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Several arrested for murders of Iranian dissidents: official

By Mehrdad Balali

TEHRAN, Jan 1 (AFP) - Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi announced Friday that several people have been arrested in connection with a series of murders of dissidents and intellectuals which rocked the Islamic Republic.

"Some people have been identified and taken into custody. The investigation has reached a semi-clear and solid point," Yazdi said in a speech before weekly Moslem prayers at Tehran University.

"This will make things easier for better and speedier work. It has greatly expedited the matter and to learn about the details and see where all (the recent killings) are derived from," he added.

The ayatollah said the judiciary would inform the public about the results of the investigation in "not too long."

Secular nationalist leader Daryush Foruhar and his wife, Parvaneh, were stabbed to death by unidentified assailants at their Tehran home on November 22.

Their deaths were followed by the kidnapping and murder of two secular writers, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Pouyandeh, in early December.

Another intellectual, Majid Sharif, was also found dead under mysterious circumstances around the same time, but the authorities said he had died of a heart attack.

The authorities have come under mounting pressure to produce results in their investigation. Several people were injured and several others arrested here Thursday during a clash between police and demonstrators protesting against the murders.

Foruhar's Iranian Nation's Party, which is banned here, has accused hardline "branches of the intelligence services" of having had knowledge of the plot to kill the nationalist leader and his wife.

Yazdi said the police, intelligence services and the judiciary had been mobilized after strict orders from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mohammad Khatami to arrest the killers.

"All the above cases are concentrated in an experienced judicial unit charged to intensely investigate the matter," he said.

The official IRNA news agency reported Thursday that a court originally assigned the cases had forwarded them to a military tribunal after deciding a special investigation was needed. But an unnamed military spokesman told IRNA that the cases "have nothing to do with the armed forces or the police."

The presidential press office said a special committee set up earlier this month by Khatami to probe the murders briefed him on Thursday on the probe.

"The committee said it had made good progress in connection with the recent suspicious murders, so much that it has paved the way for practical action in the investigation," it said, without elaborating.

The president demanded "greater speed in the process of the probe so that the public could be informed of the results," it added.

Judicial authorities announced after the discovery of the body of the last victim, Pouyandeh, that they had arrested several people and linked the killings to a "foreign crime network" also involved in the August assassination here of Assadollah Lajevardi, Iran's former prison chief.

The People's Mujahedeen, an armed opposition group based in Iraq, was accused of killing Lajevardi, but the group has vehemently denied any involvement in the wave of murders of dissidents and writers.

The murders provoked a wave of domestic and international outcry with some human rights organisations asking that they be allowed to dispatch fact- finding teams.

But Yazdi implicitly rejected the request, charging that the "enemy seeks to show that there is no security in Iran and use the opportunity to interfere.

"We have these savage killings in Algeria, but there is no talk of sending a UN team to investigate. But in our country, with two or three murders, they demand to send a fact-finding team," he complained.

"This is a clear scheme which shows that the enemy is after every opportunity to step in," he said.

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