Five persons were killed and more than 40 injured during a mosque "stampede"in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah, according to state-controlledradio in Kermanshah.
The radio, monitored by FDI sources in the region over the weekend,claimed that worshippers attending evening prayers on Saturday, panickedwhen "unknown elements" spread a rumor that a bomb was aboutto go off inside the mosque. The state-run news agency carried a similarreport on Sunday, adding that among the dead were two girls, aged 7 and13, but without giving any reason for the mosque stampede. [IRIB 2/1 and2/2; IRNA 2/2]
The deaths occurred in the main Sunni mosque in the Javanshir districtof the city, site of bloody clashes between Sunni Muslim residents of Kermanshahand security forces in December.
It is extremely unusual for the authorities to take the lead in announcingevents where civilians are killed in potentially political circumstances.In this case, the radio carried the news before any opposition organizationclaimed there was a political character to the event.
Learning of the news from public sources, a newly-formed oppositiongroup, NAVID, announced in Germany that at least four persons were killedand 13 injured during "clashes" between security forces and localresidents in Kermanshah after Friday prayers. It was not clear whetherthe group was reporting on the mosque stampede, or a separate incident,since the state-run radio reported the stampede occurred on Saturday. Thegroup also reported that 43 persons were arrested by the security forcesduring the clashes for chanting slogans against the regime [NAVID pressrelease 2/3].
Even if the state-run radio account is accurate, it is a clear indicationof how high tensions are running in Kermanshah following the bloody anti-regimeriots that occurred in December.
Since the December riots, units of the Special Guards of the IslamicRepublic have been posted at the entrances of the city. In recent days,sources in the region have reported to FDI of roadblocks and security checkpointsin the towns of Boukan, Sardasht, Paveh, Nosoud and Sanandaj, as well asin the Zamziran pass outside Sardasht.
Iranian writer and publisher Faraj Sarkuhi has been re-arrested in Tehranalong with his brother, Ismail, the PEN American Center and family membersclaim. Sarkuhi had reported in to the authorities on Jan. 28, as formerpolitical prisoners are required to do, and failed to return home.
Meanwhile, in Germany Sarkuhi's wife, Farideh Zebarjadi, has releaseda remarkable 14-page manuscript letter from her jailed husband, in whichhe describes in detail his Kafkaesque arrest and torture last November.Excerpts from the letter have beentranslated into English courtesy of Iran Press Service in Paris. Additionalinformation, including the letter from PEN and sample letters you cansend to the IRI authorities, can be found at DNI.
Following Sarkuhi's Nov. 3 disappearance, his wife and internationalhuman rights groups, including FDI, mounted a campaign calling for hisrelease. On Dec. 20, Sarkuhi "reappeared" to hold a bizarre pressconference at Tehran airport, in which he claimed he had actually goneto Germany, as the regime had claimed, refused to see his wife, and journeyedback to Iran via Turkmenistan... without a passport!
"I, Faraj Sarkuhi, am writing down this account in great hastein the hope that people one day will be able to read it, and that the world,the Iranian public and not least my wife Farideh and my children, Arashand Bahar, the people I love most intensely, will learn about the horrendouscircumstances I have been through. My notes may of course never get outbut I am hoping all the same that someone will read them and be able topublish them after my arrest or my death.... Torture, prison and deathare what lie ahead of me."
Sarkuhi said that when he arrived at the Tehran airport on Nov. 3, anIntelligence Ministry official he knew from previous periods in jail hadhim fill out the departure form. "Then he took my passport and after15 minutes, I was arrested, blindfolded, thrown into a car and transportedto a secret Ministry prison where I remained until the last day,"six weeks later. "There [in prison] I learned that they had changedthe photos of both my ID card and my passport with someone else's, creatinga double for me who had not only traveled to Hamburg, but even had purchasedforeign currency in my name at the Tehran Airport."
Sarkuhi said Intelligence Ministry officials told him he had been declareda missing person. "You will spend sometime here in jail and then bekilled, your body dumped either here or in Germany after proper interrogation,interviews and inquiries are carried out," Sarkuhi says they toldhim.
"After three or four days, they made me listen to a tape in whichmy brother was telling my wife Farideh that the Information Ministry hasannounced that I had left Mehrebad [airport]. The aim of bringing me thattape was to prove to me that they were not joking."
Later, his interrogators forced him to write a letter to a woman friendin Tehran, joining a photocopy of his doctored passport to show the Hamburgarrival stamp and asking that she show the letter to his brother Ismail.This plan by the Intelligence ministry apparently backfired, Sarkuhi wrote,because the Germans never confirmed his arrival in Hamburg "and theIranians could not say that I was in Germany for fear of being caught byshowing how much they knew."
Sarkuhi claims that his interrogators tortured him into making a videotapedconfession that he had worked as a spy for the German government, whichthe Tehran authorities intended to use as leverage in their efforts toget the arrest warrant issued against Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian-Khuzestaniby a German court lifted. Fallahian is accused of having orchestrated thegangland slaying of four Iranian Kurdish dissidents in the Mykonos restaurantin Berlin in September 1992. The Islamic Republic authorities became soincensed over the Berlin trial, in which Iranian President Hashemi-Rafsanjaniand Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i also stand accused, that inlate November they threatened to sever diplomatic relations with Germanyand to take German diplomats hostage in Tehran.
Sarkuhi's wife, however, has said she feared he was being held "asa bargaining chip" in the event the Berlin court returned guilty verdictsagainst the four Lebanese and one Iranian being tried in Berlin for the1992 murders.
"I spent 8 years in the Shah's prisons," Sarkuhi wrote, "butall those 8 years were as nothing compared to five minutes of the 47 daysI spent in an Islamic prison. So terrible... so painful... No one can understandthe depth of my misfortune, my fall, my disintegration, my tortures,"Sarkuhi wrote. He said the Intelligence ministry also forced him to confessto having had sexual relations with other women in Tehran, as a means ofdiscrediting him. [Iran Brief 2/3]
The U.S. Department of State has strongly condemned the recent IslamicRepublic Supreme Court decisions upholding death sentences against twoIranian Baha'is convicted of apostasy. The two Baha'is, Mr. Musa Talibiand Mr. Zahibullah Mahrami, were convicted in separate trials before Revolutionarycourts in 1995 and 1996.
"The United States Government strongly condemns this action andcalls on the Government of Iran to release these men," State Departmentspokesman Nicholas Burns said on Jan. 31. "We urge the governmentof Iran to free all prisoners of conscience and to ensure freedom of religionand other basic human rights." [U.S. Department of State, 1/31]
"The Iranian Supreme Court's actions are but the latest and mostdistressing reminder of Iran's continuing campaign to destroy the Baha'icommunity," said Firuz Kazemzadeh, spokesman for the 130,000 memberAmerican Baha'i community. Since 1980, more than 200 Iranian Baha'is havebeen executed and more than thousands imprisoned because of their religion.[Baha'i statement 1/31]
The day before Nick Burns' statement on the Baha'is, the State Departmentissued its annual report on human rights conditions around the world. Asto be expected, it contained no soothing words about conditions insidethe Islamic Republic.
"Credible reports indicate that security forces continue to torturedetainees and prisoners," the report said. "A new law enteredinto force on July 10 that reinforces Islamic punishments such as flogging,stoning, amputations, and public executions." Two persons were stonedto death under the new law in 1996, while two others were executed afterreceiving lashes.
"Most executions in political trials amount to summary executionsbecause basic procedural safeguards are lacking," the report stated,adding that "executions appear to continue in substantial numbers."
It said many detainees were held incommunicado following arrest, and"prison conditions are harsh."
"Some prisoners are held in solitary confinement or denied adequaterations or medical care in order to force confessions," it said, and"female prisoners have reportedly been raped or otherwise torturedwhile in detention."
The report also condemned the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Courts."[S]ecretor summary trials of 5 minutes are common," while "others areshow trials intended to highlight a coerced public confession."
The report also noted the rise in repression against Iran's Sunni Muslimminority, "both inside and outside Iran," and while criticizingthe regime's continuing efforts "to kill political opponents abroad."
The Tehran government "represses political dissidents and the rulingclerics effectively control the electoral process, thereby denying citizensthe right to change their government."
"Discrimination against women has increased since the (Islamic)revolution" in 1979, it added. [Compass 1/30]. Clickhere for the full text of the State Department report on Iran.
In a rare admission by an Iranian political figure, Majlis Deputy MohsenYahyavi has blamed the U.S. trade and investment ban signed into law byPresident Clinton in August 1996 for the lack of interest by internationalinvestors in the 11 oil and gas field development projects offered by theNational Iranian Oil company.
"Despite widespread arrangements by the (oil) ministry, foreigncontractors are not much interested in engaging in petroleum projects inIran," said Yahyavi, a senior member of the parliament's oil commissionthe daily Iran News [1/28]
Only one week earlier, Yahyavi told the same paper that the IslamicRepublic had fallen short of its oil production quota, despite all thehype by NIOC and by Oil Ministry officials to the contrary.
Yahyavi said official figures showed that Iran had produced 80,000 b/dless than its OPEC production quota of 3.6 mb, costing the country $670million in lost oil revenues (with oil prices calculated at $23/b), or$500 million at $17/b. He blamed the shortfall on "poorly maintained"oil wells and blamed the government for not providing sufficient capitalto cure the problem. "If there are no improvements, Iran will be forcedto further reduce production to 110,000 b/d below its quota," he said.
His estimates put Iran's sustained production capacity at 3.52 millionb/d, down from 6 million b/d before the revolution. [Iran News 1/22]
A new multi-party opposition committee was established in the Germancity of Koln in late December, aimed at fostering greater communicationand coordination among different opposition groups in Europe and insideIran.
In its initial press release, the Coordination Council (CC), formedof representatives of five different opposition groups as well as individuals,rejected any reconciliation or cooperation with the current regime in Tehran(as has been suggested by a dissident monarchist activist, Mehrdad Khonsari).they also denounced "the policy of State terrorism, oppression, apartheidinside and outside Iran," and called on "all Iranian communities,minorities, tribes and Armed Forces" to join forces against the regime.
The founding statement was signed by 36 intellectuals, former diplomatsand military officers, including Professor Ezzatollah Homayounfar (independent,Switzerland), Dr Hasan Kianzad (Iranian Solidarity Movement, German), MrsMahin Arjomand (Monarchist, Germany), Iraj Fatemi (Association of IranianDemocrats, France) Dr Mohammad Reza Sadri (Monarchist, Italy), Mehran Adib(European Representative of the Iranian Nation Party, Belgium) and Dr NurMohammad Asgari (Independent, Sweden). [IPS 12/27/96]
Two members of the opposition Freedom Movement, led by former IslamicRepublic Foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi, were arrested on Jan. 22 in Hamadan,an opposition group reported.
The two, identified as Hadi Ehtezazi and Ibrahim Dinavi, were said tobe working on a special ceremony to commemorate the death of former PrimeMinister Mehdi Bazargan, founder of the Freedom Movement, when they werearrested by the security forces.
No further information on their whereabouts has been received to date.
The day after their arrest, the commemoration ceremony itself was attackedby three unidentified persons, who threw a form of tear gas at participantsgathering inside Negah Hall in downtown Tehran. [INP weekly bulletin, 1/26]
Following the announcement earlier this month by the dominant KurdishDemocratic Party of Iran that it had wooed a former splinter group awayfrom the Marxist-Leninist Mujahidin-e Khalq (see Newswire 33), the MEKhas replied by announcing that an even smaller Kurdish group has chosento come under its tent.
In a statement released in Baghdad on Jan. 26, the MEK announced thatthe Organization for national and Islamic struggle of Iranian Kurdistan(Khebat) had joined the ranks of its National Council of Resistance, anMEK front group run by Massoud Rajavi and his wife, Maryam.
Khebat leader Seyed Jalal Hosseini met with Massoud Rajavi prior tothe announcement, and stated that he had joined the MEK group because theirautonomy plan for Iranian Kurdistan "completely recognized" therights of Kurds "and made the future government committed to it aswell." [NCR statement 1/27]
Hints have appeared in Tehran that Khebat may have been responsiblefor some of the cross-border attacks against Revolutionary Guards outpoststhat have been previously attributed to Mujahidin forces.
An opposition leader based in Paris, Colonel Hassan Aghilipour, hassent a message of congratulations to FDI its Dec. 10 public meeting inWashington, DC, that brought together leaders of five different Iranianopposition groups and ethnic communities.
Colonel Aghilipour, who presides the Foundation for the Independenceof Iran and is a well-known human rights activist who has repeatedly addressedthe United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights, said the FDI effort "tounite certain members of the Iranian opposition family is a real hope anddeserves applause."
"In this moment in history, when the so-called free world is undertaking"critical negotiations" with Iran, and where nearly all the worldmedia react in total silence to the crimes against humanity perpetratedin Iran, this effort at unity is important."
"The Foundation for the Independence of Iran and all of its memberorganizations support all actions aimed at bringing to power in Iran afree government that will respect international human rights standards."[FIDI letter 12/14/96]
The FDI meeting brought together Manoucher Gandji, leader of the Organizationfor Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Iran, Darioush Homayoun andKhosrow Akmal, leaders of the Constitutionalists Movement of Iran, HomayounMoghaddam, foreign representative of Iran Nation's Party leader DarioushForouhar, and representatives of the KDPI and the Iranian Balouchi community.