Today Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gets his second opportunity within a week to address the world from the United Nations General Assembly pulpit. Critics argue that given Iran’s terrible human rights record and aggressive nuclear weapons policy the U.N. should not allow him the privilege, and have called on delegations of the 192 countries that make up the U.N. to walk out during his speech.

Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi is an Iran analyst and editor of the influential website Planet Iran.com (http://planet-iran.com/) and is critical of the way the U.N. handles human rights abuses in Iran and its dealings with Ahmadinejad. She tells Fox News that “If people remain in their seats when Ahmadinejad goes to the podium, they’re essentially signaling to him and the unelected dictators of the Iranian regime, that they accept him as someone who should legitimately be there. He represents no Iranian and the Iranian people’s protests should have been an indication of that. Ahmadinejad is a part of nothing more than a veritable mafia that has hijacked Iran and is holding the people and the land hostage to intimidate the rest of the world. Same goes for Ban Ki-moon.”

Reacting to this criticism Farhan Haq, the spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Fox News that “both the Secretary-General and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have consistently raised concerns about the human rights situation in Iran with President Ahmadinejad and other senior Iranian officials, including individual cases.”

Zand-Bonazzi is herself no stranger to the regime’s torture. She tells Fox News that her father Siamak Pourzand a celebrated Iranian journalist was arrested at age seventy-one for speaking on opposition Iranian broadcast channels that were broadcast outside of Iran. He was held in solitary confinement for a year in a one meter by two meter room without lights. She says he was physically abused in the worst ways so much so that when he was taken out of solitary he was given a medical furlough, yet three months into that he was re-arrested and remained in custody for another 6 years.

Potkin Azarmehr is one of the most influential Iranian bloggers outside of Iran and with his blog, http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/ highlights the plight of Iran’s forgotten political prisoners. Azarmehr’s blog has been spotlighting the cases of Iranians who have been punished for speaking out against the regime. Here follows a small sampling of those unfortunate many who have punished for speaking out against the Ahamdinejad regime:

HOSSEIN RONAGHI MALEKI:

This pro-democracy activist was for a time one of the Iranian regime’s most wanted. According to reports Maleki now languishes at a Special detention center in Tehran run by the Revolutionary Guards known as Section 209. Potkin Azarmehr tells Fox News that Maleki was “instrumental in disseminating anti-filters and proxies on Facebook which then quickly spread to beat the internet censorship and filtering.” Such skills enabled the anti-government protesters to send out video, stills and reports to the outside world during the 2009 anti-government protests following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Azarmehr writes in his blog that Maleki is now on hunger strike and has so far resisted “all the regime’s barbaric pressures to appear on state TV and make a false confession.”

Azarmehr says in that Maleki ” has been subjected to the most horrific tortures, and to make matters worse, he suffers from heart and kidney ailments. His brother Hassan was also imprisoned, even though Hassan had no role in any political activity. To put even more pressure on Hossein in order to break him down, he was forced to watch his brother being tortured for a month, which led to Hassan suffering neck injuries. The regime is denying Hossein much needed medical treatment. On the last occasion he had a telephone conversation with his mother, he could not finish his call because of constant severe coughing.”

ABOLFAZL ABEDINI:

A human rights activist who was brutally assaulted following his arrest by government agents at his home. Abedini is now serving 11 years in the brutal Evin prison in Tehran. To make matters worse his lawyer, Mohammad Oliyaifard has now been detained and is serving a one year sentence in the same prison. According to activists hours after his transfer to the infamous Evin prison he was tortured so badly that he had to be sent to the prison hospital having developed a “Mitral valve disability”.

HAMED ROUHINEJAD:

This university student has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and was arrested for being a member of a political organization just before last year’s presidential election – at first he was sentenced to death, but that was later commuted to 10 years. According to reports from inside Iran prison officials won’t let his family bring his medicine to him and he has now lost the use of an arm. Authorities will be transferring him to a prison in North-West Iran which will be far away from his family making it even harder for them to visit and tend to him.

IMAN SADIGHI:

Is a student activist who was recently released from prison. According to blogger Potkin Azarmehr he was charged with ”acting against national security and carrying out propaganda against the regime.” Azarmehr posted Sadighi’s account of what happened to him while in prison. He wrote that “We were held with dangerous common criminals, prisoners who had committed crimes like murder, kidnapping, rape. There were ten rooms in that wing and each room held 15 prisoners. Fighting amongst prisoners and homosexual acts was a daily occurrence. In one incident two inmates had a fight with each other and one of them bit the other’s ear off, then to prove how dangerous he was, he chewed and swallowed the ear, you felt that there was nothing of humanity left inside the prison. Our rooms were infested with cockroaches, sometimes the cockroaches would even get in our food. At night, the cockroaches would get into our beds and we would wake up with them crawling over our faces. To add to all this, our blankets were infested with lice and there were rats that came in the cell from time to time there are no toilets in these solitary cells, prisoners are only ever allowed to use the toilets three times a day, many times they can’t wait for their turn and they have to do their toilet in the cell, which is why the solitary wing cells reek of excrement stench.”

As to the lack of world interest in the plight of Iran’s political prisoners, Iranian blogger Potkin Azarmehr says that “activism is like fashion, some causes are fashionable some are not.” Potkin continues “So much is talked about internet freedom and beating censorship etc, yet the very people on the ground (in Iran) who made this freedom of information possible have been forgotten and abandoned.”

Asked for comment on the above cases U.N spokesman, Farhan Haq told Fox News that “The Secretary-General has raised individual cases with the Iranian Government, but given the nature of the issue, I have no specific comment to make on those cases.” He then referred Fox News back to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Switzerland – that office has thus far ignored questions sent to them by Fox News. Questions to the Iranian Mission to the U.N. also went unanswered.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with President Ahmadinejad, Sunday. The following statement was issued by his office:

“The Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today met with the President of Iran, Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They discussed developments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East.

The Secretary-General commended Iran for its constructive role in counter narcotics enforcement activities. He thanked Iran for continuing to host a large number of Afghan and Iraqi refugees and encouraged Iran to continue supporting their welfare.

He hoped that Iran will engage constructively in negotiations with the E3+3 allowing a mutually acceptable agreement in conformity with relevant Security Council resolutions.

The Secretary-General also stressed the importance of respecting fundamental civil and political rights.”