Latest Hunger strike Stories

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Jailed Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji has broken his eight-week-old hunger strike after calls by family and friends concerned about his deteriorating health, a judiciary spokesman said on Tuesday. "Thankfully his condition is better than before ... He has recently broken his hunger strike," he said. "It seems that this was due to the requests made by other people for him to end his hunger strike." Ganji's plight has provoked comments of outrage and concern from the United...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian human rights lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi on Sunday urged her client, dissident journalist Akbar Ganji, to end a 58-day-old hunger strike undertaken in protest at his imprisonment. "I am worried about Ganji's health. Right now, what matters is his life," Ebadi, who has written to Ganji to convey her message, told Reuters. "As one of his lawyers ... I sincerely urge Ganji to end his hunger strike and eat food." Ganji, 46, an outspoken critic...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A gunman on a motorcycle shot dead the judge trying the case of Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji, judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad said on Tuesday. "Massoud Moghaddas...was shot and martyred leaving the court building," he told Reuters. "We do not know anything about the identity of the assassin." State television said Moghaddas was Tehran's deputy prosecutor. He had been presiding over the case of Ganji, a journalist who was imprisoned in 2001 following a string of...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called on Thursday for the release of jailed journalist Akbar Ganji, whose family says has been on hunger strike for over six weeks, the official IRNA news agency said. Ganji, an outspoken critic of the Islamic state's clerical leadership, was jailed in 2001 following a series of articles he wrote linking officials to the murder of political dissidents. A former hardline Revolutionary Guard turned radical reformer, Ganji was...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian human rights lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi warned on Sunday that her client, jailed journalist Akbar Ganji, is in failing health and complained she had not been allowed to visit him. Ganji, 46, an outspoken critic of the Islamic state's clerical leadership, jailed in 2001, was rushed to hospital last Sunday after a five-week hunger strike. His wife said on Friday that his health was deteriorating. "I call on the judiciary and human rights...

By Jim Loney MIAMI (Reuters) - Fifty-two inmates at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for foreign terrorism suspects have begun a hunger strike to protest their detention. The detainees, among some 500 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. Navy base, have refused at least nine consecutive meals, the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo said in a statement on Thursday. Attorneys for some detainees said Guantanamo prisoners had planned in late June to begin a hunger strike to express...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's judiciary said on Thursday hunger-striking jailed journalist Akbar Ganji, who the European Union and the White House have demanded be freed, was receiving medical treatment and would not be released. "He is under special medical care ... and the prison physicians examine him two or three times a day," Mohammad Salarkia, deputy head of Tehran Justice Department, told the official IRNA news agency. An outspoken critic of the Islamic state's clerical leadership, Ganji...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Tuesday expressed solidarity with jailed Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji, who is on a hunger strike, and urged human rights groups and the United Nations to push for his release. White House spokesman Scott McClellan also said in a statement that President Bush was concerned about the health of Ganji, an outspoken critic of the Islamic state's clerical leadership who was jailed for alleging links between officials and the murders of political...