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On August 14 Iran's Supreme National Security Council, which ischaired by President Khatami, issued its long-awaited report on theattack on student dormitories last July that sparked riots in Tehranand some 18 other cities across Iran.
The report called the police attack against the students a"blunder," but cleared the head of the Law Enforcement Forces,General Hedayat Lotfian, of any wrongdoing. During the disturbances,the students had called for Lotfian's dismissal. In acommuniqué released in Tehran on August 28, the ElectedCouncil of Students Sit-in, a leadership group that emerged from thestrike, reiterated that demand, coupled with a new threat. "If theadministration policies continue to resemble what they have been inthe past, even these measures [the firing of Lotfian and therestructuring of the security organizations] will notsubstantially solve the problems."
The Supreme National Security Council report stressed that theattack "was not ordered by the highest police command" and absolvedGeneral Lotfian of any responsibility. Instead, the report singledout for blame the Tehran city police chief and six deputies, as wellas anti-riot police and Islamic militants from the Ansar-e-Hezbollahgroup. The "incompetence" of the officers was responsible for the"blunder," the report said, adding that the students bore some of theblame for their "provocative attitude" during the "illegaldemonstration." Seven top security officials and a group of hard-linevigilantes are to stand trial in Iran for their role in an attack,according to wire service reports and Iranian press accounts.
"The forces broke the law by entering the dormitory, beating upstudents and destroying the premises. Those who made this decisionand took part in it are guilty," the report said. "The committee hasintroduced the guilty ones identified in the report to thejudiciary."
Angry campuses this fall: Higher Education Minister Mostafa Moinsaid 2,000 people were beaten and hundreds wounded in the universityattack alone, IRNA reported (8/15). Moin warned there would be newdisturbances this fall if the government continued to hold studentsarrested during the disturbances for purely political reasons. "Iwant to stress that the student arrests, particularly if they weremade for political or factional reasons or if their cases are nottreated fairly, will lay the ground for more crises in the future,"he said.
Moin added that disturbances in the provincial capital of Tabrizthat happened at the same time had been "forgotten about," and saidPresident Khatami has ordered an investigation into the incident.
Details of the Tabriz attack appeared for the first time inHamshahri (8/11), which reported that LEF and Ansar-e Hezbollahplainclothesmen attacked female students at Tabriz University inmid-July "with a violence and brutality never seen before,"undressing them in public and beating them with electric cables andhoses. The attackers "used hand guns, shooting at random at students,mostly the female ones," according to Mohammad Reza Milani, a memberof Parliament from Tabriz quoted by Hamshahri. "They used machineguns and tear gas." As they forcefully undressed the female students,the attackers jeered at them: "You who support the civil societydon't need to wear hejab" (the Islamic veil).
The report: The regime is trying to spin the attackon the student dormitory, as it previously tried to spin theassassination of dissidents Parvaneh and Darioush Forouhar, as"foreign plots" aimed at undermining the Islamic Revolution.
"The bitter event of the Tehran university dorm that had hurt theleader of the Islamic revolution, disheartened the President anddeeply touched the noble people of Iran, once again awakened thepeople to the reality of the existence of the domestic and foreignenemies laying in wait to exploit the situation to their own benefitsagainst the Islamic revolution and Islamic sovereign state," thereport began. "However, political .....
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