Five persons were killed and more than 40 injured during a mosque "stampede" in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah, according to state-controlled radio in Kermanshah.
The radio, monitored by FDI sources in the region over the weekend, claimed that worshippers attending evening prayers on Saturday, panicked when "unknown elements" spread a rumor that a bomb was about to go off inside the mosque. The state-run news agency carried a similar report on Sunday, adding that among the dead were two girls, aged 7 and 13, but without giving any reason for the mosque stampede. [IRIB 2/1 and 2/2; IRNA 2/2]
The deaths occurred in the main Sunni mosque in the Javanshir district of the city, site of bloody clashes between Sunni Muslim residents of Kermanshah and security forces in December.
It is extremely unusual for the authorities to take the lead in announcing events where civilians are killed in potentially political circumstances. In this case, the radio carried the news before any opposition organization claimed there was a political character to the event.
Learning of the news from public sources, a newly-formed opposition group, NAVID, announced in Germany that at least four persons were killed and 13 injured during "clashes" between security forces and local residents in Kermanshah after Friday prayers. It was not clear whether the group was reporting on the mosque stampede, or a separate incident, since the state-run radio reported the stampede occurred on Saturday. The group also reported that 43 persons were arrested by the security forces during the clashes for chanting slogans against the regime [NAVID press release 2/3].
Even if the state-run radio account is accurate, it is a clear indication of how high tensions are running in Kermanshah following the bloody anti-regime riots that occurred in December.
Since the December riots, units of the Special Guards of the Islamic Republic have been posted at the entrances of the city. In recent days, sources in the region have reported to FDI of roadblocks and security checkpoints in the towns of Boukan, Sardasht, Paveh, Nosoud and Sanandaj, as well as in the Zamziran pass outside Sardasht.
Iranian writer and publisher Faraj Sarkuhi has been re-arrested in Tehran along with his brother, Ismail, the PEN American Center and family members claim. Sarkuhi had reported in to the authorities on Jan. 28, as former political prisoners are required to do, and failed to return home.
Meanwhile, in Germany Sarkuhi's wife, Farideh Zebarjadi, has released a remarkable 14-page manuscript letter from her jailed husband, in which he describes in detail his Kafkaesque arrest and torture last November. Excerpts from the letter have been translated into English courtesy of Iran Press Service in Paris. Additional information, including the letter from PEN and sample letters you can send to the IRI authorities, can be found at DNI.
Following Sarkuhi's Nov. 3 disappearance, his wife and international human rights groups, including FDI, mounted a campaign calling for his release. On Dec. 20, Sarkuhi "reappeared" to hold a bizarre press conference at Tehran airport, in which he claimed he had actually gone to Germany, as the regime had claimed, refused to see his wife, and journeyed back to Iran via Turkmenistan... without a passport!
"I, Faraj Sarkuhi, am writing down this account in great haste in 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, Arash and Bahar, the people I love most intensely, will learn about the horrendous circumstances I have been through. My notes may of course never get out but I am hoping all the same that someone will read them and be able to publish them after my arrest or my death.... Torture, prison and death are what lie ahead of me."
Sarkuhi said that when he arrived at the Tehran airport on Nov. 3, an Intelligence Ministry official he knew from previous periods in jail had him fill out the departure form. "Then he took my passport and after 15 minutes, I was arrested, blindfolded, thrown into a car and transported to a secret Ministry prison where I remained until the last day," six weeks later. "There [in prison] I learned that they had changed the photos of both my ID card and my passport with someone else's, creating a double for me who had not only traveled to Hamburg, but even had purchased foreign currency in my name at the Tehran Airport."
Sarkuhi said Intelligence Ministry officials told him he had been declared a missing person. "You will spend sometime here in jail and then be killed, your body dumped either here or in Germany after proper interrogation, interviews and inquiries are carried out," Sarkuhi says they told him.
"After three or four days, they made me listen to a tape in which my brother was telling my wife Farideh that the Information Ministry has announced that I had left Mehrebad [airport]. The aim of bringing me that tape was to prove to me that they were not joking."
Later, his interrogators forced him to write a letter to a woman friend in Tehran, joining a photocopy of his doctored passport to show the Hamburg arrival 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 the Iranians could not say that I was in Germany for fear of being caught by showing how much they knew."
Sarkuhi claims that his interrogators tortured him into making a videotaped confession that he had worked as a spy for the German government, which the Tehran authorities intended to use as leverage in their efforts to get the arrest warrant issued against Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian-Khuzestani by a German court lifted. Fallahian is accused of having orchestrated the gangland slaying of four Iranian Kurdish dissidents in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin in September 1992. The Islamic Republic authorities became so incensed over the Berlin trial, in which Iranian President Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i also stand accused, that in late November they threatened to sever diplomatic relations with Germany and to take German diplomats hostage in Tehran.
Sarkuhi's wife, however, has said she feared he was being held "as a bargaining chip" in the event the Berlin court returned guilty verdicts against the four Lebanese and one Iranian being tried in Berlin for the 1992 murders.
"I spent 8 years in the Shah's prisons," Sarkuhi wrote, "but all those 8 years were as nothing compared to five minutes of the 47 days I spent in an Islamic prison. So terrible... so painful... No one can understand the depth of my misfortune, my fall, my disintegration, my tortures," Sarkuhi wrote. He said the Intelligence ministry also forced him to confess to having had sexual relations with other women in Tehran, as a means of discrediting him. [Iran Brief 2/3]
The U.S. Department of State has strongly condemned the recent Islamic Republic Supreme Court decisions upholding death sentences against two Iranian Baha'is convicted of apostasy. The two Baha'is, Mr. Musa Talibi and Mr. Zahibullah Mahrami, were convicted in separate trials before Revolutionary courts in 1995 and 1996.
"The United States Government strongly condemns this action and calls on the Government of Iran to release these men," State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said on Jan. 31. "We urge the government of Iran to free all prisoners of conscience and to ensure freedom of religion and other basic human rights." [U.S. Department of State, 1/31]
"The Iranian Supreme Court's actions are but the latest and most distressing reminder of Iran's continuing campaign to destroy the Baha'i community," said Firuz Kazemzadeh, spokesman for the 130,000 member American Baha'i community. Since 1980, more than 200 Iranian Baha'is have been 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 Department issued its annual report on human rights conditions around the world. As to be expected, it contained no soothing words about conditions inside the Islamic Republic.
"Credible reports indicate that security forces continue to torture detainees and prisoners," the report said. "A new law entered into force on July 10 that reinforces Islamic punishments such as flogging, stoning, amputations, and public executions." Two persons were stoned to death under the new law in 1996, while two others were executed after receiving lashes.
"Most executions in political trials amount to summary executions because 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 adequate rations or medical care in order to force confessions," it said, and "female prisoners have reportedly been raped or otherwise tortured while in detention."
The report also condemned the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Courts."[S]ecret or summary trials of 5 minutes are common," while "others are show trials intended to highlight a coerced public confession."
The report also noted the rise in repression against Iran's Sunni Muslim minority, "both inside and outside Iran," and while criticizing the regime's continuing efforts "to kill political opponents abroad."
The Tehran government "represses political dissidents and the ruling clerics effectively control the electoral process, thereby denying citizens the right to change their government."
"Discrimination against women has increased since the (Islamic) revolution" in 1979, it added. [Compass 1/30]. Click here for the full text of the State Department report on Iran.
In a rare admission by an Iranian political figure, Majlis Deputy Mohsen Yahyavi has blamed the U.S. trade and investment ban signed into law by President Clinton in August 1996 for the lack of interest by international investors in the 11 oil and gas field development projects offered by the National Iranian Oil company.
"Despite widespread arrangements by the (oil) ministry, foreign contractors are not much interested in engaging in petroleum projects in Iran," said Yahyavi, a senior member of the parliament's oil commission the daily Iran News [1/28]
Only one week earlier, Yahyavi told the same paper that the Islamic Republic had fallen short of its oil production quota, despite all the hype by NIOC and by Oil Ministry officials to the contrary.
Yahyavi said official figures showed that Iran had produced 80,000 b/d less than its OPEC production quota of 3.6 mb, costing the country $670 million 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 capital to cure the problem. "If there are no improvements, Iran will be forced to further reduce production to 110,000 b/d below its quota," he said.
His estimates put Iran's sustained production capacity at 3.52 million b/d, down from 6 million b/d before the revolution. [Iran News 1/22]
A new multi-party opposition committee was established in the German city of Koln in late December, aimed at fostering greater communication and coordination among different opposition groups in Europe and inside Iran.
In its initial press release, the Coordination Council (CC), formed of 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, apartheid inside 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 diplomats and military officers, including Professor Ezzatollah Homayounfar (independent, Switzerland), Dr Hasan Kianzad (Iranian Solidarity Movement, German), Mrs Mahin Arjomand (Monarchist, Germany), Iraj Fatemi (Association of Iranian Democrats, France) Dr Mohammad Reza Sadri (Monarchist, Italy), Mehran Adib (European Representative of the Iranian Nation Party, Belgium) and Dr Nur Mohammad Asgari (Independent, Sweden). [IPS 12/27/96]
Two members of the opposition Freedom Movement, led by former Islamic Republic 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 to be working on a special ceremony to commemorate the death of former Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, founder of the Freedom Movement, when they were arrested 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 attacked by three unidentified persons, who threw a form of tear gas at participants gathering inside Negah Hall in downtown Tehran. [INP weekly bulletin, 1/26]
Following the announcement earlier this month by the dominant Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran that it had wooed a former splinter group away from the Marxist-Leninist Mujahidin-e Khalq (see Newswire 33), the MEK has replied by announcing that an even smaller Kurdish group has chosen to come under its tent.
In a statement released in Baghdad on Jan. 26, the MEK announced that the Organization for national and Islamic struggle of Iranian Kurdistan (Khebat) had joined the ranks of its National Council of Resistance, an MEK front group run by Massoud Rajavi and his wife, Maryam.
Khebat leader Seyed Jalal Hosseini met with Massoud Rajavi prior to the announcement, and stated that he had joined the MEK group because their autonomy plan for Iranian Kurdistan "completely recognized" the rights of Kurds "and made the future government committed to it as well." [NCR statement 1/27]
Hints have appeared in Tehran that Khebat may have been responsible for some of the cross-border attacks against Revolutionary Guards outposts that have been previously attributed to Mujahidin forces.
An opposition leader based in Paris, Colonel Hassan Aghilipour, has sent a message of congratulations to FDI its Dec. 10 public meeting in Washington, DC, that brought together leaders of five different Iranian opposition groups and ethnic communities.
Colonel Aghilipour, who presides the Foundation for the Independence of Iran and is a well-known human rights activist who has repeatedly addressed the United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights, said the FDI effort "to unite certain members of the Iranian opposition family is a real hope and deserves applause."
"In this moment in history, when the so-called free world is undertaking "critical negotiations" with Iran, and where nearly all the world media react in total silence to the crimes against humanity perpetrated in Iran, this effort at unity is important."
"The Foundation for the Independence of Iran and all of its member organizations support all actions aimed at bringing to power in Iran a free government that will respect international human rights standards." [FIDI letter 12/14/96]
The FDI meeting brought together Manoucher Gandji, leader of the Organization for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Iran, Darioush Homayoun and Khosrow Akmal, leaders of the Constitutionalists Movement of Iran, Homayoun Moghaddam, foreign representative of Iran Nation's Party leader Darioush Forouhar, and representatives of the KDPI and the Iranian Balouchi community.