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January 27, 2001
Iran Agents Sentenced To Death
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:41 a.m. ET
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- An Iranian court sentenced three former
Intelligence Ministry agents to death Saturday for killing four
government critics, the country's official Islamic Republic News Agency
reported.
The court also sentenced five agents to life imprisonment and seven
others to jail terms of 2 1/2 to 10 years, the news agency said. Three
agents were acquitted.
Saturday's sentences were a major development in a politically charged
case that has come to illustrate the extent of the struggle between
moderates and hard-liners in Iran.
The killings began Nov. 22, 1998, with the stabbing of Dariush Forouhar
and his wife, Parvaneh, who ran a small opposition party. In the
following weeks, writers Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohammad Mokhtari
disappeared and were apparently strangled before their bodies were
dumped on the outskirts of Tehran.
Many moderates saw the slayings of the dissidents as an assault by
hard-liners against the country's reform movement. The Intelligence
Ministry -- run by hard-liners -- admitted in early 1999 that rogue
agents were behind the killings, and the intelligence minister resigned.
On Saturday, a judge handed down the sentences after a closed trial in
Tehran, the news agency said.
The agency did not specify what charges the 15 agents were convicted of,
saying only that Ali Reza Roushani, Ali Mohseni and Mahmoud Jafarzadeh
were sentenced to death for killing the four intellectuals. The three
agents who were acquitted were identified as Morteza Haqqani, Iraj
Amourzagar and Ali Reza Akbarian.
The convictions can be appealed, the agency reported.
President Mohammad Khatami has been struggling to push through social
and political reforms in Iran's Islamic government. He has been opposed
by hard-line clerics who control many of the levers of power.
AP
story on Yahoo News
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Saturday January 27 10:37 AM ET
Iran Court Orders Death in Serial Murder Case
By Jonathan Lyons
TEHRAN (Reuters) - A court on Saturday sentenced three ''rogue'' secret agents to death and 12 others to terms up to life in prison for their part in the 1998 murders of secular dissidents that rocked the Islamic Republic.
Judge Mohammad Reza Aqiqi of the Tehran military court, who heard the case behind closed doors over the course of a month, ordered Ali Roshani, Mahamoud Jafarzadeh and Ali Mohseni to be put to death, the official IRNA news agency said.
Former mid-level intelligence officials Mostafa Kazemi and Mehrdad Alikhani, who prosecutors say gave the orders to kill, were each sentenced to four life sentences, IRNA said.
Under Iran's Islamic code, those who give the order to kill are rarely sentenced to death, while those who carry out the act itself are subject to execution. Three of the 18 defendants were acquitted.
IRNA said all of the verdicts could be appealed to the Supreme Court.
The case had been widely seen as a test of moderate President Mohammad Khatami's campaign to introduce the rule of law and to gain control over the intelligence apparatus, widely seen as the preserve of the clerical establishment.
Trial Hit By Factional Rivalry
The intelligence minister was forced out after the historically autonomous service confessed that ``rogue'' agents from its own ranks had killed nationalists Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar and writers Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh.
However, the process was marred by charges from reformists backing Khatami that prosecutors had ignored links to high-ranking clerics and intelligence officials and only pursued low-level defendants as part of a cover-up.
The victims families boycotted the trial and dismissed their lawyers in protest against a virtual gag order imposed by top judiciary officials and what they said was the removal of key evidence from the court files.
Reformists say the killings were among more than 80 murders and ``disappearances'' stretching over 10 years as part of a wider campaign by state-sponsored death squads to silence opposition.
But conservatives say the murderers had ties to the reformist camp and were part of an effort to discredit Iran's establishment and force an overhaul of the secret service.
Judge Aqiqi ordered the trials to be held behind closed doors, citing national security concerns. Few details of the proceedings emerged, feeding fears in some corners that the truth would never be known.
The most senior government agent arrested in connection with the killings, deputy Intelligence Minister Saeed Emami, died in custody after drinking hair remover, but many are skeptical of the official coroner's verdict of suicide.
Two pro-reform investigative journalists and a former vice- president have said responsibility for the murders goes much higher and that several senior clerics are implicated in the affair.
All three have since been jailed, and the judiciary, dominated by hard-liners, has vowed to prosecute anyone else making ``unauthorized revelations'' about the case.
Reuters
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Follow up: British Lawyers express concern over "Serial Murders" sentences in Iran, through the The Bar Human Rights Committee press release: 25-01-01 |
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