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News & Views Iranian supreme leader orders arrest of killers of writers TEHRAN, Dec 14 (AFP) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a stern order to the security forces on Monday to arrest those behind a recent wave of killings of Iranian writers and political dissidents. "The murder of citizens, whoever they might be, is a crime against the country's national security," Khamenei told a group of clerics. "The ministers of intelligence and interior as well as the judiciary must seriously pursue the case. There is no doubt that the role of the enemy will be exposed in the recent events," state television quoted him as saying. Three secular writers have been kidnapped in the past month and have turned up dead. Two of them -- Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Pouyandeh -- were confirmed to have been murdered, while the third, Majid Sharif, is said to have died of a heart attack. Last month, secular nationalist opposition leader Daryush Foruhar and his wife, Parvaneh, were stabbed to death at their Tehran home by unidentified intruders. Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran and the commander of the armed forces, blamed "enemy plots" for the recent wave of killings. "The enemy wants to show this country is unsafe and that the authorities are unable to deal with it," he said. "These murders are complementing other plots against Iran by the great arrogance," a name used here to describe the United States. The authorities have come under growing public pressure to produce results in their investigation into the wave of violence, unprecedented since the early years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. * Iran News
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