Iran Intelligence Chief Criticized
Monday January 11
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A political party that backs President Mohammad
Khatami has called for the dismissal of Iran's intelligence minister following
the disclosure that ministry agents were involved in the deaths of five
dissidents.
The daily Emrooz on Monday quoted the party as saying it ``believes
that the first step to attract the confidence of the people is the dismissal
of the current management of the Intelligence Ministry.''
It added: ``The least public expectation is for the minister to claim
responsibility and resign.''
The recently formed party, known as the Participation Front of Islamic
Iran, has within its ranks many senior government officials allied to Khatami.
Intelligence Minister Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, a hard-liner, has
come under fire following last week's announcement that a number of the
ministry's employees were arrested in the killings of five Iranian dissidents
since November.
The arrests were made after Khatami ordered an inquiry.
The five writers and opposition figures who were killed were all critical
of the government's hard-line clergymen, who are trying to stymie Khatami's
moderate social and political reforms.
Meanwhile, a senior hard-line cleric accused Khatami supporters of being
behind the killings to get control of the Intelligence Ministry.
"For some time now, the opportunist leftists have been writing
a scenario to take over the Intelligence Ministry,'' Ruhollah Husseinian,
chief of the Center for Documents of the Islamic Republic, was quoted as
saying by the Kayhan daily.
The first of the five victims, Dariush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh,
belonged to a minor opposition party. They were found stabbed to death
in their Tehran home on Nov. 22.
In the following weeks, writers Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohammad
Mokhtari disappeared and their bodies were found dumped on the outskirts
of the Iranian capital.
They appeared to have been strangled. Both men had tried to set up a
writers' association.
A third writer, Majid Sharif, was found dead after disappearing from
his home. Two other dissidents, Pirouz Davani and Rostami Hamedani, have
been missing since mid-December.
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