The recent barring of Iran's Arabic-speaking news channel, al-Alam, or the World, from two Egyptian and Arabic satellite companies has prompted a number of contradicting suggestions over the motives behind the decision.

Both satellite companies -- the Egyptian-owned Nilesat and the Saudi-managed Arabsat -- ended the World's broadcast signal last week without warning.

Nilesat's executive director, Ahmed Anis, announced that the broadcasting was cut due to contract violations. But the head of the World's bureau in Cairo said he was informed by Nilesat officials that the decision came from a higher Egyptian government authority.

A statement sent by Arabsat to the World indicated the satellite company had received complaints that the channel was airing content that did not follow the region's religious and political values. Arabsat added that the World had also defamed a number of top Arab officials. Arab capitals, most notably Cairo and Riyadh, have been increasingly concerned about Iran's widening influence across the Middle East.

Some Egyptian sources suggested the World's support for the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen may have angered Saudi officials, who, in accordance with Nilesat administrators, agreed to stop the channel's signal from reaching millions of Sunni Muslim Arabs throughout the region.

Saudi warplanes and troops have been clashing with Houthi insurgents on the Saudi-Yemeni border since last week. Yemen, a Saudi ally, claims the rebels are receiving aid from Shiite-dominated Iran. Yemen has offered no direct evidence of a Houthi-Iran connection, and the rebels have denied receiving help from Tehran.

Egyptian authorities temporarily shut down the World's Cairo bureau in July 2008 after a lawyer filed a lawsuit against the channel following a documentary about late President Anwar Sadat, who was vilified by Iran for signing a peace treaty with Israel. The channel went on to broadcast via a private Egyptian company.

The World, which was founded in 2003, is based in Tehran and managed by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).

-- Amro Hassan in Cairo

Photo: Al Alam TV logo. Credit: Al Youm Al Sabee

Col. Akram Soliman first appeared in front of a criminal court in the city of Alexandria in September after he was accused of detaining and beating Ragaie Soltan for eight days without any formal charges. Soltan had been taken into custody July 21 during a random police sweep of the homeless in the seaside city.

Soltan was transferred to a public hospital one week later, where he was diagnosed with brain concussion and internal bleeding after losing consciousness as a result of the physical abuse.

Human rights organizations and democracy campaigners rallied around Soltan's case as another example of the abuse many Egyptians face at the hands of police and intelligence agencies. Some activists said Soliman's five-year sentence was too lenient.

"We were really hoping for a more deterrent judgment. Article 282 of the Egyptian Penal Code states that an officer who tortured or illegally captured a suspect should receive life sentence with labor," said Moheb Aboud of the Victims Human Rights Institute, which organized a march condemning torture in prisons after Soliman's conviction.

"The Ministry of Interior deals very softly with cases like torture. If proven guilty, officers are sent to prison for short periods and they are reinstated in their jobs right after their release," the founder of the El Ghad opposition party, Ayman Nour, said. "Incidents like these have increased in our prisons because the government is sponsoring torture as a mean of dealing with suspects." 

Public anger over the torture of suspects and prisoners intensified beginning in 2007 when bloggers started posting videos of police abuse on the Internet. International human rights organizations regularly criticize Egypt for torture and civil rights violations.  

-- Amro Hassan in Cairo

Photo: Officer Akram Soliman. Credit: Sarah Carr
 

Iran's moderate former President Mohammad Khatami continued to question the results of the June 12 presidential election, defying the nation's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said flatly last week that publicly voicing such doubts was illegal. 

"We should not decide for people," Khatami said in an a lengthy interview (in Persian) published today by Jamaran, a news website operated by the family of the Islamic Republic's revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"Nor should we restrict our people's choice and vote," he said. "Those who do not believe in the people's vote and even allow themselves to tamper with their votes or ignore them are unfamiliar with the Islamic Republic and revolution."

Khatami is a pillar of the country's battered reform movement and, along with presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, one of the three de facto figureheads of the opposition movement, which took to the streets again this week. 

All are under heavy surveillance and intense political pressure. Grass-roots opposition activists hunger for news and direction from the leaders, but have mostly had to make do without their guidance. 

In the interview, Khatami offered no new directives or vision for the movement. Instead he accused Iran's hard-liners of tarnishing the international image of the Islamic Republic.

"Today, the world looks at our Islamic establishment as an illogical, harsh, immoral and inhumane regime that does not respect its people's vote," he said.

Although the mood on the streets is getting more radical, Khatami placed himself squarely within the traditional camp of reformists, those who want to change the Islamic Republic from within. 

"We have to enforce the constitution, but as long as it is not interpreted arbitrarily," he said. "Why is the constitution being violated today? The constitution obliges the regime's leaders to respect people's vote."

Although some hard-liners have called for Khatami's arrest, he accused "certain individuals and organs" of breaking the law. "They only want to impose their own desires on people," he said. "They are ready to sacrifice every asset and they should not be allowed to run the country. ... The problem is that certain groups intend to bring the regime under their own control and allow themselves to treat their opponents in any manner."

Unless Iran's rulers learn to tolerate dissent, they will further solidify opinion against the Islamic Republic, he warned.

"The purge of sympathizers of the revolution under cover of baseless accusations constitutes the biggest-ever conspiracy against the Islamic Republic," he said. "It will drive social forces toward enmity with the regime and revolution."

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photo: Mohammad Khatami in the U.S. in 2006. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

"From one cup of coffee, we spent the whole day together," Ben Mhenni wrote of Riahi in a series of e-mails to the Times. "In fact, I discovered an exceptional person -- funny, full of life, [an] artist [...] We talked about music, we laughed watching Tunisian television, we talked about blogs and bloggers."

They also talked about the Criminal Brigade, the investigative security force Riahi would have to answer to, and Ben Mhenni's boyfriend, Muhammad Soudani, who was arrested on Oct. 22 after giving an interview to a foreign radio station and has not been seen since.

[Updated, Saturday, Nov. 7, at 11:55 p.m. PST: Fatma Riahi was released Saturday morning, according to a statement posted on the Facebook page and blog devoted to her release. 

The statement said Riahi was in good health but was still in danger of being re-arrested.]

Still, she could see her friend was worried. Riahi had been writing ironic, thinly veiled allegorical pieces about Tunisian politics and society for her blog under the name "Arabicca." When she asked Ben Mhenni to spend the night, Ben Mhenni said she agreed without hesitation.

"I left her in the morning to my work and she went to the Criminal Brigade," Ben Mhenni wrote. Five days later, she has no idea what became of her friend.

Riahi's lawyer and friend, Leila Ben Debba, said investigators interrogated Riahi for three days in a row, accusing her of penning the infamous political satire blog debatunisie under the handle Blog de Z. No official charges have been filed yet, but authorities confiscated Riahi's computer and Ben Debba says she has not been allowed to contact her client since Wednesday. Blog de Z's most recent post is dated Thursday, three full days after Riahi was first taken into custody.

Riahi's friends in the Tunisian blogosphere are rallying as best they can, deploying their various avatars throughout the Internet in an effort to raise awareness and bring publicity to Riahi's case. But the same international community that expressed shock and outrage over Iran's controversial elections and media crackdown are not likely to be as stern with Tunisia, an ally in the "war on terror."

Incidentally, the bloggers' advocacy site Global Voices ranks Tunisia just behind Iran as one of the most repressive countries towards bloggers and online activists, although it is a fraction of Iran's size. The most famous Tunisian blogger prisoner is Zouhair Yahyaoui, who was arrested in 2000 after inviting readers to vote on whether Tunisia was a "republic, a kingdom, a zoo or a prison." Three years later, the 36-year-old died of a heart attack after reportedly being severely tortured.

Aymen Jamani, a fellow Tunisian blogger and friend of Riahi's, insisted she was not a political blogger, and that she wrote extensively on poetry and art.

Jamari also supplied The Times with a copy of her final post before the blog was deleted. Here are excerpts from "damage":

Wanting to live free, read the newspaper you want, meet with friends or colleagues in a coffee house to discuss the development plan proposed by the municipality or the government, for coastal protection, the devastating side effects of the construction of a Marina, the curriculum of our children, to organize a concert of solidarity with a cause, to develop a campaign for the candidate best able to convey our ideas...to create an association to safeguard the Andalusian music or Berber language or to support victims of floods, to create a journal, write an article...participate in the organization of city life, it seems that this is what POLITICS means.

Making politics essentially out of love before it is hatred for or against someone, to love the idea of freedom, of a country, to want the best for its schools, its former children, its nature and culture, and to try and leave the place in better condition than we found it as much as possible for our children to continue the project.

--Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Fatma Riahi, aka Arabicca. Credit: global voices

Khatami, not to be confused with the reformist former president of the same last name, simultaneously and contradictorily downplayed the protest, admonished opposition supporters and besought them to come back into the fold.

"Out of the hundreds and thousands of people who take to the streets, only one or two thousand shouted" opposition slogans, he said. "Americans must not be happy, as there is no red carpet waiting for them."

Then he shifted gears. 

"My brothers and sisters who have  fallen in the wrong and incorrect track, look who is supporting you," he said. 

"Those who were named by the late imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] as 'blasphemous' and their Islam was called 'Americanized Islam.' The miserable monarchists are supporting you. What is wrong if you follow the mainstream of the nation? Come back to the embrace of the nation and the nation will accept your repenting and remorse."

But, he added, "Of course the criminals’ cases are different and they should be punished." 

In a pre-sermon speech, Alaedin Boroujerdi, head of parliament's national security and foreign affairs committee, said the protesters were aping slogans on Voice of America. 

"The leaders [of the opposition] used to be high-ranking officials," he said, in a slap at reformists who once dominated the government. "Now, they repeat the same slogans."

Then Khatami, took to the podium, eventually reaching the topic of U.S.-Iran relations in the wake of attempts to jump-start talks over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

He brooked little possibility of an imminent deal.

"Our uncompromising stance is not out of being obstinate or prejudiced or sentimental," he said. "No, we believe that since the 1953 coup against [Mohammad] Mosaddegh, the U.S. has done nothing except treason against our nation, and since the beginning of our revolution, as [Khomeini] said, we can compile a book about the crimes committed by U.S."

He accused the U.S. of being involved in plots against Iran, instigating ethnic groups to revolt and imposing war on the nation. 

He said the Obama administration recently released $50 million for "toppling our system." 

"President Obama said that the U.S. did not interfere in the post-election unrest," Khatami said. "He is telling a lie. As long as the U.S. will not give up its arrogant character, our nation is not going to be engaged in satanic negotiations."

The crowd of hard-liners chanted "Death to America."

"They say Iran should build confidence," he continued. "On the contrary. Iran does not trust you."

-- Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran and Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

It was supposed to be a public show of Iranian unity during day marking the 30-year anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Islamic revolutionaries.

But not only did anti-government demonstrators, many of them dressed in green scarves and headbands,  hijack the state-sponsored event. They also managed to steal the media's attention media, much to the displeasure of the authorities, who blamed the Western media for distorting the facts.

On the other hand, Iran's official media, also appeared to play fast and loose with reality. 

“A number of foreign media outlets such as al-Arabia, al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, and France24 are seeking to create widespread unrest and police brutality against the people by broadcasting phony stories and images from today (Wednesday) on the occasion of the taking of the den of spies [US embassy in Tehran] and the national day against the global arrogance,” read the report issued by IRNA.

The news outlet accused foreign media organizations of turning a blind eye to the “tens of thousands of people in Tehran” it claimed took to the streets to stand up against America and instead chose to file false reports to stir discord in the capital.

“The foreign media made no mention of the epic public turnout for 13 Aban [4 November]. They have created an emotionally charged environment, have published lies, and have highlighted certain parts of the news in order to create widespread unrest in Tehran,” said IRNA.

As proof of its claims, the news agency provides a long list of allegedly false reports from the Nov. 4 rallies put out by foreign news outlets. But it appears that some of IRNA’s allegations did not entirely square with video and photo evidence as well as eyewitness reports from the scenes of the protests.

IRNA alleged that the Associated Press claimed falsely that security forces were clashing with anti-government demonstrators in Tehran. But eyewitness accounts and videos circulated on the Internet (including the one above) show security forces beating demonstrators and crowds clashing with squads of riot police. 

IRNA also reported that reformist politician Mehdi Karroubi, who has become a central figure in Iran’s protest movement, did not appear in Tehran’s Haft-e Tir square to join the crowds of demonstrators despite eyewitnesses confirming his presence. 

Videos posted to YouTube (below) also show Karroubi receiving a rock star's greeting by supporters as he stepped out of his car to attend Wednesday’s rallies. 

Journalists working for foreign media outlets also came under fire.The Agence France Presse news agency reported that one of its Iranian reporters, Farhad Pouladi, was taken into custody by Iranian security forces while on his way to cover the rallies.

-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

Photos: Crowds of anti-government demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran on Wednesday.  Credit:Farhad Rajabali for the Times

Videos: Scenes of protests in Tehran on November 4. Credit: You Tube.

Opposition leader Ayman Nour has attacked the ruling regime after he was barred from traveling to the United States, where he was invited to speak about Egypt's political climate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Nour and a number of Egyptian politicians, including Gamal Mubarak -- a top official in the ruling National Democratic Party and the son of President Hosni Mubarak -- were invited to the Carnegie event. Nour said he is convinced that his travel ban was intended to prevent anti-government figures from spoiling Gamal Mubarak's trip. 

"Mubarak's son wants the lion's share of the Egyptian political sphere, whether that is inside or outside the country," Nour said. "But I will not give him such pleasure, and I will take part in the Carnegie seminar through video conferences." 

The founder and former head of El Ghad opposition party, who was also planning to take part in a number of conferences organized by the Egyptian community in the U.S., previously said that the Egyptian public prosecutor had issued an administrative decision preventing him from going to the U.S. and other nations in the Middle East and Europe.

Gamal Mubarak is being groomed to succeed his father, a scenario resented by many Egyptians who have suffered under the government's economic programs and repressive human-rights policies and don’t want a Mubarak dynasty. Nour and fellow opposition activists and parties recently formed a coalition under the slogan Mayehkomsh ("You don't have the right to rule"), rejecting any succession plan.

After losing to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt's first contested elections in 2005, Nour was sentenced to five years in prison on what are widely regarded as trumped-up charges of forging signatures in order to establish El Ghad party. He was released on health grounds in February and since then has only been allowed to leave the country to receive healthcare abroad.

Nour, who has been touring Egyptian cities to interact with citizens and demonstrate his political vision over the last few months, can't run in the 2011 presidential elections because of his earlier conviction.

-- Amro Hassan in Cairo

Photo: Ayman Nour. Credit: AFP
 

Perfect, scientists say, for directing hungry shoppers to the food court.

Students and faculty at United Arab Emirates University in Al-Ain have created what a team at the university's lab says is the world's first Arabic-speaking socially interactive robot.

Nicholas Mavrides, a professor of computer science, said the human-like Ibn Sina, named after the Islamic philosopher and scientist commonly known in English as Avicenna, said the robot could be used as a receptionist, salesman or shopping assistant at one of the Persian Gulf's many shopping malls.

"We're very close to being able to get him to work as a receptionist or a helper in a mall," he told Agence France Presse. "If we work on it in a group of five people, we will be able to develop those skills in six months to make him ready for full operations."

-- Los Angeles Times

Photo: Karim Sahib / AFP/Getty Images

Thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets of Tehran today, hijacking what was supposed to be a state-sponsored celebration of the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the American Embassy by Islamist revolutionaries.  Videos posted on Facebook and YouTube show police forces clashing violently with the demonstrators, led mostly by young activists and students.

 Protesters in the above video, which was posted on YouTube, chant, "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great," an echo of the nighttime rooftop chants in protests that have taken place since the disputed presidential elections in June.

Protesters also shouted, "The Russian Embassy is a den of spies," re-appropriating an old state accusation against the American Embassy.

Reports have surfaced of security forces using violence to disperse the crowds. In the above video, a student protester is seen staunching blood from a head wound.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Video: YouTube

It is not only in the bars of New York or bistros of Paris where smokers are being pushed to the sidelines and asked to step outside to light that cigarette. Now, Saudi Arabia's health ministry is launching a public campaign to make the holy cities of Mecca and Medina smoke-free during this year’s pilgrimage season.

The move is a part of a larger health drive for the pilgrimage season that has been spearheaded by the ministry to create a healthier environment for pilgrims and prevent a swine flu breakout among them. Over 2 million people from around the world travel to the two holy cities each year to perform the pilgrimage.

Speaking to the Saudi English-language daily Arab News, Majed Al-Munif of the health ministry’s Tobacco Control Program said that brochures advertising the anti-smoking campaign are being handed out to arriving pilgrims.

“Under the ministry’s Tobacco Control Program, we have printed around 1.5 million leaflets in different languages for distribution among pilgrims — both smokers and nonsmokers,” he said. 

The Middle East, home to smoke-filled teahouses, is now slowly jumping on the smoke-free bandwagon. Beirut, for example, recently organized a smoke-free night on its bar-crowded Gemmayze strip, and Turkey banned smoking in public places earlier this year.

To speed up the ministry's goal of making Mecca and Medina free of cigarette smoke, tobacco sales have apparently been banned within a three-mile radius of the two cities and the areas have been declared tobacco-free.

The campaign doesn't end there.

Billboards carrying anti-smoking messages have been erected across Mecca and Medina, and pilgrims are being given fliers advertising special clinics that help smokers to quit. Buses transporting pilgrims between sites carry posters about the anti-smoking drive.

Al-Munif said he believes that the Hajj pilgrimage serves as an excellent opportunity for smoking pilgrims to rid themselves of their bad habit. 

The health ministry has even come up with a slogan that it hopes will serve as an inspiration for pilgrims to put out that cigarette: “Make Arafat Day, a Quit-Smoking Day," in reference to climactic ninth day of the Hajj.

The bid to make the holy cites of Mecca and Medina smoke-free is not a totally new initiative. Saudi’s King Abdullah declared them smoke-free in 2002, and the health ministry has since the struggled to implement the ruling. 

One factor that has caused difficulties in the implementation of the king’s decision is the language barrier with pilgrims from around the world pouring into Saudi Arabia each year for the Hajj.

Apart from making this year’s Hajj smoke-free, Saudi authorities are also working hard to make it flu-free. About 7,000 people in the country have so far become infected with swine flu, and the virus is said to have caused 62 deaths. 

With the Hajj only a few weeks away, the health ministry has begun to vaccinate local pilgrims and workers in Mecca and Medina, and surveillance is being set up in the cities to track the spread of the virus.

Arriving pilgrims have also been instructed to do their part to protect themselves from contracting the flu, including the use of unscented hand sanitizers.

Scented disinfectants are deemed a violation of Ihram, the special religious codes for the Hajj pilgrimage, according to some Saudi religious scholars.

“Pilgrims should make sure the sanitizers and disinfectants they use during Hajj are scentless so as not to commit any violation that might harm their pilgrimage,” said Sheikh Ahmed bin Hamad Al-Mazroua, a judge at the Court of Cassation in Mecca. 

 “There are plenty of scentless sanitizers which pilgrims can safely use,” he added. 

 -- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

Photo: In one of the final stages of the Hajj, pilgrims hurl stones at largest of the three stone walls that represent Satan. The "stoning the devil" ritual symbolizes the pilgrims warding off temptation. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Of course, everyone spies on everyone in the Middle East. 

But in the past, for the sake of politesse, Israel has refused to acknowledge mounting espionage operations in Lebanon, although their existence is an open secret.

Lebanon has arrested dozens of alleged spies working for Israel this year alone, and recently found and destroyed a number of eavesdropping devices attached to Hezbollah's communications network. 

At the time, Israel said allegations of spying "did not warrant a serious response."

But during a recent visit to the volatile border separating Israel from Lebanon, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon confirmed Israel's information-gathering activities in Lebanon, which he said targeted Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia and political organization that maintains de facto control over southern Lebanon.

"The moment Hezbollah renewed their attacks, we began to collect intelligence. ... We will stop when Hezbollah disarms itself and the border is a border of peace," Ya'alon said, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

"When we are in conflict with an enemy, we gather information about them," he added.

Ya'alon's admission elicited outrage, if not surprise, from Lebanese politicians. Interior Minister Ziad Baroud called it "rude" and a "clear violation of international resolutions."

Israel is unlikely to face serious criticism from the international community over its latest revelation. On Friday, Washington's special coordinator for Lebanon, Michael Williams, warned against violations of the often ignored 2006 cease-fire deal by both sides. Such violations could "destabilize the situation," he said. 

Williams was reacting to recent flare-ups along the border between Israel and Lebanon, known as the Blue Line. Over the last year, border tensions have increased because of rocket attacks by extremist groups officially unconnected to Hezbollah, and retaliatory Israeli shelling of Lebanese border towns. 

There have also been several mysterious explosions that Israel claims were caused by Hezbollah weapons caches; Hezbollah has maintained they were caused by unexploded Israeli ordnance from the 2006 conflict.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Upper photo: A Lebanese intelligence officer shows off confiscated spy equipment hidden in the top of a cooler. Credit: Wael Hamza / EPA

Lower photo: An alleged Israeli eavesdropping device that was destroyed near the Lebanese border village of Houla. Credit: Naharnet.com

The National Democratic Party's annual convention, launched on Saturday under the slogan "For every citizen's sake," is unfolding amid the fears of many Egyptians that Gamal Mubarak -- a leading NDP official and son of current President Hosni Mubarak -- is being tailored to succeed his father in the 2011 presidential elections.

While many were anxious to see if the party would announce or even drop a hint on whether Gamal Mubarak would be nominated for the coming elections, top NDP officials did not broach the matter during speeches Saturday and today. In his address to the party faithful, President Mubarak, 81, gave no indication whether he would seek another term or step aside.

"We were hoping the NDP will be brave enough to either confirm or deny that Gamal Mubarak will be running in the coming presidential elections, unfortunately ... none of the officials talked about the issue," said Hamdi Hassan, spokesman for the parliamentary bloc of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition party.

Former Minister of Information and current NDP Secretary-General Safwat Sherif blasted the independent news media for raising what he called "speculative" suggestions that Gamal Mubarak will be the country's next president, adding that it is too early to discuss who will be the party's presidential candidate.

Today, in what was seen as a speech to raise his popularity among Egyptians, Gamal Mubarak defended the party's policies without delving into the succession drama, stressing that the NDP is working for the good of Egyptians rather than serving the interests of the country's tycoons as the opposition claims. Many in Egypt, a country where about 40% of the population lives on $2 or less a day or, regard the ruling party as corrupt and looking out only for the rich and politically connected. 

Regarding the financial aspect, opposition figures were disillusioned to see NDP members boast of the country's booming economy throughout the first two days of the conference. The vice president of the opposition Democratic Front party, Sekina Fouad, said, "Every year they [NDP] talk about the success of previous plans and the bright ideas they still have for developing the country, but what we witness on the ground is further deterioration in every Egyptian's life." 

-- Amro Hassan in Cairo

Photo: Gamal Mubarak. Credit: AFP

It was near the end of a meeting Wednesday between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a group of university students when the man who is Iran's highest political and spiritual authority asked if there were any other questions. 

He spotted a young man in the corner with his hand raised and called on him, asking him to go to the podium to speak through the public address system. 

What followed was an extraordinarily candid 20-minute speech by the student, later identified as national math Olympiad winner Mahmoud Vahidnia, in which he publicly and explicitly criticized Khamenei for the government's conduct in the unrest that followed Iran's June 12 elections. 

Vahidnia, a first-year student of mathematics at Tehran's prestigious Sharif University, spoke without notes.

[UPDATED at 4:30 a.m. PST on Nov. 1:  Despite reports of his arrest, reports surfaced that Vahidnia is okay. He told the Persian-language Alef.ir news agency in a report that appeared in the reformist newspaper Sarmayeh on Sunday that rumors of his detention were unfounded. 

He also said he made the speech on his own volition. "I had not coordinated with anyone," he told the news agency. "Even my family had no idea what I was going to say."

He added, "On the whole the meeting with the Supreme Leader was constructive."]

He criticized the violence against protesters during the election. He said Khamenei lived in a bubble, unaware of the sentiments against his rule. He critiqued what he described as Iran's "cycle of power" in which entrenched elites in institutions such as the Guardian Council and Assembly of Experts exert what he described as a stranglehold over the nation's political life.

He criticized state broadcasting and the media, saying their unwillingness to criticize Khamenei deepened Iran's divisions.

 

“Does the state broadcasting really reflect the realities of the country and the whole world, or does it draw an unrealistic caricature of the world?" he said. "Does state broadcasting permit diverse opinions?"

He said he had never seen anyone publicly criticize Khamenei in the media.

"I think if they let criticism against you get published, then simple problems are not overplayed and will not lead to schism and division and hatred," he said, according to reformist websites which recounted the exchange, but also Khamenei's own website (in Farsi). 

"When a simple criticism cannot find an environment to be expressed, then gradually it gets tainted with ill intentions," he said.

Sporadic applause punctuated his speech. A live broadcast of the event on television was shut down. A moderator interrupted, saying time was up. Somebody else interjected, addressing Vahidnia. "If criticism were not allowed, you would not be criticizing," he said.  

But Khamenei insisted on replying. Though he acknowledged that he appointed the head of state broadcasting, he said it didn't always do what he wanted. He, too, had complaints about the conduct of state broadcasting.

"We have never said not to criticize us," he said.  "We have no objection. We welcome criticism.There are lots criticism against me. We take in the criticism, and we understand the criticism.” 

Reformist websites said Vahidnia was harassed by security forces at the meeting as the event ended, and many fear that he has been locked up.

On Friday night the Sharif University dormitories erupted with cries of "God is great!" and "Death to the dictator!" in support of their fellow classmate. University activists warned that if any harm comes to the “courageous student" the campus would explode.

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photos:

At top, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Credit: Hasan Sarbakhshian / Associated Press

Mahmoud Vahidnia publicly criticized Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei during a forum Wednesday. Credit: VOA Persian (above) and BBC Persian via YouTube

Video: Amateur clip said to show classmates of Vahidnia protesting at dormitories Friday night. Credit: YouTube

For years, Israel's main concern on its northern border was the militant Shiite group Hezbollah, a tightly organized resistance movement that participates in the Lebanese government but still maintains its own military and social infrastructure. 

But now another player has appeared, a previously little-known Islamist group calling itself the Battalions of Ziad Jarrah, a branch of the Abdullah Azzam Brigade, that has now claimed responsibility for its second rocket attack on Israel this year.  Ziad Jarrah was a Sept. 11 hijacker, and Abdullah Azzam a mentor of Osama bin Laden.

Although Hezbollah has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Israel, it often coordinates with the Lebanese army and the U.N., which maintains a peacekeeping force in the south.

The Battalions of Ziad Jarrah, on the other hand, are thought to have connections to Al Qaeda, using the well-known Jihadist Fajr media center to claim responsibility for the rocket that was fired on northern Israel on Tuesday from the Lebanese border village of Houla. 

Israel responded to the rocket attack by shelling the area, where the Lebanese army later found four more timed rockets. No casualties were reported. 

The exchange comes just two weeks after a number of Israeli surveillance devices were found and destroyed near Houla.

The group is also believed to be behind the rocket attacks on Israel from Qleilah, Lebanon, on Sept. 11 this year.

The Battalions of Ziad Jarrah said this recent attack was in retaliation for Israel's crackdown on protesters at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, according to the SITE intelligence monitoring group.

The mosque sits on a site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and has been the site of clashes between police and Palestinian protesters who claim Israeli excavation beneath it is threatening the mosque's structural stability.

"The occupying Jews have dared to repeatedly raid the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque.... In response to this aggression, a battalion among the Battalions of Ziad Jarrah" fired a katyusha rocket, the statement said, according to AFP.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

No mercy for those accused of trying to topple the Islamic Republic.

Britain on Thursday protested a four-year jail sentence apparently imposed on one of its senior employees at its embassy in Tehran accused of spying and fomenting violence. 

Hossein Rassam, 44, who served as chief political analyst at the British Embassy in Tehran was sentenced in a closed courtroom earlier this week, according to The Times of London. 

British authorities were informed of the sentence Tuesday and have summoned the Iranian ambassador while Britain’s ambassador to Iran has filed a complaint with Iranian authorities. The outcome of the trial has yet to be officially announced. 

In other developments, an Iranian human rights group is claiming that judiciary officials in Iran refuse to let a lawyer file an appeal on behalf of Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian American scholar sentenced to 15 years in jail for allegedly stirring up trouble during recent protests. 

And a vacation video (above) said to “prove the innocence” of three American hikers detained in Iran since the summer has been released online. 

Not all the news is grim. Iranian authorities recently released Maziar Bahari, a Newsweek reporter and Iranian Canadian who was arrested in the post-election unrest.

The Rassam case has angered the Brits. Foreign secretary David Miliband referred to the court decision in a statement as “deeply concerning” and “wholly unjustified."

Rassam’s sentence, said Miliband, illustrated "further harassment of embassy staff for going about their normal and legitimate duties."

Rassam was arrested June 27 along with eight other local employees of the British Embassy amid the public unrest and protests that erupted after Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election. At that time, the group was supposedly accused of participating in the riots that began after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed victory in the election. 

The other eight were released after some time but Rassam was put on trial along with an employee at the French Embassy and French researcher Clothilde Reiss.

The three were tried in a mass trial of more than 100 people rounded up during the post-election fallout, accused of seeking to bring down the government. Opposition leaders slammed the proceedings as “show trials.”

Rassam is currently out on bail after his release from Teheran’s Evin prison in August. It was not known whether he will remain free pending his appeal or will have to return to prison immediately.

Non-Iranian reporters have not been allowed to attend any of Rassam’s court hearings but the state news agency said Rassam had told the court that 300,000 British pounds, or about $500,000, had been budgeted to set up contacts with political groups prior to the Iranian presidential election, including the main reformist opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Ties between Britain and Iran have grown increasingly tense since the disputed vote and subsequent fallout. 

Miliband urged Iranian authorities in his statement to overturn Rassam’s sentence, which he said constituted an “attack against the entire diplomatic community in Iran." 

He warned of gloomy consequences for Iran from countries other than Britain should the sentence not be overruled. 

Rassam, a father of one, has worked at the embassy since 2004. 

Tajbakhsh, an urban planner who holds a doctorate from Columbia University, was arrested and taken into custody in the wake of the post-election protests. He was once a consultant for the American non-profit organization, The Open Society Institute, which his indictment described as a “CIA satellite institution." 

Among other charges, Tajbakhsh was found guilty of “acting against national security,” “spying and connections with foreign elements against the sacred system of the Islamic Republic” and “causing lack of public trust toward the official national organs and the ruling system by instigating rioting, mayhem, fear and terror within the society," according to a statement issued by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.  

According to Iranian law Tajbakhsh has 20 days to appeal, but the rights group claims that Iranian judiciary officials have rejected multiple attempts by Tajbakhsh’s lawyer to file an appeal in what the group calls a “blatantly illegal act." 

The scholar has spent the months since his July arrest in Tehran’s Evin prison. He was previously kept in solitary confinement but was recently transferred to a villa on the prison compound, where he lived with a number of other high-profile detainees including a former vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, according to the New York Times.

Tajbakhsh is now said to be back in solitary confinement. 

Supporters of the three hikers caught by Iranian authorities along the Iraqi border have gone all out to try to secure their release. Two video clips, shot by a fourth hiker who was not arrested, depict the hikers singing and showing off some dance moves in Iraqi Kurdistan before they were arrested by Iranian authorities for allegedly trying to cross the border illegally.

"If ever there was even the slightest doubt that we were in Iraqi Kurdistan to relax and have fun, this should surely remove it," Shon Meckfessel, the fourth hiker who was not with the group at their arrest, told Agence France Presse. 

Relatives of the hikers said they were walking in the border area between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan while on holiday July 31. 

Iran, however, says it harbors suspicions about the activities and intentions of the Americans in the area.

-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut 

Photos, from top: British Embassy employee Hossein Rassam was sentenced to four years in jail for spying and inciting unrest; three American hikers dancing before being detained by Iranian authorities. Credits, from top: Times of London; YouTube.

After months of diplomatic isolation following Iran's disputed presidential election and the subsequent violent government crackdown, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad appears to have found a friend in Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan, who recently described Ahmedinejad as a "friend," arrived in Tehran on Tuesday with a delegation of more than 100 Turkish lawmakers and business leaders intent on strengthening trade relations between Turkey and Iran, which already amount to $11 billion annually. 

Iranian news agencies reported today that the two countries would sign a $4-billion deal giving Turkey access to Iran's rich natural gas fields.

In an interview published Monday, Erdogan told the Guardian that Turkey enjoys "very good relations" with Ahmedinejad, adding that he had no intention of "interfering" in Iranian domestic affairs by discussing allegations of government rape and torture of opposition protesters. 

He went on to support Iranian claims that its nuclear program is peaceful, slamming the U.S. and Europe for their alleged double standards toward Israel. Relations between Turkey and Israel have deteriorated dramatically since the Gaza war last winter, the most recent example coming just a few weeks ago when Turkey refused to engage in joint military exercises with Israel.

Ahmedinejad took the opportunity during Erdogan's visit to praise the Turkish premier's "clear stance toward the Zionist regime," saying, "when an illicit regime possesses nuclear arms, one cannot talk about depriving other nations from the peaceful nuclear program.

Erdogan's support for Iran appears to be based as much on economic pragmatism as on the West's stance toward Iran's nuclear ambitions. Others have speculated that Turkey, the former seat of the Ottoman Empire, is attempting to reassert itself as a regional powerhouse.

Although the Turkish government is nominally secular while Iran is an Islamic republic, the two countries have much to gain from closer relations. Iran needs diplomatic allies and foreign investment, and Turkey needs resources like natural gas and a larger market for its exports. Both countries struggle to balance matters of religion and state with security concerns while guarding against minority nationalist movements.

Erdogan's stance toward Israel and Iran has been firm but measured. Despite recent tensions, Turkey has worked hard over the years to maintain cordial relations with Israel, Iran and the Arab world, and even hosted secret negotiations between Syria and Israel over the Golan Heights last year.

Erdogan has avoided the hostile rhetoric favored by Ahmedinejad. According to BBC Monitoring, Erdogan told the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera on Sunday that Turkey prefers a "middle-of-the-road position" on major Middle East problems.

He went on to urge continued dialogue between Iran and the West, but added that it is "unfair and unacceptable for a state to have nuclear arms in the region, and yet be ignored, while emphasis is placed only on Iran," referring to Israel's unofficial but widely acknowledged nuclear arsenal.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

By Tuesday afternoon, what was thought to be the last of the dead were brought to the Valley of Peace cemetery, the most sacred burial ground for Iraq’s Shiite majority.

Undertaker Mehdi Assadi had listened to mourners’ screams as at least 80 of the estimated 155 killed in Sunday’s Baghdad bombing were buried in the Valley of Peace. Families unloaded loved ones from wood coffins to be washed and then wrapped in white shrouds. From there, Assadi or another grave digger led  mourners to the burial plots. At the graves, Assadi presided over final prayers and recited the names of Shiite Islam's 12 imams. 

Among those Assadi buried was Atheer, a 19-year-old policeman whose body was torn apart in Sunday’s attack. Assadi thought about Atheer’s tattered remains Tuesday night: All that was left of him were his arms and legs and clumps of flesh.

Then Assadi thought about another victim named Salim. Shrapnel had cut the top of Salim’s head. He had just gotten married and was the family’s breadwinner. Salim had been in central Baghdad to ask about salaries when the bombs exploded.

Assadi could still remember Salim’s mother crying: “Who after you will bring me 7UP? Who will bring me my prayer water?” and then her vow: “I’ll live on Najaf’s road so I can be close to you."

— Text and photograph by Times correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf.

It’s harvest time. The rice has been gathered, and farmers light the chaff. The Cairo skyline -- smudged gray even on good days -- turns ominous, an ashy, strange-scented cloak. Lungs grow scratchy. Eyes water. 

Is the annual rice harvest alone to blame for what Egyptians call the ‘black cloud’? Many say, definitely. But there are other theories and myths: Military maneuvers kicking up sand in the desert, dust storms, rubbish fires, global warming, autumn fog off the Nile or, perhaps, all of these mingling with the smoke from rice farms to create a sky of gloom.

Some days are worse than others, but even on the “clear” afternoons the horizon seems tinged with smoke. Egypt is not known for environmental protection, and Cairo, a city of 18 million, is streaked in air the shades of mustard dust and pepper. 

"It has been 10 years since we first saw the black cloud," said Dr. Mostafa Ghoneim, a specialist in respiratory illnesses. "The government and the Ministry of Health never put any effort into investigating such a phenomenon despite the diseases many are suffering because of it."

The problem is larger than the burning of rice straw "because smoke that spreads from these burnings can only have limited effect and shouldn’t reach Cairo with the strength we see here. Cairo alone has more than 12,000 factories and 2 million vehicles," said Ghoneim. "The black cloud is most dangerous to people with sensitive eyes, as well as children. Children’s lungs become very vulnerable when inhaling such smoke, and they can easily develop asthmas once exposed to smoke for long."

The harvest fires in the Nile Delta will burn until mid-November. Until then, shutters stay dirty, windshields gritty and the sky is a plague, descending.

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: A policeman views Cairo's '"black cloud." Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Twenty-two-year-old Rozanna Yami was sentenced by a court Saturday to 60 lashes for helping to produce the controversial July episode of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp.’s Bold Red Line talk show in which guest Mazen Abdul-Jawad boasted publicly about his sex life in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

On Monday, King Abdullah intervened in the case and granted Yami a royal pardon. The reporter expressed relief over the king’s overruling of her sentence and thanked him. 

"The king has vindicated me. I am satisfied with the king's order, and I accept the decisions of the sovereign," she told Reuters news agency. 

Abdul-Rahman Hazzaa, a spokesman for the Saudi information ministry, said the royal pardon meant that Yami’s case now will be transferred to the ministry for further review and possible disciplinary action. 

"They will transfer the case to the ministry of information. ... In this case, the flogging has been dropped,” Hazza was quoted as saying by Reuters. 

Abdul-Jawad, 32, a divorced father living in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port city of Jeddah, was sentenced to five years in prison and 1,000 lashes earlier this month for “incitement to sin” over his sexual boasts on air. Abdul-Jawad described his sexual exploits in detail on the ill-fated episode, beginning with when he had sex with his neighbor at age 14. 

He bragged about his foreplay tricks and how he used Bluetooth cellphone messaging to pick up women on the streets of Jeddah. 

He was shown in his bedroom, which was decorated in red, surrounded by sex toys with the theme song from the movie “Swingers” playing in the background. 

In one instance, Abdul-Jawad whipped out a sex toy and waved it before the camera. 

This public display did not go down well with the Saudi authorities, who, as in many other Muslim countries, restrict sexual content on television and in print publications such as newspapers and books.

Three of Abdul-Jawad’s male friends who appeared on the show with him also were sentenced to jail terms and 300 lashes each. As for Yami, the reporter denied she had anything to do with the taboo-breaking LBC talk show episode. "I had nothing to do with Mazen Abdul-Jawad's show," she told Reuters over the weekend. "The verdict was just because I cooperated with LBC."

King Abdullah reportedly ordered the case of Yami and another reporter -- a pregnant woman also accused of having a role in the LBC program -- be referred to a committee of the Saudi ministry of education and culture, which handles media issues. 

Saudi blogger Ahmed Al-Omran, who moderates the popular Saudi Jeans blog, told The Times in an e-mail that he expected Yami to be pardoned and that her case would be referred to the ministry, just like a previous case involving a Saudi columnist. 

“I have to say that I was pretty much expecting that she will get a sort of pardon and the sentence won't be carried on," he wrote. 

Courts in Saudi Arabia, which adheres to a strict version of Islamic law, are largely controlled by clerics with wide discretion in defining actions deemed criminal and setting measures of punishment, including lashes and the death penalty.

New York-based rights watchdog Human Rights Watch, or HRW, welcomed the royal pardon in a press statement, saying it “sent an important message to the country’s courts." 

HRW also called on King Abdullah to overrule the sentence imposed on Abdul-Jawad. 

 Despite the royal pardon, Yami says her life remains a nightmare, that she feels like she has been given a social death sentence for being involved with the scandal-ridden show. 

 "I am not a heroine," she told Al-Arabiya TV. "I am just an ordinary human being. Society sentenced me to death before the judge even passed sentence." 

Following the row over the talk show episode, the Saudi authorities pulled the plug on LBC in the kingdom. The channel’s offices in Riyadh and Jeddah were forced shut shortly after the episode's airing. 

-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut 

Photo: Saudi reporter Rozanna Yami. Credit: Saeed Shamaa / EPA

Beirut's Saifi Market on Sunday was filled with the sounds of chopping, cheering and the sweet, grassy smell of tons of freshly cut parsley.

Thousands of visitors showed up over the weekend to cheer on 250 sous chefs and 50 of their instructors from the Kafaat School of Catering as they toiled over two days to beat the Guinness record for the world's biggest hummus plate and tabbouleh salad. The final weigh-in for hummus on Saturday was 2,056 kilograms, or 4,532 pounds, more than quadruple the previous record.

On Sunday, the tabbouleh came in at 3,557 kilograms, or 7,841 pounds -- more than 3 tons.

The vessel itself, a giant, rotating terracotta-colored hummus bowl, won the distinction of world's largest plate.

Supporters who gathered for the final tabbouleh countdown were rewarded with a bowl of the parsley and cracked wheat salad, but the hummus, which does not keep as well, was sent as feed to a pig farm, according to Fadi Abboud, president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists, which organized the event.

The "Hummus Is Lebanese and So Is Tabbouleh" festival was a celebration of all things Lebanese, with local businesses hawking everything from Lebanese beer to olive oil, soap, sweets, nuts, and, of course, hummus."It's a nice event, and everyone should know that tabbouleh and hummus are Lebanese," said Rana Karaki, who was accompanied by her 7-year-old son, Omar.

"That's the biggest bowl I've ever seen!" said Omar, spreading his arms for emphasis.

But the festival was more than an excuse for a fun family outing. It is part of the industrialists' ongoing campaign to challenge Israeli claims to hummus. The association appears to have backed down from its original demand that Lebanon have exclusive rights to hummus, similar to France's claim on Champagne, but its members have not given up on promoting Lebanese hummus as the tastiest in the world.

"We were not trying to prove something, but to remind people that we should take the international market more seriously," Abboud told The Times. "[In the U.S.], if you question that hummus is Israeli, you're an outcast, but hummus existed long before Israel."

As for the Lebanese obsession with breaking world records (Lebanon also holds the records for the largest plate of kibbe, a meat pastry, the largest floor lamp and the longest set of wind chimes), Abboud attributed it up to people's love of competition and community.

"The Lebanese do have a competitive spirit, but what is most important is that people participated from all over the country, so we prove the Lebanese are united when it comes to economics and nationalist feelings," he said, adding: "lessons for our politicians, I hope."

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Video: Lebanese turn out to celebrate tabbouleh and all things Lebanese. Credit: Meris Lutz / YouTube