Leader Reinstates Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi for Another Five-Year Term
Messages and Letters: "Leader Reinstates Judiciary Chief for Another Five-Year Term
2004-08-12
Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, in a letter on Thursday, August 12, reinstated Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi for another five-year term. The abridged text of the letter is as follows:
Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, in a letter on Thursday, August 12, reinstated Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi for another five-year term. The abridged text of the letter is as follows:
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Ayatollah Hajj Sayyid Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi,
Considering that your five-year term of office as head of the Judiciary, during which you rendered valuable services, has come to an end now, based on Article 157 of the Constitution, I hereby reinstate you as head of the Judiciary for another five-year term.
I pray to the Almighty for your further success in performing your tasks.
Sayyid Ali Khamenei"
Ayatollah Hashemi-Shahroudi Breaks Up Plot Against the Republic. West Howls
Social Research: An Open Letter to Ayatollah Hashemi-Shahroudi from Human Rights Watch - Abstract: "An Open Letter to Ayatollah Hashemi-Shahroudi from Human Rights Watch - Abstract
Social Research, Winter, 2000
Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again with Furl.net. Get started now. (It's free.)NOVEMBER 2, 2000, NEW YORK--In an open letter sent to Iran's chief judicial official, Human Rights Watch called for an end to the prosecution of prominent independent and reformist figures who attended an international conference last April.
Human Rights Watch sent the open letter to the Head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi. At least 12 activists and writers now face charges of "engaging in propaganda against the national security of Iran." They are being tried in secret before the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, where procedures have in the past fallen far short of international standards for fair trial.
"Iran should immediately halt the prosecution of these individuals and all charges against them should be dropped," said Hanny Megally, the Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division. "Those who have remained outside of Iran since the Berlin conference for fear of prosecution should be assured they will not be subject to reprisals upon their return."
The trials began on Sunday, October 29. All the defendants received notice to appear before the court only a few days prior to the commencement of proceedings, giving them no opportunity to prepare a defense. The charges against them have not yet been fully disclosed.
A copy of the letter is attached.
November 2, 2000
BY FACSIMILE
H. E. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi
Head of the Judiciary
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Your Excellency:
Human Rights Watch is deeply concerned about the trials that have started behind closed doors of at least ten Iranians, apparently for attending and/or speaking at an international conference in Berlin, Germany on April 7-8, 2000. The charges against them, which have not yet been fully disclosed, include "engaging in propaganda against the national security of Iran." We are concerned that these individuals, most of whom are prominent independent and reformist figures, are being prosecuted for exercising their basic right to freedom of expression. We are also alarmed that they are being tried before an exceptional court, the Revolutionary Court, whose procedures have in the past fallen far short of international standards for fair trial. Human Rights Watch has learned that one of the defendants, Shahla Sherkat, the managing director of Women magazine, was summoned recently to appear before Revolutionary Court 3 in Tehran. When she arrived at the court on Sunday, October 29, she discovered that the trial proceedings were about to begin even before her lawyer had obtained access to the prosecution files. It appears that the remaining defendants (list appended) also received summonses to appear in court without allowing their lawyers the opportunity to have access to case files and to prepare their defense. In April, the defendants attended an international conference in Berlin on the future of Iran, which was also attended by banned and exiled political activists. This has been used by some conservative politicians to portray the defendants as persons linked to hostile foreign powers. The state-controlled Iranian media has described the event as anti-Iranian and anti-Islamic.
Hassan Youssefi Eshkevari, a religious scholar, has been held in prison since his return in August. His trial began in October before a Special Court for the Clergy. He is facing charges of apostasy, which may carry the death penalty. Mehrangiz Kar, a lawyer and women's rights activist, and Shahla Lahidji, a publisher, were detained for a few weeks in April and tried on Tuesday, October 31, behind closed doors. Veteran independent politician Ezzatollah Sahabi, now more than seventy years of age, was detained upon his return from the conference and interrogated for more than six weeks before being released on bail. Sahabi was tried publicly today before the Revolutionary Court along with Alireza Alavi-Tabar, an editor, and Monirou Ravani-Pour, a writer. Two participants in the Berlin conference, Akbar Ganji, an investigative journalist, and Khalil Rostamkhani, have been held in prison since their return in April and May respectively.
Your Excellency, the prosecution of these individuals is a violation of Iran's obligation to uphold the right to freedom of expression as provided for in Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which states: "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice." Furthermore, we are troubled by the manner of their summonses, which has not allowed their lawyers adequate time and access to the necessary court files.
The court before which they are appearing raises further doubts about the fairness of this process. Iranian press reports on October 31 quoted Abassali Alizadeh, the head of Tehran's Justice Department, as saying that these trials will be held in public, but some sessions have already begun in secret.
Human Rights Watch is concerned that these prosecutions are a continuation of a pattern of repression against reformist and independent figures that has gathered momentum since February's parliamentary elections. Since then virtually all independent newspapers have been closed down and leading editors, journalists, and thinkers have been imprisoned. Human Rights Watch calls on your Excellency, as head of Iran's judiciary, to halt immediately the prosecution of individuals for exercising their right to freedom of expression. All charges against these individuals should be dropped, and all of those in prison should be released. Those who attended the conference and have yet to return from abroad should be given assurances that they will not be subjected to any reprisals for their participation.
Should the trials of these individuals nevertheless continue, Human Rights Watch respectfully requests permission to send independent lawyers to observe future sessions and to assist us in assessing the fairness of the proceedings. I look forward to your early response.
Sincerely,
Hanny Megally
Executive Director,
Middle East and North Africa Division
cc: H.E. Mr. Mohammad Hadi Nejad Hosseinian, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the U.N.
Appendix
Individuals facing trial in connection with their participation in the Berlin conference:
Shahla Sherkat, managing director of a women's magazine and a pioneer in defending women's rights, was interrogated in April and released pending trial. Her lawyer resigned from the case on Monday, October 30, after being pressured by court officials. Jamileh Kadivar, a member of parliament and second-most popular candidate in the Tehran poll, is wife of Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ataollah Mohajerani, a hate-figure for the conservative right. She was released pending trial after her interrogation in April.
Mehrangiz Kar, a lawyer and women's rights' activist, was detained for a month after her return from Berlin in April, and released on payment of substantial bail.
Shahla Lahidji, a publisher, was detained for a month on her return from Berlin and freed on bail.
Ali Afshari, a student leader, was detained and freed on bail after his return from Berlin in April.
Ezzatollah Sahabi, a veteran independent politician, former minister and magazine publisher, was detained on his return from Berlin and released on bail.
Ali Reza Alavai-Tabar, a journalist, was interrogated in April and freed.
Monirou Ravani-Pour, a writer.
Hamid Reza Jalaei-pour, a newspaper editor, was interrogated in April and released pending trial.
Fariborz Reiss-Dana, a professor of economics.
Mahmoud Dolatabadi, a prominent writer.
Hassan Youssefi Eshkevari, a religious scholar who delayed his return from Berlin until August, is currently in prison and facing charges of apostasy, which may carry the death penalty, before a Special Court for the Clergy.
Four other participants from Iran attended the conference, but have not yet been summoned to the court:
Akbar Ganji, an investigative journalist, in prison since his return from Berlin in April.
Khalil Rostamkhani, a translator, in prison since May.
Two writers, Pahlevan and Kardavani, have not returned to Iran since the conference."
Khatami accepted the resignation of Dorri-Najafabadi
Brief on Iran, No. 1079: "Under Public Pressure Khatami Accepts The Sham Resignation of Intelligence Chief, Agence France Presse, February 9
TEHRAN - Mohammed Khatami accepted the resignation of his intelligence minister Tuesday.
The minister, Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, had resisted repeated calls to step down but in the face of mounting tension over the issue, Khatami put pressure on Dorri-Najafabadi to resign, sources close to the government told AFP.
Khatami thanked Dorri-Najafabadi "for your great efforts and services" and expressed appreciation for "the valuable endeavors of our colleagues at the intelligence ministry who are the defenders of the revolutionary values as well as national security and the rights of the citizens."
Khatami hinted he might find Dorri-Najafabadi another job in government. "Of course the government and the nation will certainly benefit from your knowledge and experience and capabilities elsewhere and in an appropriate manner," he said.
Dorri-Najafabadi will remain a member of the key political arbitration body, the State Expediency Council, and will be appointed an adviser to the president, the Tehran Times said.
The government newspaper Iran Daily reported that Ali Yunesi, another conservative cleric and member of a committee investigating the recent murders, was the most likely candidate to succeed him.
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution Yunesi has held a number of senior positions -- he headed the powerful Tehran Revolutionary Court and helped set up the intelligence ministry with the arch-conservative cleric Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri."
More on Dorri resignation
More on Dorri resignation: "TEHRAN, Feb 9 (AFP) - Moderate Iranian President Mohammed
Khatami accepted the resignation of his conservative intelligence minister Tuesday, weeks after a shock admission by the ministry that
rogue agents were involved in a string of murders of dissidents.
Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi's resignation follows mounting pressure from radical supporters of the reformist president for a thorough shake-up of the secretive intelligence services over the wave of murders which shocked public opinion.
The minister had resisted repeated calls to step down, with conservative supporters saying the ministry's record was distinguished and denouncing their opponents for making political capital out of the killings.
But in the face of mounting tension over the issue, the president put pressure on Dorri-Najafabadi to resign, sources close to the government told AFP.
"Now that after serving at the intelligence ministry for one and a half years ... you have decided to resign and stop your cooperation with the government at that ministry ... I accept your resignation," said a statement from the president carried by the offical news agency IRNA.
Khatami thanked Dorri-Najafabadi "for your great efforts and services" and expressed appreciation for "the valuable endeavours of our colleagues at the intelligence ministry who are the defenders of the revolutionary values as well as national security and the rights of the citizens."
In his resignation letter, the intelligence minister insisted that he had had nothing to do with the murders personally and had fought to ensure that agents respected the law and the constitution.
"Recent unfortunate events were against the wishes of the vast majority of the ministry's staff ... I was very strongly against them as I am now and was upset," said a text of his letter read on state radio.
The minister said he had finally been persuaded to resign because mounting criticism of his management of the ministry was impeding its effective operation.
He said he hoped his departure would deprive "vengeful enemies of any further opportunities" to attack the country's security apparatus and "pave the way for suitable conditions for the ministry's effective operation."
Khatami hinted he might find Dorri-Najafabadi another job in government. "Of course the government and the nation will certainly
benefit from your knowledge and experience and capabilities elsewhere and in an appropriate manner," he said.
Dorri-Najafabadi will remain a member of the key political arbitration body, the State Expediency Council, and will be appointed an adviser to the president, the Tehran Times said.
Khatami asked the minister to stay on in a caretaker capacity until "I nominate and introduce a candidate for the intelligence ministry to the parliament."
The government newspaper Iran Daily reported that Ali Yunesi, another conservative cleric and member of a committee investigating the recent murders, was the most likely candidate to succeed him.
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution Yunesi has held a number of senior positions -- he headed the powerful Tehran Revolutionary Court and helped set up the intelligence ministry with the arch-conservative cleric Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri.
Two deputy ministers at the intelligence ministry will also be replaced in the shakeup, the Tehran Times said.
Last year's murders shocked public opinion -- secular dissident Dariush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh were stabbed to death in their own apartment in November.
Soon afterwards unknown assailants killed writers Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Pouyandeh and a third writer, Majid Sharif, was found dead in mysterious circumstances.
The ministry has so far arrested a number of its agents, who will be tried by a military tribunal.
Dorri-Najafabadi's departure is the second from Khatami's government since his shock election victory in May 1997.
Last year reformist interior minister Abdullah Nuri was impeached by the conservative-dominated parliament after allowing pro-Khatami demonstrations which led to scuffles with hardliners."
Leftists Eliminate Dorri Najafabadi - February 1999
FarsiNet News - News related to Iran, Iranians and Persians - February 1999: "Iran Security Minister Resigns
TEHRAN,(Reuters) - Iran's conservative intelligence chief, under attack for his agency's role in recent dissident murders, has resigned, the newspaper of the official Iranian news agency reported on Tuesday.
"Informed sources said...that (Intelligence) Minister Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi has presented his letter of resignation to President Mohammad Khatami," the newspaper Iran Daily said.
There was no immediate official confirmation of the report.
But the daily Tehran Times carried a similar report and quoted what it called a reliable source as saying Khatami had accepted the resignation of Dorri Najafabadi, who was widely believed to have been imposed by conservatives on the moderate Khatami when he formed his cabinet in August 1997.
Iran Daily, published by the official news agency IRNA, said: "The same sources said...Ali Yunesi will replace Dorri Najafabadi."
Moderates close to Khatami have been demanding Dorri Najafabadi's ouster since the Intelligence Ministry admitted last month that some of its "rogue agents" were involved in the murders last year of four dissidents and intellectuals.
Press reports have repeatedly mentioned Yunesi, a Shi'ite Moslem cleric who heads Iran's military tribunals, as a possible replacement for Dorri Najafabadi. Yunesi heads a presidential commission probing the murders.
Tehran Times said Yunesi had been appointed by Khatami to replace Dorri Najafabadi and was "busy preparing his future agenda as (the) country's intelligence chief."
The murders and ensuing scandal strengthened the hands of Khatami and other moderates, tempting the president to try to extend his limited authority over the security forces.
Another daily, with good sources in the intelligence apparatus, said conservative MPs were prepared to abandon the minister in order to protect the security services.
The conservatives had been resisting Dorri Najafabadi's removal, accusing their moderate rivals of trying to make political gains from the murders.
Sobh-e Emrouz, a daily run by a former intelligence official turned leading reformer, said on Monday that Yunesi enjoyed the support of all factions and was likely to be confirmed by parliament should the president nominate him."
Plot Forces Intelligence Minister Dorri-Najafabadi Our Replaced by Yunesi - February 1999
FarsiNet News - News related to Iran, Iranians and Persians - February 1999: "Iranian Intelligence Minister Resigns
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's intelligence minister has resigned four weeks after his ministry admitted its agents were involved in the killing of dissidents.
President Mohammad Khatami accepted the resignation of Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, thanking him for his "great efforts and services," the official Tehran radio reported today.
The president asked Dorri-Najafabadi to continue in office until his replacement is approved by parliament. Khatami said the government would no doubt benefit from his "knowledge, experience and ability in a different place and in a different and more appropriate capacity," the radio reported.
The president has appointed Ali Yunesi, the chief military prosecutor, to replace Dorri-Najafabadi, according to two newspapers with ties to the government.
There have been continuing calls for Dorri-Najafabadi's resignation since the Intelligence Ministry said Jan. 5 that some of its agents had been arrested in a spate of killings of writers and dissidents.
The disclosure intensified the rivalry between hard-line and moderate factions in the Islamic government.
Both sides have tried to distance themselves from the killings. The agents behind the killings are widely believed to be supporters of the hard-liners, who control the Intelligence Ministry.
The government has said "foreign elements" masterminded the killings. It denied that senior officers approved the slayings.
Nevertheless, Khatami's moderate faction has called for a purge of the Intelligence Ministry.
In his resignation letter to Khatami, Dorri-Najafabadi, 54, said he hoped his departure would bring about a more suitable atmosphere at the ministry and would not be a pretext for "vindictive enemies and uninformed friends" to harm the ministry.
"The hard-working employees of the Intelligence Ministry did not and will not approve of the recent tragic and unfortunate incidents that would make any honorable human being unhappy," Dorri-Najafabadi said in the letter. The text of the letter was broadcast on Tehran radio.
The first of the killings occurred in November. Dariush Foruhar and his wife, Parvaneh, who belonged to a minor opposition party, were found stabbed to death in their Tehran home on Nov. 22.
In the following weeks, the writers Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohammad Mokhtari disappeared and their bodies were found dumped on the outskirts of the capital. They appeared to have been strangled. Both men had tried to set up a writer's association.
A third writer, Majid Sharif, was found dead after disappearing from his home."
Some of Todays Reformists are Yesterday's Radical Leftists - February 1999
FarsiNet News - News related to Iran, Iranians and Persians - February 1999: "U.S. Embassy Occupiers Are Iran's New ''Liberals''
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Twenty years after Iran's Islamic revolution, the militants who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran have returned to power and influence -- this time as born-again libertarians backing reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
The 444-day crisis, in which student followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini held 52 American diplomats hostage to demand the handing-over of the deposed shah, set the revolution on a radical, anti-Western course that lasted almost two decades.
The embassy occupation that began Nov. 4, 1979, toppled the liberal government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and helped hard-line Muslim clerics extend their grip on society.
Today, some of those former students are prominent in government and the media, but they are now preaching greater political liberty, pluralism and free-market economic reform.
"The freedom we are talking about nowadays is completely different from the freedom that existed in the first days of the revolution," said Abbas Abdi, a former hostage-taker who now runs a social research unit and is a key member of the editorial board of two reformist newspapers.
"At that time, there wasn't really freedom. There was chaos, anarchy," he told Reuters in an interview.
Abdi, who held a public reconciliation meeting in Paris last August with former hostage Barry Rosen, said Iran had achieved the transformation from dictatorship to an emerging democracy far faster than western countries.
"What you did in two centuries in Europe, we have done in 20 years in Iran. We have traveled the distance between Louis XVI and Francois Mitterrand in two decades," he said.
Abdi said the former students had shared a faith in the power of the state to do good at a time when socialism was the dominant ideology. Today, they believed in smaller government, privatization and putting more power in the hands of the people.
Echoing a pragmatic economic slogan of Britain's New Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair, he said: "Whatever works is good."
Masoumeh Ebtekar, Khatami's vice-president for environmental affairs, is the most senior former "student in the line of the Imam" in government. Nicknamed "Sister Mary," she was the English-speaking spokeswoman for the hostage-takers.
Like Abdi, she has no regrets about the embassy occupation, which she said was necessary to secure Iran's complete independence from foreign domination and prevent any repeat of a a U.S.-sponsored 1953 coup which restored the Shah's power.
"You have to understand the mentality of the students and the people at that time. What happened maybe was portrayed as an act of revenge, a fanatic act of violence...but actually the mentality of the students was that this was an act to restore the dignity of the Iranian nation," she told Reuters.
Ebtekar and several other former students were among the founders of a new pro-Khatami reform party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, which was authorized in December in the latest move toward greater pluralism within the Islamic system.
"They have one point of convergence which is the programs and policies of President Khatami...and the fact that he is seriously endeavoring to implement the constitution in terms of social freedoms, freedom of expression, political parties and the local council elections," she said.
Ebtekar said Iran's revolutionary generation had produced an elite of university-educated women who were now seeking equal responsibility in society and political life.
The leader of the students who captured the embassy, Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, a Shiite Muslim cleric who was close to Khomeini's son, is now the publisher of the reformist Salam newspaper, which spearheaded Khatami's surprise 1997 election victory and a member of the influential Expediency Council which arbitrates conflicts among Iran's institutions.
Another former student, Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, is a key pro-reform activist trying to run in the local council elections against the opposition of conservatives vetting candidates.
One key player on the opposite side of the hostage drama still regards it as a turning point toward authoritarian clerical rule that helped bring President Ronald Reagan to power in the United States.
"The whole hostage thing brought only misery. It led to war and cost us billions of dollars," said Ebrahim Yazdi, who was foreign minister on the day of the embassy seizure but resigned after Khomeini gave the students his blessing.
Yazdi, who now heads a small, semi-legal liberal party, the Freedom Movement of Iran, told Reuters that when he went to see Khomeini hours after the occupation, the revolutionary leader's first reaction had been: "Who are they? Go and kick them out."
But once Khomeini saw on television crowds of enthusiastic demonstrators converging on the embassy, he proclaimed that the students had launched "the second revolution, greater than the first," Yazdi said.
Today the embassy compound is a training college for the Revolutionary Guards Corps, still festooned with anti-American slogans and murals.
One of the slogans is a quotation from Khomeini that is particularly poignant at a time when Washington is seeking to reopen a dialogue with Tehran. It says: "On the day when the United States of America will praise us, we should mourn.""
Radical Cleric Montazeri Moves to Overthrow Government - December 1998
FarsiNet News - News related to Iran, Iranians and Persians - December 1998: "Iran dissident cleric wants secret police purged
TEHRAN (Reuters) -- Iran's most prominent dissident cleric called in a statement published Monday for a thorough purge of the cou ntry's secret police after revelations of death-squads in the organization.
Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, whose statement appeared in the moderate daily Khordad, called for a "deep and complete purge of the (Intelligence Ministry) personnel."
"This purge is an immediate necessity and should not be delayed. This action will regain the people's confidence," said Montazeri , who has often complained about police pressures.
He was echoing demands by backers of moderate President Mohammad Khatami who have called for the resignation of Intelligence Minister Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi after his ministry revealed last week that some of its agents were among those arrested for a recent spate of killing of dissidents.
Montazeri, a 76-year-old senior Shi'ite Muslim cleric, has lived under house arrest since he publicly criticized Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 1997.
The demands followed press reports that Khatami might take over the running of the ministry, ousting Dorri Najafabadi, a conservative minister imposed on the reformist president by powerful conservatives when he formed his cabinet in 1997.
Meanwhile a shadowy hard-line group hailed the killings and blasted the arrests, saying "brothers and dedicated friends" were targeted and vowing to take revenge.
"The Devotees of Pure Mohammedan Islam ... are determined this time to block with full force the main source of this sinister plot and extensive hypocrisy," the daily Hamshahri Sunday quoted the secret group as saying in a faxed statement.
It was not clear if the remarks were a threat against Khatami, who spearheaded the probe into the murders of a husband-and-wife team of dissidents and two secularist authors.
A third writer was found dead under mysterious circumstances and a fourth is presumed dead after going missing in August.
Little is known of the Devotees group, which has claimed an attack with sticks and iron bars in November on a busload of U.S. bus inessmen visiting Iran as tourists. No one was hurt.
The hard-line daily Kayhan Monday rejected the widely held view that hard-liners were behind the killings. It quoted Ruhollah Hosseinian, the head of a state archives center, as saying the arrested secret agents were supporters of Khatami.
Conservatives have rushed to Dorri Najafabadi's defense after Khamenei, who outranks Khatami, last week voiced support for the intelligence minister and his colleagues and said the killings were part of a foreign plot."
Former Intelligence Minister Najafabadi cleared of charges related to serial murders case Ganji Frame Fails
Former minister cleared of charges related to serial murders case: "Former minister cleared of charges related to serial murders case
Tehran, Dec 9, IRNA -- Head of the Judicial Organization of the Armed Forces Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Niazi said on Saturday that the military court has closed the lawsuit against former Intelligence Minister Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi in connection with the serial murders case.
Niazi said in an interview with IRNA on the process of investigation into the serial murders case that the then intelligence minister was the first person to be summoned to the military court several times.
Niazi said the military court held different sessions and arrange a face-to-face meeting between Najafabadi and the other defendants involved in the case, but the legal proceedings cleared Najafabadi of the charges.
He dismissed the claim raised by Akbar Ganji during the open trial of those taking part in Berlin Conference (in April 2000) accusing Dorri Najafabadi of ordering the murders. He said that Najafabadi has been found not guilty.
Political activist Darioush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari and other intellectuals Jaafar Puyandeh and Mohammad Mokhtari were killed in a series of murders blamed on the rogue elements of the Intelligence Ministry."
Description of Selected News
Description of Selected News: "Office for Consolidating Unity asks Karrubi to run for president
Tehran Times Political Desk
TEHRAN (MNA) -- Central council members of the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU) invited former Majlis speaker Mahdi Karrubi to run for president in the upcoming election in a meeting on Tuesday night.
“In a meeting with Mahdi Karrubi we discussed our views with him and asked his views about the position and the current status of the reformist faction,” Mahdi Darvish, the head of the OCU public relations office, told the Mehr News Agency."
Khatami backs Government over Anarchy 8 JULY 1998
"WE SHALL NEVER FORGET 18 TIR" (8 JULY) (Iran Press Service): ""WE SHALL NEVER FORGET 18 TIR" (8 JULY)
Posted Thursday, July 8, 2004
TEHRAN, 8 July. (IPS) As the Iranian government firmly stopped the students commemorating the anniversary of 8 July 1999 revolt against the Islamic Republic, stating that the event has "no meaning" to be commemorated, students warned they would take their complaints against the regime to the United Nations.
In a statement, the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU) said “now that the voices of justice and freedom are silenced and the eye of justice is blind, we have no other choice but to take our complaint to international instances, including the United Nations”.
The date marks the fifth anniversary of the nightly attack of the Police, backed by plainclothes men from the Intelligence Ministry and security forces on the dormitories where some 300 students were demonstrating peacefully against the shutting down of a “Salam”, a popular newspaper.
Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic, fearing for the survival of his regime, ordered all forces of repression to crush the demonstrations “at any cost”.
The surprise raid on the student’s dormitories in Tehran and Tabriz, the capital city of the northwestern Province of Eastern Azarbaijan was terrible. Some sleepy students were thrown out of the windows, others savagely beaten. Rooms were ransacked and books and belongings burned down.
As a result, students took to the streets the days after, demanding the culprits be brought to justice. Angered by the arrogance of the regime, the demonstrations continued and as days passed, became more political.
On the sixth consecutive days of unrest, as people had started to move backing the demonstrators, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic, fearing for the survival of his regime, ordered the police and all others forces of repression to crush the demonstrations “at any cost”.
On 8 of July, as the revolt had taken openly an anti-regime nature and slogans appeared against Ayatollah Khameneh'i and some other leading ayatollahs, the revolutionary guards, supported by thousands of basij forces and special units of the Intelligence Ministry attacked the students, leaving hundreds of demonstrators wounded, several dead and thousands arrested, some still in prisons.
While the students were claiming that several of theirs had been killed, the authorities agreed to only one dead, in Mr. Ezzat Ebrahim Nezjad.
But what surprised both the students and the Iranians was the fact that Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami, elected president two years earlier mostly thanks to the vote of the students and young generation, had backed Mr. Khameneh'i in sending the forces against the students.
What surprised the Iranians was the fact that Mohammad Khatami, elected president mostly thanks to the vote of the students had also confirmed the crackdowns.
The crackdown revolted the Iranians and created outrage outside. Against repeated demands by the students for identifying those responsible for the savage attack, the authorities took no decision except sending hundreds of students to prison and a mock trial for one of the police commanders, who was later freed.
“The event, a savage operation against the student’s movement, marked for ever the rupture between the students and the regime. From the outset, the students knew well that none of the real culprits would ever be tried. The wound on the students would not disappear, nor those responsible for the brutal attack would ever sleep in peace”, warned Mr. Abdollah Mo’meni, the Secretary of the Office for Consolidating Unity, the Iranian student’s largest organisation.
Explaining the reasons the students decided to keep quiet, Mr. Sa’id Razavi Faqih, a member of the OCU said considering the “enormous” pressures put on the students by the authorities, including verbal and telephone threats and warrants sent against students activists, “there was no place we could hold demonstrations and express our views, even peaceful, as we intended”.
“Dossiers against many students were reactivated, newspapers were told not to publish anything about the 18 of Tir (Iranian month), others were contacted by phone, warned to stay at home”, he told the BBC’s Persian service.
Days before the 8 July, some senior officials, including General Mohammad Tala’i, Commander of Tehran Police had called on the students to “forget the past, whoever bitter”.
To prevent any outburst, special anti riot of the Police and plainclothes men had been deployed in Tehran and other Iranian cities, claiming it was for "helping flow of the trafic jam".
As the day passed in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran with no major incident, outside, Iranians of all ideology organised well-attended demonstrations in several major cities and capitals, denouncing the ruling “Mollahrchy” for its “brutal crackdowns” on Iranian students, intellectuals, journalists and dissidents.
“8 July of 1999 was the year President Mohammad Khatami showed his true colour, abandoning both his promised reforms and the people who voted for him. What started out as a reaction to the utter brutality of the fossilized establishment by young Iranian students has turned into a freedom movement the world should acknowledge and encourage”, Iranians said in a statement.
Amnesty International and the New York-based Human Rights Watch renewed their calls to Iran's judiciary to undertake an independent and impartial judicial review of the trials of demonstrators convicted after their arrest during the 8 July 1999 demonstrations.
“The organization also calls on the authority to carry out investigations of allegations of torture made by these prisoners and ensure that anyone found responsible for the torture is brought to justice” Amnesty International said in a statement released on Thursday from London.
“Five years latter, the authorities have taken no measure against those who conducted the savage attack on students and we are certain that like in the case of the serial murders, those who ordered the raid would never be identified”, one scholar told Iran Press Service, hinting indirectly at the very person of Ayatollah Khameneh'i who actually ordered the forces to put down the revolt, the largest ever against the 25 years old Islamic Republic.
Iranian analysts said the authorities preventing peaceful manifestations by the students would further damage the already difficult relations between Tehran, now firmly controlled by the conservatives, with the rest of the world, mostly the European Union, which, in a recent statement, had strongly condemned the Islamic Republic for its handling of human rights. ENDS STUDENTS COMMEMORATION 8704"
Abdollah Nouri and Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi Spar over Karbaschi 3/4/98
: "Interior Minister Harshly Attacks Top Judge for First Time, Reuter, March 4
Iran's Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri on Wednesday launched a rare attack on the country's top judge for an alleged campaign against a key political supporter of Khatami. Nouri, appointed by Khatami to his cabinet last August, said an investigation Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, head of the judiciary, was carrying out into Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi and his aides was misplaced.... Iranian analysts and journalists said that Nouri's comments were a clear warning to the judiciary to lay off Karbaschi, one of the president's closest advisers. In last Friday's prayer sermon broadcast on Tehran radio, Yazdi denounced the mayor's aides.... Nouri responded at Wednesday's news conference: "I recommend to Yazdi that when he makes speeches he should speak more cautiously...the head of judiciary must not be contradictory and bring anxiety into the system," according to an unofficial translation of his comments.... Karbaschi's top aides have been jailed and received flogging sentences for graft. A closed court last year banned the mayor himself from travelling abroad and only freed him on bail of five billion rials ($1.7 million). Nouri made it clear he backed Karbaschi and his aides.... Ever since the May election, Karbaschi has been in the firing line of conservatives who lost out at the polls but still control large parts of the Islamic justice system and many other levers of power.... "
Arrest of Karbaschi Sparks Street Protest- April 1998
FarsiNet News - News related to Iran, Iranians and Persians - April 1998: "Tehran's mayor is at center of Iran's power struggle
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The arrest of the mayor of Tehran earlier this month sparked the largest protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. His release just days ago led hundreds of thousands who lined the streets to shower him with flowers and praise.
It was partly this emotional public outpouring more than 4,000 people demonstrated when Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi was in jail that led to the Tehran mayor's liberation. Judicial officials had warned he could be held for months until his trial on municipal corruption charges.
But the 44-year-old mayor hardly seems the subject for such hero worship. He is more technocrat than politician, known for his dour expression and a no-nonsense manner that some say verges on rudeness. Others say he is simply shy.
"I really don't know how to give my appreciation. I am only a small servant of you," Karbaschi, smiling broadly, told the crowds on Wednesday after his release.
Mayor since 1989, Karbaschi has added a splash of color to polluted, congested capital of Tehran a city of 8 million by having buses painted pink, lavender and orange, and establishing small parks throughout the city.
He also built new roads, restricted vehicle access to downtown and developed 1,300 sports facilities and more than a dozen cultural centers.
All this gained Karbaschi fans and enemies. Conservative clerics complained about the "corrupting" influence of films and music at the cultural centers. And the powerful bazaar merchants say they have been taxed heavily to pay for city improvements.
Karbaschi was a controversial figure even before the corruption scandal erupted.
The mayor, a bespectacled man who studied religion in college before turning to mathematics, has acknowledged that he upset many people, but said it was done to improve Tehran.
"Obviously, when we disrupt people's lives, we are going to face opposition," Karbaschi told The Associated Press in an interview last year.
Karbaschi is the son of a clergyman. He wore a traditional turban when he began a career in television, but soon took off the headdress.
The mayor was jailed in 1978 for opposing the Shah of Iran and wasn't freed until the revolution a year later. In 1981, he was named governor of the central city of Isfahan, where he did what he later became famous for in Tehran changing the city and taxing businesses to pay for it.
Karbaschi's arrest on April 4 touched off a major power struggle between hard-line and moderate clerics. It was widely seen as an effort by hard-liners to undermine moderate President Mohammad Khatami, who was elected in a landslide victory in May 1997.
Khatami's attempts to ease social restrictions and end Iran's international isolation have upset conservative clerics.
But many analysts say that in ordering Karbaschi's arrest in a probe of municipal corruption, hard-liners in the judiciary added to the power of the moderates by causing an outpouring of support for the mayor.
"Karbaschi's release has strengthened the position of Khatami and his supporters," said Mashallah Shamselvaezin, editor in chief of the independent Jameah newspaper.
The head of Iran's judiciary said Monday the corruption investigation would continue, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
"By putting the mayor in the dock, the judiciary has made itself an object of scrutiny," the English-language Iran Daily editorialized. "The impression is that far from the image of fleet-footed efficiency and future vision that attaches to the mayor, it looks decidedly like a dinosaur."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Scheherezade Faramarzi, an AP correspondent based in Cairo, Egypt, has been covering events in Iran since the 1979 revolution."
Khatami Promised Students Rule of Law But Failed to Deliver
Days of Rage in Tehran: "Days of Rage in Tehran
Geneive Abdo
Ms. Abdo is the Iran-based correspondent for The Guardian newspaper and author of a book on the Islamic movement in Egypt, forthcoming in 1999 from Oxford University Press. For a printable pdf version of this article, click here.
On December 28, 1996, Mohammad Khatami gathered with university students in a courtyard in downtown Tehran to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Ali, one of the holiest figures in Shiite Islam. The meeting took place at the headquarters of the Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat, a 20-year-old student organization whose founders helped take U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979. Khatami pulled out of his pocket a small copy of the Iranian constitution and promised his audience that, if elected president, he would create a society based on the “rule of law.”
It was the beginning of Khatami’s close affiliation with Iran’s youth, who comprise more than half of the population. From that day forward, student groups vowed to help elect him president. They campaigned for him in their towns and on their campuses. When Khatami won in a landslide victory five months later with 70 percent of the vote, he owed much of his victory to Iran’s students.
This relationship between Iran’s president and its youth prompted university students to demonstrate July 8-14 in support of the very policies Khatami advocates. Over the two years he has been in power, the country’s youth have embraced his reformist agenda with high expectations for social and political change. The days of unrest were sparked by the closing of the liberal newspaper Salaam, a publication that symbolized freedom of expression. But the students’ underlying motivation was in fact their own liberation from cultural and political pressures. This would require modernizing the Islamic system that now restricts their social and moral behavior. So when they shouted “Freedom or Death”at their rallies, which began on university campuses and then spilled into the streets, they were thinking of the freedom that Khatami had first promised that cold December afternoon in 1996.
By the third day of the July unrest, the protests grew more violent. As students felt the pain of the brutal and, in some cases, deadly blows of the Islamic militia, and plainclothes police and vigilantes took swipes at them on the campuses and in the streets, they became inflamed. At some rallies, there was no way to know if the armed men beating the students were police, members of the right-wing Basij militia, the secret intelligence service, or the Ansar-e Hezbollah, Iran’s most prominent militant extremists. It appeared the aggression was unauthorized at times; yet the authorities failed to stop it.
When calm had returned to the capital and major cities such as Tabriz, where clashes between students and law-enforcement agencies were reportedly bloodier than in Tehran, the question on the students’ minds was: Where was the “rule of law” Khatami had promised?
The student unrest, the worst since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, raised the political stakes to a level unseen since the president took office in August 1997. Their courage to cross the line from peaceful protest to public rage came from a determination to chart their own destiny. If at one time they doted on Khatami’s every word, now they were willing to risk leaving him behind. The students and youth in general believe the pace of reform has been too slow. Their patience has grown shorter each time their weddings are broken up by aggressive vigilantes who are given law-enforcement powers, or they are stopped in their cars and taken into custody for being in mixed company, or when they sit, boyfriend and girlfriend, in cafes.
If modernists fail to answer this call for fast reform, they risk being done in by the very people who helped bring them to power. But how can they accelerate the pace, when President Khatami himself seems powerless at times to undo the damage his hardline rivals have inflicted on his government? Unlike the chief executive of a Western government, Khatami’s power as president is severely circumscribed. In all matters of state, he must defer to Iran’s supreme clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is backed by conservatives. Khamenei and his loyalists effectively control most branches of law enforcement, which include the police, the Revolutionary Guards (Sepah) and the Basij militia. They also dominate the judiciary and have used their powers to close reformist newspapers, attempting to choke off the growing independent media that represent one of the president’s greatest achievements to date.
A few weeks after a court closed Salaam, Khatami, making a public appearance, was asked by a journalist what action he might take:
“What about Salaam?” the journalist asked.
The president grinned from a distance.
“Mr. Khatami, why are you grinning?” the journalist asked.
“What do you want me to do, cry?” Khatami replied.
“I mean, what have you done for Salaam?”
“What can I do?” the president answered.
STUDENT MOVEMENT
Intellectually, the student movement understands the limitations of Khatami’s presidency. But rather than waiting for change within the institutions beyond his control, the students have decided to apply their own pressure from outside. In pressuring their hardline rivals, they are also forcing the man they helped elect to sit on a time bomb. This volatility has made Iran a more dangerous place than it was before the riots occurred.
The students have become a powerful force on the political scene, yet they have neither the organization nor the leaders to direct their movement. With its long history of working against secularist dissent lodged at the Islamic regime shortly after the revolution, the Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat, or Office to Consolidate Unity, was once the students’ guiding light. But the July demonstrations illustrated the organization’s shortcomings. Its almost exclusive focus on political affairs leaves many of today’s students cold, as does its impeccable revolutionary heritage. Its original mentors are now seasoned politicians and journalists in their 40s. And its loyalty to the Khatami government has left it struggling to keep up with the rising demands of the campuses for accelerated change.
Ideologically, the Daftar backs President Khatami’s political agenda, even if he may at times disappoint them. “Khatami is the system’s last hope for survival,” said one of the organizations’ leaders during a press conference at the height of the July mayhem. “This is why we must support him.” It is a message many students do not want to hear.
In the heat of the unrest, when fears were rampant that students might try to take over Tehran streets and get themselves killed while doing so, the Daftar called on all students to restrict their rallies to the university campuses. But the young students refused to obey. One evening, they left the gates of Tehran University and began marching in the streets. Soon they were chased back into the university by Islamic vigilantes. The students were so frightened they took refuge in the university mosque, which the vigilantes then tried to storm. The Daftar issued a statement disassociating itself from the student demonstrators. The protestors then elected the so-called Select Committee, including several members of Daftar, to act as their representatives. This split showed their ultimate difference: the Daftar as a whole had become part of the system; but the younger students were content to remain outside it if rebellion was the only avenue to rapid social freedom.
Generational change plays a large part in these differing approaches toward reform. Today’s students, too young to carry the baggage of the 1979 revolution, are less ideological than their elders who stormed the U.S. embassy and founded the Daftar. The most important change for them is to remove the prying eyes of law enforcement and intelligence agencies from the personal lives of Iranians. But the important point upon which the Daftar and the young generation agree is that Iran should remain an Islamic state. Students made it clear during their protests that they were fighting for Islamic revisionism, not for dismantling the system.
“There might be an idea that the Islamic system is bad. What we want to say is that some have tried to install a system which is not a real Islamic system. Everyone in the Islamic system should be able to express their ideas in a clear way and live freely,” one student leader said in an interview.
COMPETING RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATIONS
The depth and scope of Tehran’s days of rage clearly caught the reformist camp off-guard. Students, after all, hold a near-sacred status in modern Iran. It was the students who did much of the heavy lifting during the Islamic Revolution. Later, they watered the homeland with their martyrs’ blood to defend Iran from Iraq. And it was the students who reveled in their new political power with the election of Khatami and then were among the first to enjoy the tentative fruits of his social and cultural reforms. Surely, no true student would seek to destabilize the existing order.
The conservative establishment suffered from no such illusions. It was not that they were any less starry-eyed over the students. Rather, they grasped at once the immediate political implications to what was essentially a release of pent-up demand for cultural and social “normalization” after 20 years of permanent revolution. If competing versions of Islam were allowed in the name of expanded freedom, then the role of the clerical hierarchy could be called into question.
To freeze the momentum created by the protests, senior religious figures ran to their pulpits to denounce Western-style personal and intellectual freedom. The right to resort to violence in defense of the existing orthodoxy was asserted from one end of the country to the other.
At a rally organized by hardliners during the July unrest, the students were denounced as mohareb, a term meaning those who declare war on God, and mofsed, or the corrupt on earth. “No doubt, those who have resorted to sabotage, destruction of public assets and violation of the state property will be tried in our relevant courts,” Deputy Speaker of Parliament Hasan Rowhani, a mid-ranking cleric, told a crowd of about 100,000 people. “They shall be punished as corrupt of the earth who waged war against God.” The most common penalty for such crimes is death.
The monopoly the conservative establishment claims to hold on Islamic interpretation collides with the thinking of the students’ guiding light, the philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush. In his theory of the “contraction and expansion of religious laws,” Soroush rejects the idea that the clergy maintains the exclusive religious knowledge required to interpret Islamic texts. To adopt such a view, according to Soroush, is to deprive an individual of free thought. And such deprivation does not produce true believers. In The Theoretical Contraction of Religious Law, he wrote: “A religion that is tied to the material and political interest of a special class leaves little room for its own evolution and development. From that point on, that groups’s defense of that religion, and its struggle against invention and innovation, will become a defense of its own interests and position....With such a religion it is neither possible to attain happiness in this world and contentment among the people, nor to satisfy the Creator and achieve happiness in the hereafter.”
Soroush, who led Iran’s cultural revolution in 1980 after the overthrow of the shah, has long been on the fringes of the system. For years he was considered a dissident. He was removed from his post as a professor at Tehran University and often denied permission to leave Iran in order to give lectures in the United States and Europe. Over the last six months he has been rehabilitated to some extent. He is now allowed to give public lectures, albeit at the risk of violent disruption by the hardline Ansar-e Hezbollah, and to travel abroad. But Soroush’s new liberation is made possible only through President Khatami’s indirect support for Soroush, which is never discussed publicly.
For the clerical establishment, Soroush’s ideas are a serious threat to their legitimacy, to say nothing of their very existence. His direct challenge provides an example for the youth to act likewise. At rallies during the unrest, students booed and jeered at Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Such an act verges on heresy. Khamenei symbolizes the sacred nature of the Islamic Republic, and supporters of the “absolute” reading of clerical rule say he is answerable only to God. To insult the leader is considered a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. Insiders said Khamenei was devastated by such humiliation. When he appeared in public shortly after the unrest, he was visibly shaken.
One of the fundamental differences between thinkers such as Soroush and those of the conservative establishment lies in their interpretation of the velayat-e faqih, the concept of supreme clerical rule. The main problem of the principle of velayat, according to Soroush, is its imposition on the people of obligation to the state. In a republic, the state should be governed according to the rights of the people.
What has become the establishment political reading of the velayat was first introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini, but many senior theologians argue there is insufficient evidence in the Quran or other sacred texts to support its existence. Islamic intellectuals such as Soroush argue it is the people who give legitimacy to political rule. The conservative establishment, however, believes the state’s legitimacy rests within the divine rule of the supreme leader.
When students jeered Ayatollah Khamenei, they were in fact expressing their disapproval with the system of supreme clerical rule, which inherently gives short shrift to the desires of the people. More significantly, their dismissive attitude toward one of the greatest symbols of the Islamic revolution – the velayat – shows they have left much of the revolution behind psychologically. Many students may not be able to articulate this idea, but their vision of an ideal Islamic Republic has all the characteristics of a modern Iran that has moved on since 1979.
The conservatives, on the other hand, appear incapable of surrendering their revolutionary mentality. They interpreted as heretical the students’ anti-clerical protest. Their response to the student rebellion was to hold a staged rally. Tens of thousands of citizens traveled to Tehran from their villages and towns on state buses, in a tactical maneuver reminiscent of those used by the Communist party in the former Soviet Union. When the crowd was shown on national television, which is controlled by the conservatives, marchers carrying pictures of President Khatami were conspicuous by their absence from the nation’s television screens. Crowd shots included only those participants holding pictures of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
The debate over religious interpretation heated up in the weeks following the student unrest. In mid-September, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, the leading ideologue of the right, gave a speech before Friday prayers in central Tehran and clearly articulated the conservatives’ position: “If everyone is allowed to make his own interpretation of the holy Quran, nothing would be left for Islam.What would you do if in the future someone claims that according to his reading there is no God? He would base his words on his interpretation of Islam. If you plan to be Martin Luther, invent a new religion for yourself. The religion we have inherited from the Prophet and his household is not adaptive to different readings and has no other interpretation but that of the Prophet.... If anyone tells you he has a new interpretation of Islam, slug him in the mouth,” he concluded.
KHATAMI’S STANDING
The current crisis of defining the “true Islam” certainly is not new in Iran. But the student demonstrations have pushed both the extreme left and right to new heights, regenerating a cycle of debate that has put President Khatami in a no-win situation. During the days of unrest, Khatami called upon the students to stop demonstrations in the streets. When the protests continued, he distinguished among the students, calling those who marched in central Tehran a “deviant movement.” Some of the demonstrators in the streets during the fifth and sixth days indeed included non-students. Some were workers who sympathized with the students; others were hooligans who took advantage of the chaos, burning cars and tires and breaking the windows of two banks near Tehran’s grand bazaar.
By the time the students called off their marches, they felt betrayed by a president they had worked hard to elect. They never heard the words of support and sympathy they had expected from President Khatami; some said they just wanted to see him shed a sympathetic tear or two. In his first public appearance after the unrest, in the western town of Hamadan, he referred to the police and Islamic vigilantes who had attacked students in their dormitories the first night as “supporters of violence.” But he drew a clear separation between the injustice committed that night and the following days of unrest. “The attack on the university dormitory was a crime. Why did they attack the university? Why did they beat up students? Because students and academics are dynamic and active members of society and the greatest supporters of the progress and development of this country.”
Khatami distinguished the dormitory attack from the demonstrations which followed by saying, “What (later) happened in Tehran damaged our national security. It was an effort to cause unrest among the honorable people and to destroy public opinion and private property. It was to express vengeance towards the system. It had nothing to do with the honorable nation or the university and its students.”
In declaring the students “sacred,” Khatami tried to convince Iranians that his supporters were not among those wreaking havoc on the nation. When he ran for office, his conservative rivals had warned that his presidency would spark civil unrest, and Khatami tried hard not to give credence to hardliners’ predictions that his own supporters were defying his calls for law and order. But despite his revisionist history that evening, the reality remains: Students have become the wild card in the political game being played out in the Islamic Republic.
Khatami’s loyalists – the editors of reformist newspapers, the modernist intellectuals and pundits and the Daftar leadership – are all warning the young students to slow down. But they concede they have little control over the momentum of the movement that Khatami’s landslide victory unleashed. This, of course, is the danger of any reform drive under authoritarian conditions, as illustrated most memorably in the case of the former Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev, in creating the political climate to reform and energize the Communist system, inadvertently laid the groundwork for his own political demise. Like Gorbachev, the Iranian president is hoping to carve a more modern and democratic reality from the existing system, in this case an Islamic Republic.
But Khatami, unlike Gorbachev, continues to enjoy broad popular support well into the reform process. And Khatami also seems fully aware that he can no longer control the pace of change, which is the reason his response to the student demonstrations has been a mixed strategy of appeasing his conservative rivals while not permanently alienating his pro-reform constituents.
THE FUTURE LIES WITH THE JUDICIARY
For now, Khatami’s strategy appears to have worked. There are no signs that his popularity plummeted as a result of the unrest. But the long-term political implications depend upon the very promise the president made to students back in December 1996. The pace of reform – and Khatami’s ultimate success – depend upon the judiciary. If Khatami’s administration can manage to force judicial reform and create a modicum of law and order, his supporters will tolerate change at a gradual pace.
In August, a new judiciary chief was appointed by Ayatollah Khamenei. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a little-known scholarly cleric, has a record of conservative policies. But upon taking office, he vowed to remove the judicial system from factional infighting. This has encouraged the reformers. But shortly after he took office, hardliners made a point of showing their strength and underscored the difficulty Shahroudi will face in instituting any profound change.
The Revolutionary Court announced that four people were handed the death penalty for their involvement in the July demonstrations. There was no evidence a trial had taken place, and the names of the accused were not released. The announcement sparked outrage in the international community. The European Union registered a formal complaint with Iran’s foreign minister, and international human rights groups issued stinging letters of criticism. Shahroudi’s staff made it clear the new chief was unaware of the sentences ahead of the announcement. The sentences were not only a direct challenge to his authority, but handed him a most difficult predicament during his first weeks in office.
The conservatives are clearly using the judiciary as a means for settling their political scores. For example, in cases such as those involving the press, conservatives have sidestepped the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the institution with formal authority over the press, and have taken their objections directly to the judiciary. They prefer to be heard in the courts, which they dominate, rather than in the ministry, which is under Khatami’s influence.
Shahroudi has suggested he will try to remove the courts from press matters and all other issues that should be dealt with administratively, but the obstacles he faces could prove insurmountable. Conservatives generally use the Islamic texts as justification for their legal arguments. When they have taken newspaper editors to court in the last year, they have generally charged them with undermining Islamic principles as stated in the Quran, or they have charged journalists with insulting the faith by questioning Islamic practices such as retribution or blood money. Thus, as long as Iran’s judicial system remains one that is based entirely on the Sharia (Islamic law), the conservatives will likely maneuver their way into the courts.
Shahroudi’s only avenue toward substantive judicial reform is to cleanse the courts of jurists who base their decisions on ideological grounds. He has already made moves in that direction. One of his first acts was to remove several key judiciary officials, including hardliners tied to the Haqani seminary in Qom, the holy Shiite city and seat of Islamic learning.
In many ways, Shahroudi’s announced mission resembles that of President Khatami: insitutionalization of the rule of law in a system long-dominated by factional interests, ideological considerations and expediency. In a broader sense, both men are seeking to lead their respective branches of government, the executive and the judiciary, into the post-revolutionary era. Given the heated political environment of contemporary Iran, however, neither of these two learned clerics, who both trace their lineage back to the Prophet Mohammad, can say as much out loud."
Philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush opposes velayat-e faqih Ally of Khatami
Days of Rage in Tehran: "The monopoly the conservative establishment claims to hold on Islamic interpretation collides with the thinking of the students’ guiding light, the philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush. In his theory of the “contraction and expansion of religious laws,” Soroush rejects the idea that the clergy maintains the exclusive religious knowledge required to interpret Islamic texts. To adopt such a view, according to Soroush, is to deprive an individual of free thought. And such deprivation does not produce true believers. In The Theoretical Contraction of Religious Law, he wrote: “A religion that is tied to the material and political interest of a special class leaves little room for its own evolution and development. From that point on, that groups’s defense of that religion, and its struggle against invention and innovation, will become a defense of its own interests and position....With such a religion it is neither possible to attain happiness in this world and contentment among the people, nor to satisfy the Creator and achieve happiness in the hereafter.”
Soroush, who led Iran’s cultural revolution in 1980 after the overthrow of the shah, has long been on the fringes of the system. For years he was considered a dissident. He was removed from his post as a professor at Tehran University and often denied permission to leave Iran in order to give lectures in the United States and Europe. Over the last six months he has been rehabilitated to some extent. He is now allowed to give public lectures, albeit at the risk of violent disruption by the hardline Ansar-e Hezbollah, and to travel abroad. But Soroush’s new liberation is made possible only through President Khatami’s indirect support for Soroush, which is never discussed publicly.
For the clerical establishment, Soroush’s ideas are a serious threat to their legitimacy, to say nothing of their very existence. His direct challenge provides an example for the youth to act likewise. At rallies during the unrest, students booed and jeered at Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Such an act verges on heresy. Khamenei symbolizes the sacred nature of the Islamic Republic, and supporters of the “absolute” reading of clerical rule say he is answerable only to God. To insult the leader is considered a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. Insiders said Khamenei was devastated by such humiliation. When he appeared in public shortly after the unrest, he was visibly shaken.
One of the fundamental differences between thinkers such as Soroush and those of the conservative establishment lies in their interpretation of the velayat-e faqih, the concept of supreme clerical rule. The main problem of the principle of velayat, according to Soroush, is its imposition on the people of obligation to the state. In a republic, the state should be governed according to the rights of the people.
What has become the establishment political reading of the velayat was first introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini, but many senior theologians argue there is insufficient evidence in the Quran or other sacred texts to support its existence. Islamic intellectuals such as Soroush argue it is the people who give legitimacy to political rule. The conservative establishment, however, believes the state’s legitimacy rests within the divine rule of the supreme leader.
When students jeered Ayatollah Khamenei, they were in fact expressing their disapproval with the system of supreme clerical rule, which inherently gives short shrift to the desires of the people. More significantly, their dismissive attitude toward one of the greatest symbols of the Islamic revolution – the velayat – shows they have left much of the revolution behind psychologically. Many students may not be able to articulate this idea, but their vision of an ideal Islamic Republic has all the characteristics of a modern Iran that has moved on since 1979."
Student Radical break with Reformists and seek overthrow of the Republic July 2003
EurasiaNet Human Rights - Conservatives in Iran Looking to Deliver "Knock-Out Blow" Against Reformists: "CONSERVATIVES IN IRAN LOOKING TO DELIVER "KNOCK-OUT BLOW" AGAINST REFORMISTS
Afshin Molavi: 7/22/03
Iran’s leading pro-democracy student group held a press conference July 9 to announce the cancellation of planned protests to mark the fourth anniversary of a student uprising. Leaders of the group, known as Daftar-e-Tahkim-e-Vahdat (The Office to Foster Unity), expressed concern that in Iran’s "hostile environment," organizers could not guarantee the protesters’ safety. They also predicted a stepped-up campaign by Iran’s conservative camp to quash pro-democracy forces.
They had no idea their prediction would come true so soon.
Shortly after the news conference, armed plainclothes security men, most likely from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, grabbed three of the student leaders as they emerged outside, pushing them into waiting cars and speeding away. An astonished press corps witnessed the entire episode.
One student leader described the action as "a government-sanctioned kidnapping." Meanwhile, an Iranian journalist said: "I couldn’t believe my eyes. They put guns to their heads and shoved them in a car. It was like a scene from a Mafia movie."
Later that night, roughly 5,000 people gathered around Tehran University and nearby parks, despite a government ban on commemorating the July 9 protests and the Daftar cancellation of the organized student demonstration. Met by an intimidating force of riot police, plainclothes security officers on motorbikes and helicopters circling overhead, many decided to leave the area. Those who remained were attacked by vigilantes affiliated with conservative elements of Iran’s political leadership. Street clashes left scores injured and resulted in the detention of over 100 people, according to security sources.
The July 9 incidents help underscore the broad crackdown on freedom of expression being carried out by Iranian conservatives. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Iran’s jails are swelling with dissidents, pro-democracy activists, journalists, and reformist politicians.
"We are witnessing a stepped-up campaign by the conservative camp to shut off all dissent," said a reformist parliamentarian who asked not to be named.
"They have made the calculation that they can get away with it," added the parliamentarian, who himself faces jail time on a number of charges brought up by Iran’s hard-line judiciary. "They have done this because they see the reformist camp as vulnerable due to its declining popularity."
Iranians, frustrated by the inability of reformists to deliver on promises of political liberalization in the face of conservative intransigence, have increasingly turned away from the once popular reformists. They are now seeking "third options" – neither reformist nor conservative – that have yet to form into viable movements. Indeed, the Daftar-e-Tahkim-e-Vahdat officially broke from the reform movement in an open letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. That letter sought UN assistance in the student movement’s struggle for democracy and freedom. In the letter, they described the reformists around President Mohammed Khatami as ineffective.
Conservative forces appear intent on crushing the reformists before the "third option" has a chance to coalesce, political analysts say. "The reformists are on their last legs and the conservatives seem to want to administer a knock-out blow," said Shirzad Bozorgmehr, editor of the independent Iran News English daily.
The conservatives’ confrontational methods, however, are threatening Iran’s international interests. The European Union, for example, announced July 21 that Iranian human rights abuses may force the EU to curtail economic contacts. As one Tehran-based European diplomat told EurasiaNet: "When the government rounds up students and puts them in jail and the news reaches our capitals, it makes it increasingly difficult for us to make the case that our dialogue with Iran is moderating its behavior." The EU diplomat was referring to the June street demonstrations in Tehran [For background see the Eurasia Insight archives] that resulted in the arrests of an estimated 4,000 people.
International scrutiny has intensified in the days following the death of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. A judicial investigation into the death is being led by Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran’s chief prosecutor. Mortazavi is an unabashed hard-liner who regularly calls reformist journalists "Zionist spies" and "corrupters of Islam."
Kazemi’s death has helped produce an outpouring of criticism of conservatives’ practices. For instance, the group Reporters Without Borders described Iran as "the biggest prison in the Middle East" for journalists. At the same time, the Canadian government has become more aggressive in its calls for bringing those responsible for Kazemi’s death to trial.
Daftar-e-Takhim-e-Vahdat members feel that increased international pressure on human rights issues is needed to blunt the conservative-led assault on basic freedoms. Their open letter to the UN Secretary General is seen as an attempt to implement such a strategy. The trouble is, analysts say, appeals for outside assistance are considered a taboo by many in Iranian political circles. Some observers believe the letter prompted the arrests of the three student group leaders. Still, as one member of Daftar-e-Takhim-e-Vahdat said: "Without an international spotlight, the conservatives would take even worse [action] than what they are doing right now."
Editor’s Note: Afshin Molavi, a Washington-based journalist specializing in Iranian and Caucasus affairs, recently returned from a three week reporting trip to Iran."
Student leader Ali Afshari Guilty of challenging the authority of Khamenei
Islam Online- News Section: "Meanwhile, student leader Ali Afshari, political head of Iran's largest pro-reform student group, was given a five-year sentence, his lawyer told IRNA.
Afshari, who was already in prison over a fiery campus speech last month challenging the authority of Khamenei, was given four years for taking part in the conference and one year on other charges. He will also appeal."
Ganji admited to and claimed the right to rebuke Ayatollah Khomenie in a German Magazine
GANJI IDENTIFIED FALLAHIAN AS THE "MASTER KEY" IN CHAIN MURDERS: "Mr. Ganji denied having insulted the Founder of the Islamic Republic in an interview with a German magazine, explaining that the fault lies with the translator and he had warned the review about this.
On the charge of insulting Ayatollah Khameneh’i, he said that opposing the Leader's views could not imply "affront". "Legally, insult means pronouncing or writing indecent words against someone and in this case the prosecutor general has failed to distinguish between insult and criticism", he observed.
He acknowledged that as far as the bundle closure of the press, the imprisonment of journalists and the treatment of political prisoners are concerned, he did not share the views of the leader. "And this is my right", he argued."
