had to flee Chechnya after he uploaded a video on the Internet on April 14 in which he urged Putin to personally intervene in a row in his home village of Kenkhi, where he said residents were forced to pay bribes to local authorities.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on May 13 that, if the reports about the men burning down Dzhalaldinov's house were true, law enforcement would intervene.

Based on reporting by Chernovik, RIA Novosti, and Kavkaz-uzel.ru