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* LEF capture "King of Hashish," kill 45 persons
* Seven executed for drug trafficking
* Three to hang for robbery
* Border skirmishes with Turkey continue.
* Alleged MOIS agent convicted of Thai bombing
* More spy rings exposed
* Jannati calls for "Jihad" against Israel
* Iranian children overseas barred from local schools
* Maroufi will stay in Germany
* Rafsanjani loves North Korea
* Bank Director jailed for fraud
* Bomb threat thwarted
* Mujahidin threaten exile radio owner
LEF capture "King of Hashish," kill 45 persons
The LEF claims to have captured Tehran's "King of Hashish" and put him behind bars, according to Major General Yousef-Reza Abulfathi, commander of the greater Tehran LEF.
Abulfathi said the Hashish King, who was not identified, was arrested along with fifteen youths who were selling drugs in city parks. The police also "smashed" two other gangs and arrested 45 others, he said. [Kayhan 7/9]
Other reports claimed that anti-narcotics agents had mounted a 45-day dragnet in search of the Hashish King. Iranian officials acknowledged last year that they have executed more than 4,000 persons on charges of drug trafficking since 1988, and now say there are "more than 12,500 foreign drug smugglers in Iranian jails." [Resalat 7/10].
In subsequent reports by IRNA, LEF officials claimed they have arrested 951 drug smugglers and more than 3,000 addicts over the past four months, killing 45 "drug smugglers" in clashes in northeastern Khorassan province. [IRNA 7/11].
On a separate report on the 13th, IRNA reported that two more drug smugglers were killed in a clash in northeastern Khorassan province, along the border with Afgahnistan. Armed police had encountered them while patrolling the road linking Kalatteh Menar village to Mashad. [IRNA 7/13]
Seven executed for drug trafficking
Seven persons were executed on drug trafficking charges, Tehran Radio announced on July 17, after they had been convicted by a Tehran revolutionary court. The court claimed the unnamed persons belonged to an international smuggling network recently broken up by police. Tehran Radio claimed that police had seized "more than five tons of opium, heroin and morphine from the network," but did not say when the executions took place [Tehran Radio 7/17]
This brings the total number of announced executions for drug charges since the beginning of this Iranian year (March 21) to 60. An additional 58 persons have been killed in "armed clashes" during the same period. [FDI archives]
Three to hang for robbery
An Islamic Revolutiunary court in Tehran has convicted three persons for robbing corporate ofices and women's beauty parlors, and has sentenced them to hang.
The three were identified as Mohammad Mohammadi, Reza Mohammadi and Mojtabi Moieni. According to Kayhan, they were found guilty of robbery, rape and unspecified "other" crimes. [Kayhan 7/10]
Border skirmishes with Turkey continue.
Both Turkey and Iran have denied reports that Turkish troops clashed with a KDPI patrol in Northern Iran on June 22, as announced by the KDPI and reported by FDI (see last week's newswire and Action Memorandum 016). Turkish diplomats in Washington said they continue to investigate the incident. They suggested that the KDPI may have encountered a PKK military patrol and mistaken them for Turkish soldiers.
Meanwhile, Turkey's deputy interior minister, Erol Caker, told a press conference in Tehran on July 10 that Turkey was still investigating an alleged attack by a Turkish helicopter on a Kurdish village inside Iran on June 26, in which six Iranians were killed and 15 others wounded. However, he suspected that the helicopter attack occured after an exchange of fire between Turkish forces and PKK rebels along the Turkish-Iranian border.
Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati protested only mildly, saying that Turkey should tell its border officials "to be more cautious" when operating in the border zone, so as to prevent future incidents. [FDI; IRNA 7/10]
In separate incidents, a Turkish daily reported that Turkish jet fighters had hit an Iranian border post bymistake while attacking a PKK guerrilla camp the day before, klling 20 Iranian soldiers. According to the report, Iranian troops shelled a Turkish border post in reply, killing four Turkish soldiers. [Sabah, 7/14]
Alleged MOIS agent convicted of Thai bombing
An alleged agent of the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Intelligence and Security was convicted and sentenced to death on July 17 by the Bangkok Criminal Court, for the murder of a Thai driver and a failed attempt to bomb the Israeli embassy in Bangkok.
The Deputy chief of Mission for the IRI in Bangkok, Jafarzzadeh Khaili claimed the convicted man was innocent and that the verdict had resulted from "pressure from outsiders, from foreign countries... We insist that he is innocent. There is no concrete evidence against him," Khaili said.
The convicted man, Hussein Dasgiri, was arrested in southern Thailand in June 1994, three months after an abandoned truck was discovered near the Israeli embassy in Bangkok, packed with one-tonne of explosives, detonators, and the body of the murdered Thai driver. Prosecutors presented testimony from 11 eye-witnesses proving that Dasgiri was involved in both the murder and the botched terrorist attack. [Reuters, 7/17]
Another Islamic Republic diplomat is facing charges in Rome for the 1993 murder of the Mujahidin representative to Italy, Mohammed Hussein Naghdi. A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran scoffed at the investigation. "Even if the Rome prosecutor general attributes the killing...to Iran based on the lies of the hypocrites [Ie, the Mujahidin] and their agents, it cannot prove it," IRNA quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.[IRNA 7/17]
Meanwhile, the Mujahidin say that yet another MOIS agent, Reza Barzgar Ma'ssoumi, has been charged by prosecutors in Istanbul for his alleged involvement in the assassination of a Mujahidin operative in Turkey, Mrs. Zahra Rajabi, and her companion, Ali Moradi, on Feb. 20, 1996. [Iran Zamin 7/18]
More spy rings exposed
It must be the witching season, because Iran's MOIS has uncovered three more spy rings, according to a local Intelligence Ministry official. [Hamshahri 7/11]
These latest rings were uncovered in Isfahan province, but no one is saying who they were spying for. Last month the Islamic Republic executed an army colonel for spying on behalf of Iraq, and arrested two other officers on charges of spying for the U.S. and for Turkey. In April, MOIS officials claimed they had uncoverded dozens of spy networks "sent to Iran by World Arrogance" (See our 1st Newswire).
Jannati calls for "Jihad" against Israel
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the self-styled leader of Iran's international Hezbollah movements, denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "madman" and urged his followers in Iran and abroad to launch a Holy War against the Jewish state, in a Friday prayer broadcast by state-run Tehran radio.
"The enemy will not hold back even if we do...You see how this madman who has recently become prime minister in Israel thinks and what he is doing," Jannati said ."We should not forget the Jihad (Holy War) is God's way. And God is with us and will help us."
Two days before Jannati's "sermon," Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress and singled out the Islamic Republic as the main threat to the security and development of the Middle East because of support for international terrorism, its subversion of neighboring regimes, and its clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Replied Jannati: "Today they are making Iran an issue, because Iran is the great power that is standing up to them... But if they stop being concerned about Iran...they will target other (Moslem) states which they easily can devour." [Tehran Radio 7/12]
Iranian children overseas barred from local schools
Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati has issued an order demanding that the children of Iranian diplomats and government employees posted overseas attend Iranian schools, in a bid to avoid being tainted by "foreign" cultures.
The report, carried in the daily Akhbar, said Velayati's order was part of the current effort to enforce "Islamic values" and prevent the invasion of foreign culture. Velayati told Akhbar he was seeking to expand Iranian schools overseas as a means of "preserving and promoting Islamic values" among Iranian communities living in exile as well as for the diplomats and government employees.[Akhbar 7/21]
Farsi-language schools are run and operated in the United States by a series of Islamic Centers financed by the Alavi Foundation in New York, formerly known as the Mostazafan Foundation of New York. The Alavi Foundation continues to use assets that had been placed in the United States by the former Shah, that were invested in real estate and run through the New York-based Pahlavi Foundaiton. All of the former Shah's assets, including the Foundation, were seized by the Revolutionary regime in 1979.
Maroufi will stay in Germany
Iranian author and magazine editor Abbas Maroufi will stay in Germany, where he has been living since leaving Iran in March. A Tehran court sentenced Maroufi in January to 35 lashes and six months imprisonment for "publishing lies" and insulting Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the literary monthly "Gardoon."
Maroufi denied, however, that he had requested political asylum from Bonn, but said he faced an unknown fate since his visa expires at the end of August.
Maroufi has been living near Cologne as a guest of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, in the house of the Nobel prize winning novelist.. [Reuter, 7/12]
Rafsanjani loves North Korea
Islamic Republic president Rafsanjani loves North Korea, and would like to expand ties with the new economic miracle blossoming under the leadership of the "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-Il, IRNA reports. Rafsanjani has called for ''more exchange of views and bilateral delegations so that the foundation is laid for stronger ties.'' Speaking to North Korea's outgoing ambassador in Tehran, Choi Youg Ro No, Rafsanjani noted that Tehran and Pyongyang shared a ''common stance...on many international issues." [IRNA 7/17]
While Rafsanjani didn't go into details, one might surmise he was referring to Iran's purchases of North Korean ballistic missiles, and North Korea's extremely positive experience with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Under the watchful eyes of the IAEA, North Korea succeeded in developing a nuclear weapons capability between 1987-1993, including enough nuclear material for two weapons, U.S. officials have stated publicly.
Bank Director jailed for fraud
Another bank director bites the dust... Abdolhassan Chizri, director of a provincial branch of the Bank Tejarat, and a cleint, Nasser Nassirein, have been sentenced to five and six years respectively for having "misappropriated" $859,000 from the state-owned bank.
A bank employee, Davoud Hashemzadseh was jailed for six months for his alleged role in the case.
Since last year's famous Saderat Bank trial, which involved the brother of Mostazafan Foundation Director General Mohsen Rafiq-doust, the Islamic Republic has been scouring the state-run banks for other potential fraud cases involving low-level employees and bank managers with no obvious ties to the clerics. [Kayhan 7/3]
Bomb threat thwarted
The MOIS has thwarted a plot by an unnamed group to carrying out a series of bombings and sabotage missions," officials said. The group was arrested in June and was composed of individuals from Mazandaran Province along the Caspian sea coast near the border with Turkmenistan. [IRNA 7/3]
In the same category.... a Farsi-language radio in Stockholm reported on July 18 that that day's Iran Air flight from Stockholm to Tehran was delayed for 11 hours, following a bomb threat. The Swedish police found no bomb and let it fly on, leading to speculation that the bomb threat may have been harassment by an Iranian opposition group.
Mujahidin threaten exile radio owner
The People's Mujahidin have publicly threatened the owner of an exile radio station in Los Angeles, obliquely warning that he might be assassinated.
In an article carried in the Farsi-edition of the organization's London-based weekly, Iran Zamin, the organization threatened Assadollah Morovati, the owner of 24-hour Radio Sedaye Iran in Los Angeles, because he has broadcast interviews with former members of the organization who have defected. Calling Morovati "one of the traitors who has had a background of various contacts with the agents of the Iranian regime in Tehran," the article said his radio programs only "provide opportunities for the intelligence agencies of the regime to strike at the resistance" (i.e., the Mujahidin).
"Morovati and other characters like him are like dogs who just attack the enemies of the Iranian regime," the paper said. Then it warned: "there is always a possibility for the Iranian regime to assassinate him and then claim that he has been killed in a factional dispute of the Iranian opposition." [Iran Zamin 7/8]
"Traitor"... "dog"... Those are certainly strong words from an organization that claims to be supporting a democratic alternative for Iran.
Contacted by FDI, Morovati said he had referred the matter to his attorneys for potential legal action against the paper, and had demanded a retraction.