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Iranian human rights lawyer Sotoudeh: 'Free forever'
By Shirzad Bozorgmehr, CNN
Tehran, Iran (CNN) - Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent Iranian human rights activist, was among five women activists released Wednesday from a Tehran prison where she had been jailed since 2010.
"I'm glad, but I'm worried for my friends in prison," she told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in a telephone interview soon after her release, citing other political and human rights activists who remain in prison.
Sotoudeh said authorities at the notorious Evin Prison initially told her she would be allowed out on a short break. They then put her into a car.
WEB EXTRA: Angela Kane
In this web extra, CNN's Christiane Amanpour speaks with Angela Kane, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, about alleged Syrian evidence that the opposition used chemical weapons, asl well as about the difficulties presented by gathering evidence in a war zone.
Amanpour's full interview with Kane can be seen here.
U.N. to Russia: Syria chemical report 'stands for itself’
By Mick Krever, CNN
The United Nations official in charge of weapons inspectors said that the report alleging chemical weapons use in Syria “stands for itself,” shooting back Russian allegations that the report was “biased” and “distorted.”
“It is a very sound, scientific report,” Angela Kane, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday in her first television interview since the report was released. “It has forty pages. It is buttressed by scientific evaluation, by diagnosis and by assessments, and so therefore I have no heard any criticisms of the findings themselves. The findings show that there is use of chemical weapons – what the inspectors found on the ground.”
The allegations of bias came from Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, who met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday.
Did Iran’s Berlin Wall fall, just to go right back up?
By Lucky Gold, CNN
Imagine a world where the Berlin Wall came down – and went right back up again.
On Monday, an extraordinary tweet was sent by Thomas Erdbrink, Tehran bureau chief for The New York Times.
“Is Iran's Berlin Wall of internet censorship crumbling down? I am tweeting from Tehran from my cell [phone] without restrictions.”
And he wasn't alone. Suddenly, Iranians were able to access Twitter and Facebook without side-stepping government firewalls – a freedom of expression almost unknown since the 2009 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the crackdown against his political opponents, both inside and outside the country.
America’s CEO of the Environment
By Mick Krever, CNN
Is Sally Jewell a contradiction in terms?
She is a CEO turned government regulator. She is a petroleum engineer turned conservationist. Indeed, the contradiction is built right into her job: As U.S. secretary of the interior, she is responsible for both the conservation and exploitation of about twenty percent of America’s land – that owned by the federal government.
“I feel privileged to be in a unique position of understanding how we must balance both” conservation and exploitation, or extraction of natural resources like oil and gas, she told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“You can't make a choice between having jobs and having resources and having a great environment,” she said from Washington. “It's a false choice.”
Israel Cabinet Minister Lapid on Syria, Iran: Words not enough
By Mick Krever, CNN
It may not be Yair Lapid’s job, but he certainly has a lot to say about foreign policy.
“If you want to negotiate you better have a big stick in your hand – or in this case a big Tomahawk,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour of negotiations with Syria on Tuesday. “It’s the Middle East; you have to have sticks with the carrots.”
Lapid, a former journalist and TV presenter, threw a wrench into Israeli politics when his upstart moderate party, Yesh Atid, took second place in the last election.
He is clearly a man with ambitions. He was widely rumored to have wanted the post of foreign minister; he was given finance. Most observers assume he covets the prime minister’s office.
So it’s no surprise that he has plenty to say about some of the top international issues on Israel’s agenda: Syria and Iran.
His views come down to this: Words are great, but we care about deeds.
“Unless there is a credible threat, all the negotiations [on Syria] are just empty words,” he said. “This is not over. It won’t be over until all weapons of mass destruction will be out of Syria. Then we will know this whole move has succeeded.”
Saving an archaeological treasure with a Picasso
Imagine a world where you can own a Picasso for the price of an opera ticket, and save an archaeological treasure at the same time.
CNN's Christiane Amanpour has the story.
Former bank regulator Sheila Bair warns against debt ceiling ‘nuclear bomb’ – Amanpour
By Mick Krever, CNN
The former head of a top U.S. financial oversight agency issued a stark warning over the upcoming, déjà vu battle over America’s debt ceiling.
“As sympathetic as I am to some of the Republican concerns about our fiscal situation,” Sheila Bair, former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday, “those are nuclear bombs that you can never actually use.”
Bair served under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as head of the FDIC, which guarantees the deposits of Americans’ bank accounts.
EXCLUSIVE: Inside lab that tested Syria chemical weapon evidence
By Fred Pleitgen and Andrew Carey, CNN
The Hague, Netherlands (CNN) - When U.N. weapons inspectors left their hotel to investigate claims of chemical weapons use in the suburbs of Damascus in late August, most of the experts travelling in the convoy of armoured SUVs were not United Nations staff at all.
In fact, nine of the 12 were inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The OPCW is the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international treaty which bans the possession of chemical weapons, and has been signed and ratified by 189 countries around the world.
Syria has just applied to join, presenting the OPCW with perhaps the most challenging assignment in its near 20-year history, as the country is still locked in a deadly civil war.
The OPCW's experts have monitored the cataloguing and destruction of chemical weapons in countries ranging from the United States and Russia to Libya. They have also worked in Iraq, which was the first time its inspectors were sent into a live battlefield.
"We try to get as much information as we can about what we are doing," Franz Ontal, OPCW's head of inspector training, recently told CNN, during an exclusive visit to the organization's lab and staging facility in the Netherlands.
Assad moving chemical weapons to Iraq and Lebanon, Syria opposition General Salim Idriss claims to CNN’s Amanpour
By Mick Krever, CNN
(CNN) - The head of the opposition Free Syrian Army told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday he has intelligence showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government is moving its chemical weapons out of the country.
"Today, we have information that the regime began to move chemical materials and chemical weapons to Lebanon and to Iraq," Gen. Salim Idriss said from inside Syria.
CNN could not independently verify Idriss' claim.
Several senior Israeli officials told CNN's Elise Labott that they have not seen movements into Lebanon or Iraq, and that they did not believe it made sense for the Syrians to be moving weapons so soon.
And Iraq categorically denied that chemical weapons had crossed into its territory, with an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speculating "there is a political agency behind this claim."
"We were the victims of chemical weapons under Saddam's regime," said the adviser, Ali al-Moussawi. "And we will never allow to let any country to transfer chemical materials to our lands at all."
Still, if the allegation were true, it could fundamentally shift the assessments of U.S. intelligence officials, CNN's Barbara Starr reports.
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