The minister was speaking of restricting and curing regional illnesses when the youths laughed inadvertently. However, the SSF agents arrested six of the 12 teens. Journalists covering the event intervened but failed to free the minors. The SSF commander on the scene threatened the persistent journalists with arrest if they followed up the story.
The mullahs' regime is sensitive to public protests and treats all matters as security issues. Sanandaj has always been considered a sensitive spot for the Iranian regime since it is hated by most of the local residents.
Earlier this month the city was brewing when the mullahs' local officials refused to give in to the local residents' demand to free Farzad Kamangar – a teacher and a political prisoner from jail.
The protesting crowd marched from Kamangar's residence to a village where he used to teach a few miles outside the city. The SSF agents stopped the marchers and forced them to go back to Sanandaj riding on police buses.
The Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) arrested Kamangar in Tehran in July 2006 and held him in various detention centers in Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Tehran.
During a period of detention in Ward 209 of the notorious Evin Prison — run by the MOIS — in August 2006, officials tortured him to such an extent that they had to transfer him to the prison clinic to receive medical attention. He was severely tortured and was subject to ill-treatment while in detention in the cities of Sanandaj in Kurdistan province and Kermanshah.
The mullahs' Supreme Court upheld an earlier death sentence by a lower court for three Kurdish political activists Farzad Kamangar, Ali Heidarian and Farhad Vakili on Friday. The three were first arrested in April 2006 and tried in the lower court in February 2007.