Kazemigate
The murder of Zahra Kazemi is now cast as an international
crisis
September 5, 2003
The Iranian
TEHRAN -- An authoritarian state is like the universe
in that the majority of its mass consists of dark matter. The
actual beast that hides behind the visible façade can be
glimpsed only in brief flashes as lightenings from occasional political
thunderstorms adumbrate its contours. The lightening lasts
longer when the authoritarian state is weak and to the extent that
it contains democratic components. For both of these reasons
scandalous events have been shedding a steadier light on Iran's
political structure in recent years.
A great deal about the
cloak and dagger operations of the Iranian Judiciary will be known
before the storm over the death of Zahra Kazemi blows over. She
was an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who died on July 10th as
a result of injuries sustained while being interrogated in an Iranian
prison.
The contrast to what happened seventeen years ago
during the Iran-Contra Affair is clear. In November of 1986
a rouge clergyman named Mehdi Hashemi embarrassed the revolutionary
government by leaking the story of Iran's clandestine contacts
with Americans to Lebanese newspapers. He was swiftly tried
and put to death, but damage control was not optimal.
In
its attempt to expose the gun slinging ayatollah's shadowy
career, the state could not help exposing itself as a system in
which such activities could go unpunished as long as the perpetrator
did not defy the system.
But the revelations were too oblique,
too scant and too controlled to bear comparison to scandals that
in democratic systems locate and eventually dislodge illegal activities
and occasionally bring down entire governments. In other
words, the trial of the marauding clergyman did not amount to a
"Hashemigate".
At the outset of President Khatami's first term (1997-98)
a band of state-sponsored assassins who had done away with scores
of undesirables under the previous government concluded that the
reformers lacked the backbone to interfere with their activities. This
encouraged them to continue with the business of assassinating
more dissidents ending with the grisly murder of the renowned nationalist
politician Daryoush Forouhar and his wife.
But President
Khatami stood firm (for the first and last time in his presidency)
and as a result the perpetrators were brought to justice and the
Ministry of Information was exposed as the den of their nefarious
activities. However, the light sputtered out as soon as Khatami's
government faltered in its his resolve to see the case through. As
a result the lines of command leading up from the perpetrators
were never officially explored.
What followed would make
a Joe Pesci character blush: the ringleader was found dead (an
alleged suicide) and the trials of the accused were so rigged by
the partisan judiciary as to preclude references to those who had
ordered the assassinations. Subsequently a veteran information
official and reformist who headed an ad hoc committee that captured
the culprits (Saeed Hajjarian) was assassinated.
The top
journalist investigating the political network of the serial murderers
(Akar Ganji) was also imprisoned on trumped up charges. Although
the modus operandi of the rouge elements of the shadow
government had remained in the limelight of the sandal for
a much longer period compared to the trial of Mehdi Hashemi, a
"Forouhargate" never
materialized.
This summer's heinous murder of Zahra Kazemi
at the hands of the right wing judiciary however, may very well
turn into a
"Kazemigate".
To
begin with, the victim's Canadian nationality insures that
the investigation will not be compromised as a result of insider
deals. The murder is now cast as an international crisis
along with Iran's nuclear ambitions and the role it might
have played in the attack on the Jewish Community Center in Buenos
Aires. Therefore, it can't be sanctimoniously snuffed
out for partisan and personal reasons and in the name of preserving
the honor of "the holy order of the Islamic Republic."
Furthermore,
the murder of Zahra Kazemi is different from previous scandals
in that it occurred on the active fault lines of the reform/ right-wing
divide in Iran. After seven years of oppression by the right
wing, such reform leaders as the parliamentarian Mohsen Armin (who
regularly and publicly challenges the judiciary's fabrications
about the death of Zahra Kazemi) have little to lose by hanging
tough on this issue.
They consider the Judiciary a brutal
and dastardly organization that has perverted the cause of justice
to crush both reform and dissent. Khatami's Ministry
of Intelligence has also refused to play the scapegoat and obtained
the release of two of its employees who were wrongfully arrested
by the judiciary as the main suspects in this case.
The coming Kazemigate will direct a powerful searchlight toward
the violent and secret world which Akbar Ganji had called Iran's
"dungeon of ghosts". It will also focus the
world's attention on the intractable problem of torture in Iran. But
its disclosures will not be as devastating to the system as those
of a Frouhargate
might have been.
Unlike the serial killings, the murder of
Zahra Kazemi does not seem to have been elaborately planned as
part of a larger scheme. Nor is it likely that the lines
of command would lead all the way to the top.
But at the
very least some illustrious right-wing heads must roll, starting
with that of the notorious judge Saeed Mortazavi who had personally
supervised the interrogation of Ms. Kazemi and later attempted
to cover up the crime by issuing false statements about the circumstances
and causes of her death.
We can also expect
a heavy blow to the right wing Judiciary for its perverted, proto-legal
campaign
against the democratic movement and for its brutalization and
murderous torture of dissidents >>> News & politics
forum
Author
Ahmad Sadri is Professor and Chairman of the Department
of Sociology and Anthropology
at Lake Forest
College, IL, USA. See
Features .
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