Lawyer for families of assassination victims freed
on bail: press
TEHRAN, Dec 14 (AFP) - A lawyer for the families of two Iranian dissidents
assassinated in 1998 was released on bail three days after his arrest,
a newspaper said Thursday.
Nasser Zarafshan, who was arrested Sunday just days before the trial
of the alleged killers begins in a Tehran military court, was freed Wednesday
on 27,000 dollars bail, the Khorassan paper said.
Zarafshan was arrested in the wake of a warning by the head of the military
justice department, Mohammad Niazi, against any unauthorised revelations
about the case, due to come before the court on December 23.
He had also been summomed by the trial judge to give evidence.
Zarafhsan represents the families of writers Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad
Pouyandeh, murdered in late 1998 along with another writer, Majid Sharif,
and two secular opposition figures, Daryush and Parvaneh Forouhar.
Niazi had warned that "anyone who makes speculations or revelations
about the serial killings or insults or defames third parties will be prosecuted."
Earlier, Zarafshan had said that the four murdered dissidents were not
the only people to have been killed, adding that the assassinations followed
religious decrees.
Last month, investigative journalist Akbar Ganji, who is on trial in
another affair, for attending an "un-Islamic" seminar in Berlin,
told a revolutionary court senior figures of the regime were behind the
killings.
He named in particular former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian and
a senior judge, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei.
Fallahian denied the accusation in a statement published Monday in the
conservative Jomhuri Eslami daily, saying he was not in office at the time
so could not be responsible.
The intelligence ministry has said that a group of its agents carried
out the killings but without the knowledge or authorisation of their superiors.
A total of 18 people are to go on trial later this month but not their
alleged ringleader, Said Emami, who committed suicide in prison in June
1999, according to officials.
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