Regime cannot stop For Neda

The Iranian regime is resorting to jamming satellite broadcasts in a vain attempt to stop people seeing a new film telling the story of Neda Agha-Soltan, According to the Guardian viewers in Tehran complained of jamming and power cuts last week when the Voice of America Persian TV network broadcast the documentary For Neda, featuring the first film interviews with the family of the 27-year-old.

Unsurprisingly, given the groundswell of feeling in the country the film has rapidly gone viral in Iran in the run-up to next Saturday's anniversary of the disputed elections that triggered the protests. It is available on YouTube so can be seen by anyone with access to the internet.
The film was directed by Antony Thomas and co-produced by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, a former Guardian correspondent in Iran. Kamali Dehghan risked arrest to interview Neda's parents and siblings and obtain unseen footage of her life.

Witnesses have said that she was shot in the heart by a sniper with the Basij militia force, who has been named as Abbas Kargar-Javid.

Iran's intelligence ministry is reportedly due to release its own documentary to remove "ambiguities" surrounding her death and provide "new evidence" about what it calls the west's version of events. Neda's family were under pressure to cooperate with the official documentary but refused. Two of her friends were forced to participate.

The Iranian regime will probably suggest again that Neda was an agent of the US and Britain who staged her own death and poured blood on her face. BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne was also blamed for her killing before being expelled.

Meanwhile Ahmadinejad today warned the opposition of tough measures, ahead of protests next week. "Those who want to tarnish the image of the country and its system will be removed from the [political] scene," he said in a speech marking the 21st anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, architect of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which toppled the shah.

"The election last year was the most democratic in the world as nowhere else would 40 million people turn up for elections," he claimed. Ahmadinejad pledged: "Whoever stands against the Islamic system will not survive." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini's successor as supreme leader, boasted that Iran, facing new UN sanctions over its nuclear programme, was in a position to "see off any conspiracies".

Democratic? Don’t make me laugh! It was as rigged as HMS Victory! A few Stalinist scumbags George Galloway, Seumas Milne et al may swallow that bullshit but most people don’t. Protests have been muted for several months but there is still a huge reservoir of anger among the people of Iran. Ahmadinejad is a dead man walking, metaphorically speaking. He will be flushed into the sewers of history, count on it.