Watchdog

Georgian civil activist Tamara Mearakishvili says she has been detained without reason in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Mearakishvili said that an officer of the de facto South Ossetian prosecutor’s office took her into detention on August 16 in Akhalgori after she arrived from Tbilisi.

"[The officer] has not explained anything yet. There are no documents, nothing," she told RFE/RL's Echo of the Caucasus in a brief phone call..

Mearakishvili has repeatedly been summoned by prosecutors in the separatist government for questioning over interviews she has given to Echo of the Caucasus, which broadcasts to Georgia in Russian.

Russia recognized South Ossetia and another Georgian breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent states following a five-day war with Georgia in August 2008. Only a few countries followed Moscow’s lead.

Russia maintains thousands of troops in the two regions, and Georgian authorities have accused Moscow and the separatists of taking control of additional territory in recent months.

Iranian opposition figure Mehdi Karrubi, who has been under house arrest for more than six years, has begun a hunger strike, his family says.

Karrubi's son, Mohammad Taghi Karrubi, said that the 79-year-old cleric has stopped eating since the morning of August 16 because he wants to be put on trial rather than remain under house arrest.

Karrubi's wife told the opposition Sahamnews website that her husband, who she said is only taking heart medicine, "does not expect a fair trial" but wants it to be public.

Fatemeh Karrubi said that he also wants security officers to leave his house.

A reformist MP, Mostafa Kavakebian, raised the subject of Karrubi's hunger strike in Iran's parliament, calling for action from the Health and Intelligence Ministries.

Mehdi Karrubi, along with opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard, were placed under house arrest in February 2011 for challenging the establishment over the disputed 2009 presidential vote and also for highlighting human rights abuses.

Karrubi, a former speaker of parliament, has been hospitalized twice in recent weeks due to heart problems.

Musavi and Rahnavard are also suffering from health problems, their daughters have said.

Rights groups have repeatedly called for the release of the three opposition figures.

Amnesty International said last month that it was "high time" Iranian authorities ended their "unjust treatment" of Karrubi, Musavi, and Rahnavard.

"All three have been unjustly deprived of their liberty in a chilling illustration of Iran's zero tolerance approach to political dissent," the London-based watchdog's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Magdalena Mughrabi said in a July 31 statement.

In March, Iranian authorities sentenced Karrubi's eldest son, Hossein Karrubi, to six months in prison on charges of distributing propaganda against the government.

The jail sentence was for e-mailing to his brother in London a letter that their father had written to President Hassan Rohani. The letter, which called for a public trial, was then released publicly.

With reporting by AFP