Iran Human Rights: A pregnant woman and her husband were sentenced to death convicted of drug trafficking, reported the state run news agency ISCA news.

According to the report, the couple identified as "Shahla" (wife) and "Shahram B." are convicted of keeping 800 grams of heroin, and were sentenced to death by the revolutionary court in the town of Roudan, south of Iran.

Under interrogations, they have confessed that poverty was the reason why they wanted to sell drugs, said the report.

The prosecuter of Roudan, Jafar Hamzei told ISCA news:"The court has sentenced them to death according to the law, but we have asked the judiciary to reduce their punishment to life in prison, due to their poverty and bacause they had not succeeded to sell any drugs yet"

"Another reason why we have asked for reduction of the punishment is because the woman is pregnant" he added.

An Iraqi court is to decide on Tuesday the fate of Saddam Hussein's notorious hatchet-man "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid and 14 others accused of committing war crimes during the 1991 Shiite uprising.

The hearing, comes after harrowing testimony from witnesses of Saddam's crushing of the rebellion who described family members being thrown from helicopters and mass executions.

Majid was sentenced to death in June 2007 for genocide after ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign, when Iraqi forces strafed villages with poison gas, the source of his grim nickname.

Iraq's presidential council approved the death sentences of Majid and two other former senior military officials -- Sultan Hashim al-Tai, another former defence minister, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, former armed forces deputy chief of operations -- in February, after months of legal wrangling.

But the three remain in US custody and have since been charged with committing similar war crimes in southern Iraq during the Shiite uprising that followed Saddam's crushing defeat at the hands of US forces in the 1991 Gulf War.

Perhaps as many as 100,000 people were killed as troops carried out massacres around the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala and the Hilla and Basra regions and shelled towns and villages across the south.

Many Shiites who participated in the uprising say they had expected US forces to back them, but former US president George Bush instead ordered a halt at the Iraqi border, leaving the rebels at the mercy of Saddam's forces.

Majid served as minister of the interior at the time, after serving as the military governor of Kuwait. The 68-year-old was arrested by US forces in August 2003.

In August 2007 an unidentified witness accused Majid of personally executing her two sons by tying bricks to their feet and throwing them out of helicopters into the Gulf after detaining them in March 1991.

Another witness, who also testified behind a curtain, said in September 2007 that Majid had overseen the execution of some 200 people in a sports stadium near the southern city of Basra, shooting them dead in batches of 25.

Majid has never denied or expressed remorse for his actions during the campaign against the Kurds, but he insisted he was not in Basra during the alleged massacre.

Since the March 2003 US-led invasion, experts have exhumed dozens of mass graves of victims killed in the two uprisings.
Saddam was hanged in December 2006 for his role in the massacre of 148 Shiite villagers in the southern town of Dujail in 1982.

Shiites, a minority in the Muslim world, comprise 60 percent of Iraq's population and were ruled for decades by Saddam's Sunni-led regime.

 
Two prisoners were transferred to solitary confinement in preparation for hanging at a future date in the central city of Isfahan, according to the Resistance sources in Iran on Monday. The two men were identified as 27-year-old Mehdi Rezaii and 25-year-old Naqeb Alami. 

Prior to their transfer, the prisoners were held in a ward known as Afghan's Ward.

On November 21, the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly passed a resolution expressing deep concern over human rights violations by the ruling clerics in Iran.
 
The UN document reads in part: "Torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment such as flogging and amputations, public executions, stoning as a method of execution, execution of persons who were below 18 years of age at the time their offence was committed, arrests of and violent crackdowns on women exercising their right to assembly, increasing discrimination and other human rights violations against persons belonging to religious, ethnic, linguistic or other minorities, ongoing and serious restrictions of freedom of opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association, and the increasing harassment, intimidation and persecution of human rights defenders," are a common practice in Iran. 

Turkish fighter jets on Monday raided on several boarder areas of Kurdistan region under the pretext of chasing PKK.

Turkish warplanes on Monday bombed the terror organization PKK targets in northern Iraq, the general staff said in a statement.
The jets bombed the Zap region, close to the Turkish border, the army said in a statement posted on its website.

It said all planes returned to their bases safely and described the operation as "effective." There was no information on casualties.

Turkey, provided with intelligence by the United States, stepped up its campaign to crackdown on the PKK inside Kurdistan region that have forced tens of Kurdish families to escape their homes heading to the shelters for their safety.

Also Iranian artilleries have been shelling border areas of Kurdistan region in the last 50 hours attacking the Kurdish guerrillas of PEJAK.
No casualties have been reported yet, but sources confirm that the assaults have spread panic among the families along the border.
The sources also said the families fled to caves to protect their lives from the assaults.