IRAN. YOUNG BELUCHI JOURNALIST CONDEMNED TO DEATH

February 11, 2008: Yaghoub Mehrnahad, a student and journalist from the Beluchi ethnic group, is the latest person to be condemned to death in Iran.
The trial against Mehrnahad took place behind closed doors without legal representation or his family.
According to the student site of the Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran, the young journalist was arrested last April at the end of a debate organised in Zahewdan, capital of Iranian Beluchistan.
His family last saw him in Zahefan prison last December saying his body showed obvious signs of torture. Quoted on the Amir Kabiri site, Yaghoub's younger brother said it was being said that his brother had died in prison after being tortured and his trial and death sentence was only a way to hide the truth.
Mehrnahad is accused of having had contact with the armed group of Jondollah, that operates in Iranian Beluchistan. (Sources: AKI, 12/02/2008)