Iason Athanasiadis' ordeal began at the airport, shortly after he checked in for his flight to leave Tehran. "I was heading to the gate," the Greek-British journalist said. "This guy materialized on my right. He said 'are you Iason Fowden' [Athanasiadis' passport name]. I said 'yeah that's me.' He said 'please step to the side ... you're not going to be flying tonight.'" It was an ominous introduction to Iran's security apparatus. Athanasiadis spent the next 21 harrowing days in ...

The commander of Iran's security forces warned that police would "strongly confront" anyone planning to protest Thursday, a day that marks the anniversary of a pivotal point in Iran's reformist movement. In an interview with the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Maj. Gen. Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghadam said authorities would confront protesters and that no demonstration permit had been issued for Thursday, the 10th anniversary of a 1999 student uprising that, at the time, posed the biggest threat to the ...

A town that seemed on the road to becoming a ghost town has taken a turn toward prosperity despite the recession, thanks to an automaker. Korean car manufacturer Kia plans to open a sprawling automobile factory in tiny West Point, Georgia, by the end of the year. The boon has already spurred economic growth -- and just plain excitement -- among residents, said Mayor Drew Ferguson. "We jokingly call it Kia-ville," said Ferguson, a 42-year-old dentist helping to oversee expansion ...

The United Nations should "urge" Iran to release political prisoners rounded up during the recent unrest following last month's disputed presidential elections, a group of Nobel Peace Prize winners have declared. The group of 10 Nobel laureates, including former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, made the request in a letter to the secretary-general of the United Nations on Monday. They also cited a concern for fellow Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. The Iranian lawyer ...

Relations between North Korea and the rest of the world — including its neighbor to the South — are beginning to look like a feedback loop. On Wednesday morning, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and Kim Jong Il announced that they will meet for three days of talks at the end of this month in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, just the second time in history that the leaders of the Koreas will have met. But ...

Europe used to be the good cop with Iran, engaging with the regime on tricky issues like its nuclear program while the bad cop, the U.S., rasped that Tehran was part of an "axis of evil." But the European Union's moderating stance has done it few favors in the wake of last month's disputed Iranian elections. On Wednesday, Iran's military chief of staff, Major General Hassan Firouz-Abadi, accused the E.U. of "interference in the postelection riots." He said that, ...

Bloody attacks and midnight arrests, combined with a regime growing more technologically savvy, have begun stemming the flow of online information from dissidents in Iran, activists and human rights officials say. Once emboldened by their ability to dodge the government and spread news about their protests to the world, many in the youth-driven protest movement, they say, are now scared of the consequences of getting caught. "It's absolutely chilling," said Drewery Dyke, a member of human rights group Amnesty International's ...

An Indian court has handed down the first conviction in a series of attacks on Christians in an eastern state last year, authorities said Wednesday. Maziar Bahari, 42, made his alleged confession at a news conference Tuesday. Because international journalists have been limited in their ability to gather news in Iran, CNN has not been able to confirm the agency report. Fars reported that the Canadian-Iranian reporter who had worked for the BBC and England's Channel 4 network admitted having ...

Three leading Iranian reformists who have rejected the results of last month's election questioned the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government Wednesday. This comes as Ahmadinejad is set to take office at the end of the month. Presidential candidate Mehdi Karrubi wrote a letter in his party's newspaper, saying he would not recognize the government and vowing to "stand by the people and the revolution, until the end of my life." His statement prompted Iran's government to block publication of ...

The chants, the clashes, the outrage, the blood -- for more than two weeks, the world watched as the fallout from Iran's presidential elections unraveled from peaceful demonstrations to government-led crackdowns on city streets. Saying it has tallied the votes and investigated the complaints, Iran's Islamic leadership considers the election that gave incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an overwhelming win "case closed." And the massive protests that concentrated in Tehran are growing thinner in number. Yet for the tens of thousands ...