Some Iranians Call for Overhaul of Intelligence Ministry
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
January 7, 1999
CAIRO, Egypt -- Iranian political leaders said Wednesday that an extraordinary
admission that rogue intelligence officers had carried out a wave of political
killings showed that their fractured government was capable of cleaning
house.
President Mohammed Khatami and a chief rival, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri,
said the acknowledgment by the Intelligence Ministry proved that even the
most feared security organ would be subject to the law.
But in other quarters there were hints of skepticism about the official
account that the ministry issued on Tuesday. The ministry faulted an undisclosed
number of rogue intelligence agents for the serial killings late last year
of five dissident writers and opposition figures.
An influential party that supports Khatami called for an overhaul of
the ministry, saying its failure to prevent and halt the killings showed
"its weakness and incompetence." The group, the Islamic Iran
Partnership Party, called on Iranian authorities not only to guarantee
that those responsible for the killings were put in trial, but also to
"follow up the case forcefully and courageously and to abolish it
from the roots."
Several prominent writers said despite the arrests they believed that
their lives were in danger.
The victims were killed in November and December. They included Daryush
Foruhar, leader of a banned nationalist opposition group, who with his
wife, Parveneh Eskandari, was stabbed to death in his house in Tehran.
The others were writers who disappeared one by one, to be found dead
in suburbs of the capital. Two, Mohammed Mokhtari and Mohammed Pouyandeh,
had had trouble with the authorities earlier in trying to reinvigorate
a banned writers' association. The third writer, Majid Sharif, was not
a member of that group, but like the other two had written critically of
the conservatives.
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