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In a startling and unprecedented admission, Iran's IntelligenceMinistry issued a public statement on January 5 acknowledging thatrenegade agents were responsible for the recent "serial murders" ofpolitical dissidents and intellectuals inside Iran, and pledged tobring them to justice.
The admission, apparently forced upon the MOIS by widespreadstudent demonstrations last month and by the personal intervention ofPresident Khatami, did not name those responsible for the deaths ofDarioush and Parvaneh Forouhar, the leaders of the Iran Nation'sParty who were found brutally stabbed to death in theirheavily-guarded Tehran apartment on November 22. Since then,dissident writers Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh werealso found murdered, as was a journalist, Majid Sharif. Two otherdissidents remain missing, one since August.
But the statement, called by a leading Iranian political analystfrom the University of Tehran as "unprecedented in Iranian history,"was clearly a blow for hard-liners and gave President Khatami moreroom to maneuver in his struggle to reform Iran's faltering butbrutal clerical system.
"With the cooperation of President's special investigatingcommittee," the statement read, "the Ministry has succeeded inidentifying the network and arresting its members and finally handingthem over to the law authorities. Unfortunately some of theirresponsible colleagues of this ministry with deviatory thoughtsacting on their own and without doubt as surreptitious agents and inthe interest of aliens perpetrated these crimes. Such a horrendousact has not only betrayed and inflicted harm to the unknown soldiersof imam-e zaman (may Allah hasten his reappearance) but also have toa very great extent tarnished the credibility of the sovereign stateof the Islamic Republic of Iran. With full confidence and all itspower, the ministry pledges to follow up the complicated case untilall the bandits, gangsters and those alien agents both within andoutside the country involved in such destructive designs, which runcontrary to laws of the nation, are identified, brought to justiceand uprooted."
The MOIS statement came only five days after the head of theJudiciary branch, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, rejected calls for aninternational investigation into the killings, telling a Fridayprayer audience on January 1: "In Algeria there have been savagekillings ...but there is no question there of a United Nationsinvestigation team. But when two or three people are killed in ourcountry, immediately it is blown out of proportion and it is saidthat an investigative team must go and see what is happening."
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene'i made similar remarks inDecember, accusing the United States and Israel of having plotted theassassinations to create instability in Iran.
Reacting to the Information Ministry's statement, Ms ParastouForuhar, the daughter of the murdered couple told the Paris-basedIran Press Service that it was the "most horrible and disgusting newsI could have ever heard. Authorities and agents who are supposed tobe the protectors of our nation's security have turned to be thekillers of the nation's bravest sons and daughters. One can not stophere, thinking that with the arrest of five or six unidentifiedpeople, the whole affair is over. They (the authorities) have beenforced under pressures from the Iranian and international publicopinion to do something. Now, it is time to push them further, forcethem to say the truth, to give the names of the real murderers", shesaid.
Dr Karim Lahiji, a Paris-based lawyer and president of the IranianLeague of Human Rights, said that the arrest of few agents of theInformation Ministry or a statement acknowledging that the securityagents participated in the killing of dissidents was not enough. "Allthose responsible, directly or indirectly in the murder of all thedissidents must be brought to justice and tried in public, with thepresence of international press and observers. It is the duty of theJustice Ministry to bring court all those involved in the murders,whatever the rank or position. But as the Islamic Judiciary is notindependent, therefore we call for open trial of all thesuspects."
Salam calls for resignation: In Tehran, the leftist pro-Khatamidaily Salam called for the resignation of Intelligence MinisterQorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi on January 7. "Few people do not know thatthe intelligence minister was not the president's choice, and he hasnot had the necessary cooperation with the president," Salam wrote ina lead editorial. "The least that must be done now is to replace himand probe his performance."
Many analysts believe that the MOIS admission has given a boost toKhatami and his reformist camp in their struggle against thehard-line clerics. A Tehran University professor currently in theUnited States as a visiting scholar in Washington, DC, called theMOIS admission "unprecedented in Iranian history," and said it gavePresident Khatami "the opportunity to inject some of his own peopleinto that Ministry, and that is a major change. For months now everywriter, every actor, every movie director in Iran has been afraid forhis life," he said. "My own wife called me recently asking me to becareful when I return to Tehran."
Salam has been leading the charge against the security servicesand their subservience to the hard-liners. Already on the morning ofJanuary 5, hours before IRNA issued the MOIS confession of guilt,Salam alleged that the assassinations were the work of "elementsinside the regime." "Anyone who has cared for this regime and thisrevolution can not imagine that some persons inside the power havereached that such a degree of deviation to regard as legitimate thatkind of crimes and think that by committing such crimes one can serveIslam and the Islamic regime", Salam wrote. Never before has thesemi-official Tehran press made such an accusation without immediatereprisal.
Special Operations Committee: Salam appears to have gainedaccess to a Top Secret report, delivered to President Khatami onDecember 31, that exposed the existence and detailed the operationsof the Special Operations Committee which reports to Supreme LeaderAli Khamene'i, which is in charge of eliminating opponents ofVelayat-e faghih, or clerical rule.
The SOC is said to be headed by former Intelligence Minister AliFallahian, who became an advisor to Khamene'i after Khatami took overas President in August 1997, and by Hojjat-ol eslam Hasan Akhtari, aformer Ambassador to Damascus who is now the adviser of Mr. Khamene'ifor Arab and Palestinian affairs. A German court issued an arrestwarrant against Fallahian for his role in orchestrating the Mykonosrestaurant killings of four Kurdish dissidents in Berlin in 1992.Iranian defectors mentioned the SOC in testimony offered during theMykonos trial. The warrant against Fallahian remains in effecttoday.
The operational wing of the SOC is run by Rev. Guards BrigadierGeneral Mohammad Baqr Zolqadr, his deputy, Hossein Abdollahi,commander of the 41st Sarallah Division of the Guards, and the sonsof Assadollah Lajaverdi, the "butcher of Evin" who was assassinatedseveral months ago by the Mujahedin in Tehran. Also named as part ofthe SOC was Hossein Shariatmadari, who was appointed by Khamene'i asExecutive Editor of Keyhan newspaper, which is the mouthpiece of theIntelligence Ministry.
Defector charges plot: In Germany, a member of the ruling clergyarrested in late December while transiting the Frankfurt airport enroute to Canada, told the German government and Iranian exiles thatthe Special Operations Committee carried out the recent murders inTehran on the orders of Ayatollah Khamene'i. The cleric, identifiedby Iran Press Service as Hojjat-ol eslam Ja'far Baqrian Avazi,originally presented himself to the German authorities as an advisorto the Majlis "Crisis Committee." He also provided the Germanauthorities with a hit list of 179 persons currently under "scrutiny"by the Special Operations Committee.
A Frankfurt-based dissident, Mehdi Khanbaba Tehrani, who said hehad reviewed the hit list presented by Baqrian, said it includedsenior staff members of the banned publications "Tous" and "Iran-eFarda," members of the Iran Freedom Movement including its leader,Ebrahim Yazdi, prominent nationalists and liberals, femalejournalists and intellectuals, as well as journalists, women's rightsadvocates and dissident politicians living in exile.
A clandestine group known as Fedayeen-e Eslam, affiliated withAyatollah Khamene'i and other top regime leaders, publicly claimedresponsibility for the murders in a series of statements faxed toTehran dailies, but simultaneous faxes also purporting to emanatefrom the group to other dailies denied any involvement.
On January 4, former President Banisadr issued a statement fromhis office in Versailles quoting a second clerical defectoridentified as Hojjat-ol eslam Parvazi as saying that the order toassassinate the Forouhars and the dissident intellectuals waspersonally signed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene'i and carriedout by Brigadier General Mohammad Baqr Zolqadr.