FDI's Weekly Newswire

FDI WEEKLY NEWSWIRE NO 12

July 8, 1996

CONTENTS

* Forouhar attacked during Tehran rally

* Marzieh tells son to drop dead

* Rafsanjan deputy rejected by Majlis

* Clashes between KDPI and army reported

* Payam- Daneshjou publisher banned

* Vice President's paper banned

* Hanged man to be executed... again!

* Executions for homicide, adultery

* Hijacker Condemned to Death

* "Human Rights Emissaries are sick," says Lajaverdi

* Debate over IPO

* Paper Criticizes Turkey's Erbakan

* Business as usual at Mostazafan

* Cool Summer, Hot Autumn for Universities

* Besharati versus Karbaschi

Forouhar attacked during Tehran rally

Darioush Forouhar, the leader of the Iran Nation's Party, was attacked by a group of Hezbollahis on motorcycle while leaving a ceremony on the first anniversary of the death of National Front leader Karim Sanjabi in Tehran.

A statement issued by Forouhar's party in Tehran said the Hezbollahis "fled when they faced determined resistance from young party members" who were protecting Forouhar. The clash took place in front of a mosque in Tehran on July 4.

A Hezbollah group had warned citizens not to organize or attend any commemoration of Sanjabi, or "Face its consequences , with is death in the hand of Hezbollah." Sanjabi was from the Sanjabi tribe of Iranian Kurds from the Kermanshah region. [INP statement 7/4/96]

Marzieh tells son to drop dead

In a peculiar interview with the Mujahidin radio station last week in London, that was rebroadcast in Los Angeles, the famous Iranian singer Marzieh called her own son "an animal" for having attempted to embrace her during her June 25 concert in London.

As we reported in last week's newswire, the son, Mahmoud Malak-Afzali, was beaten by several dozen Mujahidin security guards when he called on his mother to "sing for 70 million Iranians," and not for the Mujahidin.

In the interview, Marzieh claimed that her son was "an agent of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence," and that his intervention at her concert was "an operation" that had been orchestrated by MOIS with the help of Nasser Khajeh-Nouri, an Iranian exile living in the Washington, DC area who has been a frequent target of Mujahidin propaganda. (In fact, Khajeh-Nouri had worked as a consultant to the Mujahidin, but says he broke with them over a financial disagreement).

Massoud and Miriam Radjavi were "the only alternatives" to the current regime, Marzieh said, and anyone who made propaganda against them "was actually an agent of the Islamic Republic."

The Mujahidin have frequently used the same line in condemning anyone who criticizes their organization (and we expect to be called agents of the IRI for running this piece - stay tuned!). [Radio Sedaye Iran 7/5].

Rafsanjan deputy "un" rejected by Majlis

The Majlis is now reconsidering its earlier rejection of the newly-elected member from President Hashemi-Rafsanjani's home town of Rafsanjan, Mr. Hamid Bahrami Ahmadi. Mr. Ahmadi was elected on the first round of elections in March, soundly defeating 4-term Majlis deputy Hossein Hashemian.

Hashemian, who is a relative of President Rafsanjani and a member of the board of directors of the Rafsanjan Pistachio Company, was accused by a weekly paper Payam-e Daneshju of corruption. (See below). Following these allegations, the company took out full page ads in all major Iranian newspapers, calling the revelations a plot by "international competitors" in the pistachio market.

At first, the Majlis rejected Ahmadi's credentials, leading to widespread protests in Rafsanjan on June 21, as we reported in last week's Newswire. According to Kayhan, the protests have now led the Majlis to reconsider its position. The Majlis had opened an investigation into Ahmadi's past, alleging he had dark connections to the United States. [Kayhan 6/25]

Clashes between KDPI and army reported

The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) claims to have killed "scores" of Iranian government soldiers in a June 21 attack on a military outpost in Faraveh village, near the town of Saquez in Iranian province of Kurdistan. According to a statement released by the KDPI in Paris on July 6, two Iranian army colonels , identified as Hushang Varmaghani, and Rahman Mehrabani, were killed during the operation.

The KDPI also reported clashes between peshmergas and government forces in Sanaday, Orumieh, Kamyaran, Marivan, and Saquez.

A KDPI supporter, Kazem Kirza'i, was said to have died under torture in Orumieh prison on June 18. He was arrested two years ago. [KDPI statement 7/6]

Payam- Daneshjou publisher banned

Heshmatollah Tabarzadi , the publisher and editor-in-chief of the banned Payam-e Daneshjou weekly, was fined 10 million rials ($3,300) and banned from journalism for five years, by a special press court. The court had initially condemned him to one year in prison, but subsequently relaxed the sentence because of his service during the Iran-Iraq war.

Payam-e Daneshjou was banned and its publisher put on trial after investigative pieces it ran on the Saderat Bank, the Pistachio Cooperative of Rafsanjan, and the Bonyad-e Mostazafan. All three groups attacked the paper for libel. [Jomhouri-e Eslami, 7/2].

Tabarzadi was accused of "spreading lies, calumny, document forging, and spreading anxiety in the society" by the press court. In his defense, Tabarzadi said he considered revealing corruption cases "a religious duty," and pointed out that during the two years that followed his paper's initial revelations on the Saderat Bank the bank "never issued a denial ... against our charges." [Jomhouri-e Eslami 7/2].

Vice President's paper banned

The Basijis were not alone in their problems with the press laws. Recently even a Vice President of the Islamic Republic, Ataollah Mohajerani, has run afoul of the law, and has been condemned by the special press court of "spreading lies", "defamation", "insults" for articles published in his weekly about the Jameh-e Ruhaniat-e Mobarez, the Combatant Clerics Society of Parliament-speaker Nateq-Nouri.

Mohajerani says he closed his weekly newspaper, Bahman, "for financial reasons" after the second round of the Majlis elections. The court banned him from journalism for one year and fined him 500,000 rials ($167).

Bahman had accused the JRM of receiving a $1 million bribe during the election campaign. In a separate article, the paper accused JRM of "using force to achieve its goals," and of being the main cause of political asphyxiation and the lack of freedom in Iran.

Mohajerani defended himself in court by evoking the poisonous atmosphere of the Majlis campaign. "Our genuine concern was the spreading violence and repression in the name of the religion," he said, referring to the pro-Rafsanjani list of Majlis candidates, the Servants of Construction.

Mohajerani has been very active in recent years as an unofficial speaker for Rafsanjani supporters , mainly through writing articles in the pro-government press.

The court decision would appear to be another show of force by Nateq-Nouri to his opponents. [Salam 7/3]

Hanged man to be executed... again!

A hanged man who survived has been condemned to hang - again.

Niaz Ali, said to be in his thirties, was hanged in February, after he was condemned to death for killing a man near the city of Hamadan three years earlier.

He stayed suspended from the rope for 20 minutes before being pronounced dead by the authorities. But when his brother went to the morgue to claim his body five hours later , he noticed that his heart was still beating slowly. He asked for help, and the hanged man revived. He taken back to jail... and now the authorities want to hang him again.

In an interview with Kayhan from his prison cell, Niaz Ali begged for clemency. "I've already faced my punishment and I do not have the heart and nerves to bear it again. I am enjoying a new life in prison and I pray to God every day for it to continue. Now I've asked the authorities to pardon me. But they say I should be hanged again, unless the parents of the man I killed forgive me. So I beg them to forgive me. I really regret what I have done and I have changed completely," he said. [Kayhan, 7/4]

Executions for homicide, adultery

A man identified as Manuchehr Mehrban was executed this month in Tehran's Qasr prison on charges of homicide. In its report on the execution, Hamshahri said Mehrban's crime occurred last year following a family dispute.

Because of the increased scrutiny by human rights organizations of public accounts of executions, which used to flood the Iranian press, the Tehran government has given strict orders only to report executions for crimes such as murder, theft, and rape, and even these appear as notices on the inside pages of official newspapers in a brief and uniform format.[Hamshahri 6/22].

Meanwhile, Kayhan reported that a 29 year-old woman, identified only as Homeyra, and her lover, Alireza, were executed in Shiraz on charges of adultery. No other details were provided. [Kayhan 7/1]

Hijacker Condemned to Death

The Prosecutor General of Tehran's Revolutionary Court , Hojjat-ol-Eslam Gholam Hossein Rahbarpour, announced that the man who hijacked an Iran Air Boeing 727 to Egypt in 1984, Gholam-Reza Bahid-Jou, has been condemned to death.

"He asked for clemency, but his request was rejected by the sentencing committee," Rahbarpour said. He released no information on the date or conditions of the trial.

Iran has repeatedly announced in the past that it would prosecute hijackers who flew civilian airliners to Iran, but has never done so. [Ettelaat 6/20]

"Human Rights Emissaries are sick," says Lajaverdi

The head of the Islamic Republic's Prisons Organization has called Western human rights emissaries who visit Iran "sick people." But he had kinder words for the UN's new special representative for Iran, Maurice Copithorne.

"We don't have any problem to letting human rights groups visit our prisons," said Asadollah Lajaverdi, "because the quality of life in our prisons is very good. But these people are sick...They come to see the reality of our prisons, but go away reporting what they already had in their minds. They have made human rights into a political issue," he added.

Lajaverdi was more upbeat about Copithorne's recent report on the human rights situation in Iran, which he called "somewhat positive, and better than previous reports." Nevertheless, he said, Copithorne "did not reflect all the truth."

Lajaverdi, who is as "Jallad-e Evin" (the butcher of Evin) to former prisoners, said Iran welcomed visits to its prisons. He also offered some intriguing figures on the number of prisoners currently behind bars, which contradicts other recent statements by Iranian officials.

In all, some 110,000 persons were currently behind bars, he said.

"The majority of our prisoners are there for drug related offenses (53,5%). The rest have been jailed for theft (14%), financial crime (7%), disturbing public order and wickedness (5%), anti-Islamic behavior (4%), homicide (4%), security offenses (3%), forgery (2% ), smuggling (1.5%), unintentional homicide (1.2%), illegal border violations (0. 5%), driving offenses (0.3%), vandalism (0.3%), family offenses (0.3%), illegal occupation of property (0.2%), he said.

But not a single one of those 110,000 persons could be considered a political prisoner, Lajaverdi insisted. Not one. "We have no one who is in prison for thinking in a way that is different from the regime, or for political activities. You can see that political activities are allowed everywhere in Iran. People can speak their opinions freely, and no one will bother them. We do have a few members of armed groups, but their number is fortunately very small. Even they are not in prison because they belong to a group, but because they have committed armed robbery or terrorist crimes. In Evin Prison, which once was full of them, today they can be counted by the fingers of two hands."

Lajaverdi painted a positively idyllic picture of the prisons of the Islamic Republic,. They have "flowers in the gardens, and aquariums in halls." Prison libraries are stocked with "hundreds of thousands of books," while prison medical clinics offer "the best medical services" in Iran. In addition to that, prisons are given "quality food," and access to "sports and cultural activities," he said.

"If any guardian assaults or mistreat a prisoner, he will be severely dealt with. We know that the best way to treat prisoners is by love and corrective methods. Most of the prisoners are like sick people who need to be cured," Lajaverdi said. Indeed, one third of all prisoners were eventually cured, because "they recite Koran fluently. 2300 of them have completely memorized the Koran." [Jomhouri-e Eslami, 6/23]

With prisons like this, who wants to live in the southern suburbs of Tehran?

Debate over IPO

No, it's not an initial public offering... It's the Islamic Propagation Organization, and there's an ongoing debate in the Majlis what to do with it.

Some government ministers and parliamentarians have sought to subsume it within the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance. But for Majlis speaker Nateq-Nouri that "is not a wise thing to do," since by his own admission the IPO engages in activities which the government "must avoid because of national security concerns," such as sending clerics as recruiters to Bosnia and elsewhere. Therefore, retaining plausible deniability as to who is really running the show is the better way to go, he told a recent gathering celebrating the 15th anniversary of the IPO.

The IPO receives millions of dollars from the government's annual budget. Its mission is to spread fundamentalist propaganda in Iran and throughout the world. It has branches in dozens of countries, acting closely with Iranian embassies. But the arrest and expulsion of IPO emissaries in Bosnia this past winter, their huge organization in Lebanon which funnels money to Hezbollah, has raised concerns of the organization's support for Iranian government-sponsored terrorist activities.

Nouri, claiming that the U.S. is trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic by infiltrating Iranian culture, called on Iranians to "defend Islam on the cultural front, by starting a new cultural and intellectual movement. The U.S. is quietly planing our cultural defeat. It main target is our youth. So we should maintain control on our youth and university students through propaganda and cultural activities. We should fight corruption and cultural assault by every possible means, including physical means when necessary."

Nateq-Nouri's suggestion for countering America's cultural onslaught? More mullahs, and Islamic films. "I regret that the number and the quality of our preachers has dropped. We should replace preaching by art and culture, projecting films in the mosques to absorb the youth," he said. [Iran, 6/22]

Paper Criticizes Turkey's Erbakan

A conservative Tehran daily had sharply criticized Turkey's new Prime Minister, Necmeddin Erbakan, for having formed a coalition government with former prime minister Tansu Ciller.

"In their second attempt to form a government, Erbakan's Refah Party has turned to Ciller, the head of the secular True Path Party, and has stepped back from their positions to meet Ciller's satanic demands," Jomhouri-e Eslami said in an editorial. The paper was founded by and reflects the views of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i.

"The undeniable truth is that the Islamist Welfare Party has chosen the wrong way to achieve power." The daily called Erkaban's cooperation with Ciller as "paying a political bribe in order to gain power. This is an indefensible approach which is surely not shared by those who voted massively for the Welfare Party."

"Political analysts believe that even if a coalition government is put together between True Path and Welfare, it will be short lived because of fundamental differences in the goals of the two parties," the paper added. [Jomhouri-e Eslami, 6/22]

Business as usual at Mostazafan

Two month after the publication of the Majlis report on fraud and corruption at the Bonyad-Mostazafan (Foundation of the Oppressed), nothing has changed. Although the report revealed astonishing details about mismanagement and embezzlement in the privatization of Foundation assets, the Bonyad continues to put companies and real estate on the auction block. But apparently only crooks and cronies need apply.

In a June 23 announcement carried in Jomhouri-e Eslami, the Bonyad put five more of its companies up for sale. Just as in previous announcements, the Foundation gave the names of the companies and invited bids. No price or conditions for the sale were announced.

The latest companies were the Kerman Industrial Complex (100% of shares for sale); the Keshpoud Elastic and Industrial Label Factory in Rasht (100% of shares on sale); the Naval Equipment Distribution Co., located in Chalus, a manufacturer of fiberglass and other kinds of boats (100% of shares on sale); Electro Danube, an industrial electronic equipment factory in Tehran (74% of shares on sale); and the Oxygen Gas Factory in Abadan (100% of shares on sale).

Since the Majlis report was released, all investigations appear to have been dropped, and no steps have been taken to prevent the Foundation from altering or destroying evidence. Majlis investigators complained on numerous occasions during their investigation that files they had sought were systematically withheld or simply declared missing or in the personal possession of Rafiq-doust and therefore inaccessible. [Jomhouri-e Eslami, 6/23]

Cool Summer, Hot Autumn for Universities

Basiji students will get special instructions over the summer vacation, aimed at "countering perverse movements" at Iran's universities, Basij commander Alireza Afshar told a gathering in Qom of the Islamic Propagation Organization.

"The aim of the Velayat Plan is to inform Basiji university students of Islamic values and current affairs of the country during the summer holidays , to prepare them for a wave of cultural activities to face perverse movements," Afshar said. He revealed that the Plan will be carried out with the help of clerics from the Qom seminary. [Kayhan, 6/24]

The government and senior clerics have been calling for a vast purge of the universities for some time, but this was the first time the mechanics of the purge were discussed in public.

A deputy Minister of Culture and Higher education, Mohammed Reza Shojai'i Fard, denied there were plans to dismiss teachers or students, calling them "all rumors. This is not the will of the Supreme Leader. Islamization of the universities will be a long and gradual program." [Resalat 6/23].

But he did confirm that some professors would be fired. "The professors the Supreme Leader referred to them [as unfit to teach] will have to go. But their number will not be significant."

Meanwhile, the governor of Maragheh (A major city in East Azerbaijan Province) called the academic level in provincial universities "shameful".

"In this town, fresh college graduates are teaching B.S. courses. I ring the warning bell for our universities," he said. [Resalat, 6/24].

(And this is before teachers with bad attitudes get the knife. Wonder who will be teaching these classes after the purge?)

Besharati versus Karbaschi

A new incident pitting the LEF against the Mayor of Tehran has not only revealed the continuing political tension between the pro-Rafsanjani and pro-Khamene'i/Nateq Nouri factions, but seems to confirm an emerging rivalry between Interior minister Ali Mohammad Besharati, and Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, the controversial Tehran Mayor.

On June 23 , Rev. Guard General Yousef Abolfathi, the commander of LEF for the greater Tehran region, announced that his forces alone will be allowed in the future to sell the special permits allowing cars to circulate in central Tehran. [Salam 6/25]

Abolfathi's announcement puts an end an end to an important source of income for the Tehran Mayor, who has closed Tehran streets in an apparent effort to fight pollution and then turned around and sold vehicle circulation permits on a daily, monthly, or annual basis. Karbaschi has used fees from permit sales to finance his ambitious municipal plans.

This new challenge to Karbaschi came only days after one of the Mayor's deputies denied any change in the traffic permits, and asked Tehranis to buy their permits from the Municipal Traffic Office as before.

Earlier this year, Karbaschi spent millions of dollars to install parking meters throughout Tehran, only to have the LEF declare the meters were illegal, outlawing their use.

Two weeks ego, the LEF broke up a municipal police lock out in the bazaar on Besharati's order. (See our 6/24 Newswire).

Some observers see the rivalry between Besharati and Karbaschi as an extension of the Rafsanjani/Nateq-Nouri split. But others see them as rivals for a single chair - the Mayor's - and believe the Besharati is looking for a new job. [Salam 6/25]