Iran Arrests Rogue Security Agents Crime
Intelligence Ministry admits that some of its own had a role
in slayings of five dissidents.
By JOHN DANISZEWSKI
Los Angeles Times
January 6, 1998
CAIRO--In a startling admission of wrongdoing by security forces, Iran
announced Tuesday that a network of "deviant" intelligence agents
has been rounded up in the mysterious slayings of five dissidents late
last year.
A statement from the Intelligence Ministry said that a group of its
agents, acting on their own, had carried out "horrendous" crimes
that had "to a very great extent tarnished the credibility" of
the Islamic Republic.
The statement, distributed by the official Islamic Republic News Agency,
gave no clue as to how many agents might have been involved in the killings
or where they rank in the ministry. It suggested that the killings had
taken place at the instigation of foreign agents but gave no details to
support that claim.
The ministry emphasized its condemnation of the deaths and pledged to
get to the bottom of the "complicated" case by uprooting "all
the bandits, gangsters and alien agents both within and outside the country"
who were involved.
"Unfortunately, some irresponsible colleagues of this ministry,
with deviant thoughts and acting on their own . . . perpetrated these crimes,"
the statement said.
The deaths of the two political activists and three writers set off
panic within Tehran's intellectual elite and sparked demonstrations by
students demanding that the killers be found and brought to justice.
President Mohammad Khatami, the liberal cleric who has been at loggerheads
with the hard-line judiciary on a number of issues, has been at the forefront
of those demanding that the killers be apprehended. That the Intelligence
Ministry, controlled by Khatami's hard-line foes, was compelled to admit
that the killers came from within its ranks will probably be viewed as
a significant political victory for Khatami's pro-reform forces.
The victims were all reform advocates who wanted to see the grip of
hard-line clerics in Iran loosened. The first of the victims, Dariush
Foruhar and his wife, Parvanjeh, belonged to a small nationalist opposition
party. They were found stabbed to death in their Tehran home in late November.
In the following weeks, writers Mohammed Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohammed Mokhtari
disappeared. Their bodies were found dumped on the outskirts of Tehran,
apparently strangled. Both men had tried to set up an independent writers
guild. A third writer, Majid Sharif, also was found dead after disappearing
from his home. Sharp divisions within Iran's governing institutions
have been evident since Khatami's landslide election as president in May
1997.
At times, it has been almost open warfare between Khatami and the ministries
he controls on the one hand and the conservative-dominated judiciary, parliament
and security agencies on the other.
To Khatami's supporters, the killings of the dissidents had appeared
to be the latest sinister reflection of these schisms.
But conservative politicians denied that they had anything to do with
the crimes and suggested that they probably were carried out by enemies
of Iran seeking to harm the country's image abroad.
In another manifestation of political violence, Iran announced Tuesday
that a senior hard-line cleric, Ali Razini, the much-feared head of the
judiciary in Tehran, narrowly escaped assassination as he was traveling
from work.
According to IRNA and state television, Razini's car was attacked with
a hand grenade Tuesday night. Razini and three passengers were wounded,
the reports said, and an unidentified bystander was killed. Razini
was treated at a hospital for leg injuries and was in satisfactory condition,
according to IRNA. Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility
for the attack, it appeared to fit a pattern of assassination attempts
by an Iraqi-based Iranian opposition group, Moujahedeen Khalq, which the
United States has labeled a terrorist organization.
Links
