NCRI – A week following Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's prosecutor general, announcement of new round of crackdowns on what he called "internet and SMS violators," a new special task force for "internet crimes" start working at mullahs' judiciary, reported the state-run daily Etemaad on Saturday.

"The SMS might target the society as a whole or individuals. In the first case the prosecutor general will act as public defender and in the second case an individual has to file a complaint on his own," Mortazavi added.

Amin Hassan Rahimi, Secretary of mullahs' Majlis (parliament) Judiciary Committee said to the state-run news agency ISNA that the new task force is designed to "enforce" the "filtering" of the sites.

Last month the Iranian regime said that more than 5,000 sites had already been filtered by the government. 
In October, A number of senior officials of the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG), the main body for imposing censorship, have expressed its deep concern over the use of SMS messaging by the Iranian Resistance’s network inside Iran.

Sarami, Vice-president of MCIG’s Center for Development of Information Technology, said: “Mojahedin [the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)] is exploiting country’s communication network to spread their anti-revolutionary SMS messages,”   the state-run daily Qods reported on Tuesday, September 30.
According to some figures every day over 20 million text messages are received in Iran, the peak hours are between ten in the evening and one in the morning. The SMS has become a tool to exchange messages by opponents of the regime.

The network of the PMOI inside Iran has sent millions of SMS messages across the country making use of it for organizing protests against the regime.

In the past the regime’s officials while expressing their concern claimed that such activities by the PMOI’s network were directed from abroad.

Davood Zareian, regime’s Minister of Communications told the state-run news agency ILNA on September 24: “the messages have been sent from a foreign SMS center.”
                    
But the mullahs' officials now admit that the Iranian Resistance’s network is using the country’s communication network from inside Iran.
                 
In recent weeks the clerical regime has staged a repressive campaign to counter the activities of the PMOI’s network. 

On September 13, Tabnak Website belonging to Mohsen Rezaii former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) criticized the regime’s security apparatus for their incompetence in countering the activities of the Resistance’s network.

“In Tehran, supporters of the PMOI distributed CDs containing speeches and clips of their activities door to door.  Some media have even reported distribution of similar CDs in other cities in Tehran province, including Karaj,” the website added.

Iran has hanged five men in a prison in the religious city of Qom after they were convicted of crimes including rape and drug trafficking, the government newspaper Iran reported on Sunday.

The men were identified as Mohammad Reza, 37, convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy, and Hamid, 22, who raped a teenage boy after threatening him with a knife.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Russia has begun delivering S-300 air defense systems to Iran which could help repel any Israeli and U.S. air strikes on its nuclear sites, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.

"After few years of talks with Russia ... now the S-300 system is being delivered to Iran," IRNA quoted Email Kosari, deputy head of parliament's Foreign Affairs and National Security committee, as saying.

Kosari did not say when the deliveries began. Iran's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report.

The United States, its European allies and Israel say Iran is seeking to build nuclear arms under the cover of a civilian atomic energy program. Iran denies the charge.

Israel's insistence that Iran must not be allowed to develop an atomic bomb has fueled speculation that the Jewish state, widely assumed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, could mount its own pre-emptive strikes.

In October Russia's Foreign Ministry denied media speculation that Moscow would sell the medium-range S-300 system, adding Moscow had no intention of selling weapons to "troubled regions."

But Russia's RIA news agency last week quoted "confidential sources" as saying that Russia was fulfilling a S-300 contract with Iran.

The most advanced version of the S-300 system can track targets and fire at aircraft 120 km (75 miles) away. It is known in the West as the SA-20.

Russian arms sales and nuclear cooperation with Iran have strained relations with Washington, which says Tehran could use them against their interests in the region and also against its neighbors.

Russia, building Iran's first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr, says Tehran does not have the capability to make nuclear weapons.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Jon Boyle)

HALABJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iraqi minority Kurds demanded on Sunday the execution of a Saddam-era official known as 'Chemical Ali' for the killing of 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 gas attack.

Ali Hassan al-Majeed, a Sunni Arab who was Saddam's cousin and a member of his inner circle, has already been sentenced to death twice, once in 2007 for his role in killing tens of thousands of Kurds in Saddam's military 'Anfal' campaign.

Majeed and three other high-ranking officials accused of mounting attacks on civilians appeared at Iraq's High Tribunal at the opening of a trial for the March 1988 attack.

Prosecutors described how relatives of 483 plaintiffs were gassed to death in the Kurdish border town of Halabja.

Majeed's second death sentence came this month for his part in crushing a Shi'ite revolt after the 1991 Gulf War.

Disputes within the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, however, have so far stalled Majeed's execution.

In Halabja, more than 200 km (120 miles) northeast of Baghdad, hundreds of Kurds waved banners and shouted for Majeed and his fellow defendants to be executed.

"We ask the court to execute Chemical Ali and to heal the wounds he caused by gassing our beloved," said Shereen Hassan, a Halabja housewife who took part in the protest.

"I will never rest until I see him hanged," said Peshtwan Qader.

At the time of the massacre, Iraq had been at war with Iran for almost eight years, and Saddam's government alleged Halabja residents were aiding Kurdish militants and siding with Iran.

Fouad Saleh, the town's mayor, urged the Iraqi government to pay victims' families compensation.

Majeed's Halabja trial will be headed by Judge Mohammed al-Uraibi, a Shi'ite jurist who also headed Majeed's first two trials, a court spokesman said.

Also charged in the case are Sultan Hashem, a former defence minister, and two intelligence officers. All the defendants are already facing life sentences or execution.

Majeed has been held in a U.S. detention centre but is due like thousands of other detainees to be handed over to the Iraqi government under a security pact taking effect on January 1. U.S. military officials in Baghdad on Sunday could not immediately confirm whether Majeed was still in their custody.

(Reporting by Sherko Raouf in Halabja and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Missy Ryan; Editing by Michael Christie)