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    News & Views

    Two other activists missing; first arrests made

    By Afshin Valinejad

    Monday, December 14, 1998

    TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian authorities have arrested the first suspects in a string of slayings of dissidents that has terrified intellectuals opposed to hard-liners in the ruling clergy, state media reported Monday.

    Judicial spokesman Nasiri Savadkuhi said several suspects had been arrested in the five slayings and authorities were ``striving to arrest all the perpetrators of the recent mysterious killings.''

    The report, carried on Iranian television, gave no other details. Judiciary officials were not immediately available for comment.

    The official newspaper, Iran, said two other political activists remain missing: Pirouz Davani, who led a small political group called the United Left, and Rostami Hamedani, an activist allied with Davani. It gave no other details.

    In a speech Monday to a group of clerics, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned the slayings, saying ``the killing of citizens, whatever their beliefs may be, is a crime.''

    Khamenei leans toward hard-line clergymen who have been the target of criticism of Iranian liberals, including the three writers and two opposition activists killed in the past month.

    The conservative clergymen are opposed to moderate President Mohammad Khatami's attempts at social and political reforms.

    The television quoted Savadkhui as saying the investigation into the writers' slayings has been expanded to include the August shooting of a hard-liner, Assadollah Lajevardi. He was the former chief of prisons and a former chief prosecutor.

    The United States strongly condemned the killings of the dissident writers, calling the crimes an attempt to stifle free speech.

    ``We urge the Iranian leadership to protect the lives of all Iranian citizens, including writers and other voices of dissent, and to preserve the rule of law,'' State Department spokesman James Foley said from Washington.

    Hard-line activists and vigilantes have often resorted to violence against Khatami's supporters, but nobody has accused the hard-line camp of being behind the killings.

    The hard-liners have blamed unnamed foreign agencies and even an exiled Iranian opposition group.

    One opposition writer, Houshang Golshiri, said the killings have spread panic among dissidents.

    ``Some of our intellectual friends have been trying to keep a low profile by moving out of their homes into the homes of friends or relatives,'' Golshiri said in a telephone interview.

    Golshiri had been working with seven other dissidents, including two of the dead writers -- Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohammad Mokhtari -- to establish a writers' association.

    Pouyandeh and Mokhtari were summoned by a court two months ago for questioning about their activities. Their bodies were later found dumped on the outskirts of Tehran. They were apparently strangled.

    Another writer, Majid Sharif, was also found dead after disappearing from his home. The head of an Iranian opposition group, Dariush Foruhar, and his wife, Parvaneh, were found stabbed to death in their home Nov. 22.

    Khatami said in a statement Monday that the government was determined to bring the killers to justice.

    He said there was ``high hope'' that a special investigative team he set up would ``soon have something to report to the nation.''

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