Sunday, August 09, 2009 BRUSSELS: France has called for the "immediate release" of a French lecturer and a Franco-Iranian employee at its Tehran embassy who are being tried in an Iranian court.Paris considered the charges against 24-year-old Clotilde Reiss "devoid of any foundation" and those against embassy staffer Nazak Afshar to be "non-existent", the foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.France also objected to the fact that their embassy had not been informed in advance that they would be appearing in court, "in conformity with international rules and consular protection," the statement added.The ministry said it deplored the fact that neither of them had been represented by a lawyer in court.Reiss and Afshar were among more than 10 other defendants brought before the court for a mass hearing on charges related to huge protests that erupted across Iran after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, was declared winner of the June 12 election.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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