Tuesday, December 22, 1998
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The chief of Iran's hard-line judiciary has ordered
the formation of a committee to investigate a spate of dissident killings,
Tehran newspapers reported Tuesday.
The official, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, said the committee would improve
coordination of information and evidence concerning the cases, the Farsi-language
Iran and other newspapers reported. No other details were available.
Five dissidents killed during the last month were all critical of the
government's hard-line clergymen, who are trying to stymie the social and
political reforms of moderate President Mohammad Khatami.
A similar investigative committee has already been set up by Khatami,
and it was not immediately clear if the one ordered by Yazdi would work
independently or support the other one.
Thousands of students and intellectuals demonstrated last week to protest
the killings, and they called for the dismissal of Yazdi and other intelligence
officials.
There is, however, no evidence linking the hard-liners with the killings.
The conservative faction has suggested that unnamed foreign forces and
even an opposition group in exile could be killing dissidents to discredit
the government.
The head of an Iranian opposition group, Dariush Foruhar, and his wife,
Parvaneh, were found stabbed to death in their home on Nov. 22.
In the following weeks, writers Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohammad
Mokhtari disappeared from their homes, and their bodies were found dumped
on the outskirts of Tehran. They were both apparently strangled.
Both had tried to establish a writers' association and had been summoned
by a court two months earlier to answer questions about their activities.
Another writer, Majid Sharif, was also found dead after disappearing
from his home. But his family said he might have died of a heart attack.
Two more political activists remain missing.
