UN Report Finds Iran's Crackdown Expanding

In a story sent Oct 11 about a U.N. report on Iran's human rights situation, The Associated Press misidentified the number of Iranian journalists in prison in December 2011, as tallied by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The correct number is 42, not 179.

A corrected version of the story is below:

UN report finds Iran's crackdown expanding

UN report calls for probe into post-election violence; finds Internet crackdown expanding

By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) The U.N.'s human rights expert on Iran is condemning the Islamic Republic's reliance on stoning as a form of capital punishment, citing that as just one of a number of "deeply troubling" Iranian rights violations, many of which are "systemic in nature," according to a report circulating among U.N. delegations.

Ahmed Shaheed, the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council's special rapporteur on Iran, also called for an "extensive, impartial and independent investigation into the violence in the weeks and months that followed the presidential election of 2009," when pro-democracy protesters surged into the streets to denounce the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as bogus and rigged.

Shaheed also "reiterates his call for the immediate release of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience," according the report, which The Associated Press obtained Thursday.

The document will be the basis for a General Assembly resolution critical of Iran's human rights violations, which will probably be voted on in December.

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UN Report Finds Iran's Crackdown Expanding