A closed Tehran court has sentenced a senior local employee of the British embassy in Tehran, Hossein Rassam, to four years in prison for fomenting violence, reports say. The sentence has not been communicated officially. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said the sentence was unacceptable, and dismissed the charges as “wholly without foundation”, reports the Times.
Rassam, the embassy’s political counsellor, was arrested late June with eight other embassy employees, following the mass disturbances after the disputed presidential election. He was put on trial with a Frenchwoman. He is free on bail after having been released from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison in August. Reuters,The Times
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Brazil is increasing pressure on the UK to take back the 1,400 tons of hazardous waste in 41 containers exported from the UK to Brazil early July 2009. The foreign ministry has asked its permanent mission in Geneva “to report the traffic of hazardous waste from the UK under the terms of the Basel Convention”, according to Brazil’s official government (Por) site.
The United States and Britain are encouraging China to come out into the open about what happened during the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in Beijing 20 years ago, June 1989, reports the BBC, with statements from British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s statement is interpreted by at least one experienced observer as the US taking a firmer stance with China on human rights. Western media are carrying the 20th anniversary story as headlines news, while in China security is tight and there is virtually no media mention of Tiananmen. CNN‘s bureau chief Jaime Florcruz, who has been in Beijing for some 30 years, notes that for the younger generation of Chinese, there is little interest in the protests of two decades ago, a theme carried by Le Monde (Fre). Globe & Mail, Canada, New York Times, Times, UK,
