In December 1998 Dariush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari, both in their seventies, were savagely butchered and mutilated at home. Both had been founders of the Iranian Nation Party, and vociferous critiques of the government. All fingers pointed to yet another extrajudicial killing (see inset) by shadowy groups inside the ministry of information, with links to the religious ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’ and his circle.
Within a few weeks three writers: Majid Sharif, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad-Ja’far Puyandeh - all closely involved in the rebirth of the Writers’ Association – disappeared after leaving home and their murdered bodies, showing signs of torture, appeared a week to ten days later. Black clouds of fear descended on the capital that winter after a number of other savage and inexplicable murders.
Khamenei’s faction, in control of the security apparatus, the judiciary, the immensely powerful Council of Guardians, the Majles (parliament), the radio-television network, and much else, insisted on its version of events: the serial killings was a foreign plot designed to destabilise the Islamic Republic.
There were dark hints implicating the president’s faction. When the Taliban in Afghanistan murdered a group of Iranian officials in Mazar-e Sharif, the ultra-conservatives whipped up an atmosphere of nationalist hysteria. Everyone was anticipating a coup [see letter by poet Simin Behbahani – iran bulletin no 21-22].
The Iranian public was in a different mood. The funeral of Foruhars was attended by tens of thousands. The slogans openly targeted the “Iranian Taliban” – a euphemism for the ultra reactionary faction around Khamenei’. Yet, as the abductions and killings continued, fear did set in. The funeral of the murdered writers was a much more subdued affair. Nevertheless the relentless campaign to get to the bottom of the serial murders continued, led primarily by students.
As protest built up, so did the courage to target the heart of the conspirators. People wondered, at first in a whisper and later out loud, that it would be unthinkable for extrajudicial killings to take place in the Islamic regime without official religious sanction - fatwa. This was a theocratic state functioning within particular interpretations of Islamic laws. Khamenei’ was the transparent, though still unmentionable, executioner.
Revolutionary Guard commander Safavi had threatened to sever heads and cut out tongues, as had a number of high ranking mullahs. Leaks appeared that some senior clerics had indeed given fatwas sanctioning these deaths. Then a fatwa in the handwriting of Khamenei’ was smuggled abroad. He had headed this with the Qura’nic verse “if they refuse [to go in the way of Allah] capture and kill them wherever you find them”. The message was unambiguous, as was the source of Safavi’s brazen outburst.
Yet the students would not be cowed. In meeting after meeting they denounced the threats to freedom. Something had to be done to divert the extraordinary public anger.
A commission of enquiry was set up and the Judicial Organisation of the Armed Forces was given this task. Soon afterwards they passed this over to the National Security Council, which being headed by Khatami, would indirectly implicate him in any cover-ups. And there were many.
Rumours spread that a telephone conversation between the killers of the Foruhars and the Ministry of Information had been taped. The killers were asking for guidance as to whether they should dispatch his wife too. Her murder was apparently not on the agenda. Other evidence also pointed unequivocally to the ministry of information.
A scapegoat had to be found. An unspecified number, later admitted to be 27, of information ministry officials were arrested. They were said to be rogue elements in pay with foreign intelligence and opposition abroad. The pressure mounted on the information minister, Dorri Najafabadi, to resign. What role had the minister played? Najafabadi’s resignation did not stop the questions.
Who was behind the murders? On whose sanction? Who were those arrested? What was the role of the previous information minister Fallahian? Had not Fallahian been implicated in the Berlin trial which investigated the extrajudicial killing of Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Sharafkandi and his associates in that city in 1992? And did not the court indicate that the orders for this murder came from the National Security Council – then headed by Rafsanjani and under the direct responsibility of Khamenei’? Why were the “rogue elements” not tried in public? Why the silence and secrecy? State security, replied all the factions, including the president’s.
Other names began to surface in newspaper articles, interviews and Majles speeches. First it was the Aseman air hostess – Parvaneh Gha’em Maghami. There were hints that she knew too much – of corrupt dealings and drug smuggling. Then a list of other killings surfaced: Dr Sami minister of health in the months after the revolution, assorted writers such as Zalzadeh, Saidi Sirjani [see iran bulletin number no 9, winter 1994], the aborted attempt to plunge the bus of 25 prominent writers into a ravine on their way to a conference in Armenia [see open letter by Iranian Writers Association in Exile, iran bulletin no 14, Winter 1996] and countless others.
Then suddenly a former deputy minister in the information ministry, Said Emami (also known as Said Eslami and Mojtaba Ghavami) who had been arrested in connection with the murders committed suicide in prison. Apparently he swallowed a delapidation fluid. Newspapers wondered aloud how he, who was under close watch could have taken this stuff, and why he was given an arsenic containing fluid, when this had been banned by the government years ago.
Emami was a foreign agent, it was said. When the press ignored the ban on his portrait the conservatives published a picture of him in the US – with long hair – so un-Islamic. See! He must be a foreign agent, a Machiavellian plant, to discredit the regime.
The reformist papers floated the idea that was he “suicided”? How could someone with such apparently dubious links and murderous behaviour have been deputy minister of information for so many years? What was the role of Fallahian who appointed him as his deputy? And how much did Rafsanjani, who was executive president at the time, know about the activities of this gang?
Journalist Akbar Gangi wrote of a “dark house of murderous ghosts”. Sobhe Emruz referred to an “enormous circle” with “freedom to act and pursue their projects”. Emami had apparently boasted to a senior provincial cleric of the death of writer Saidi Sirjani in one of his safe houses. Neshat linked “the country’s number one man for political security” with the attack on the bus carrying American tourists earlier in the year, the plot in 1996 to plunge a bus carrying 25 prominent writers on their way to a literary convention in Armenia into a ravine, and with the mysterious deaths of writers Ahmad Mir Alai’, Tafazzoli and many others. Jomhurye Eslami angrily warned that certain “elements are trying to implicate the religious ruler”.
In an open rebuff to the president the funeral of Eslami, a supposed agent and mass murderer, was attended by a large number of senior clerics and other information ministry dignitaries. They included Ruhollah Hossenian, influential head of the Organisation of the Documents of the Islamic Revolution.
The circle around Khamenei’ went on the offensive. State violence is perfectly legitimate, they said, if it is in defence of Islam. A senior cleric went further. Anyone has the right to spill the blood of someone who insults Islam, sermoned Mesbah Yazdi. Yet more names of those murdered appeared in official opposition papers. And with it a call to find the roots of the crimes.
It was in this atmosphere that Hosseinian hit out at the critiques. In an astonishing speech made in September, and given wide publicity, he made it clear that he and his colleagues deplored the “sacrifice” of the “information kids” in order to save the skin of the ones who really ordered the serial killings. What was all the fuss about anyway, he implied. Serial killings had taken place throughout the life of the Islamic regime, in the hundreds, in and out of the country. What was new, and unacceptable, was the feeble response of the leadership and what in effect was concessions to the president Khatami and the May 10 alliance for reform around him. He repeated his own story line, that the serial murders were the work of the May 10 alliance to discredit the religious leadership.
Ex- minister of information Fallahian hinted that unless the pressures on him are lifted he would implicate his superiors, which include Rafsanjani – who as executive president had appointed him. Commenting on the death of Said Emami he confessed “look here, by Allah, I too have been a murderer, I too have been a prison guard. Well I have passed all these stages”. Hosseinian had said something along the same lines.
It was a vain effort to take the country back to the days before the 1998 presidential election. From the Friday prayer platforms, such weighty mullahs as Mesbajh Yazdi, former judicial chief Mohammad Yazdi, Society of Militant Clergy (Jame’e Rohaniate Mobarez) head Mahdavi Kani, as well as the majority of the Majles deputies, and even the religious ruler came out in a chorus.
Those murdered were nasebi – and hence deserving of death, Mezbah Yazdi said. When an article in Neshat denounced the death penalty – Khamanei’ put his full authority behind Mesbah Yazdi “a learned clergy well versed in the interpretation of Islam”. He went on to savagely attack journalists for “misleading public opinion” and being no better than “bandits”. Then came the ominous warning that anyone who rejects the pillars religion, such as the right to kill, is an apostate whose punishment is “obvious” – death.
Brigadier general Naghadi, head of the police security intelligence division, in his customary thuggish tone threatened to kill those who insult the president with his own hand – which he retracted after a rebuke by Khamenei’. The atmosphere was so thick that even president Khatami joined the chorus “anyone who attacks what is sacred is either a traitor, or so ignorant that their ignorance leads to murder and treachery”.
In October a further six people were arrested in conjunction with the rogue “circle” in the information ministry. They included the wife of Said Emami, and his brother-in-law Kazemi (alias Musavi). Meanwhile a number of pro-Khatami papers were closed and/or their proprietors arrested (Neshat, Thursdays, Asre-Azadegan, Sobh-e Emruz e.t.c.). Thugs disrupted pro-Khatami speakers – such as Habibollah Payman, Sahabi, Sorush. And student dormitories were invaded by official thugs triggering six days of violent riots across the country. Hundreds of students were arrested.
And then Abdollah Nuri was arrested and put on trial.
Nuri’s defence in the special clerical court was the most outspoken indictment of the regime to date. He listed the names of all those who had been murdered since 1988. In addition to writers and intellectuals such as Hossein Barazendeh, Ahmad Tafazzoli, Ahmad Mir-Alai’, Ebrahim Zalzadeh, Sai’di Sirjani, Piruz Davani, Majid Sharif, Ghaffar Hosseini, Manuchehr Sanei’, and Firuzeh Kalantari, he blamed the death squads for the killing of academics, Sunni clerics and two Christian priests: Mikhailian and Dibaj. He told the court how killers had cut up one of their victims and stored the bits in a freezer.
His was the most damning attack on the ultra-conservatives, coming as it did from the position of someone who saw the abyss opening up in front of the regime under popular revulsion and anger. His was, and is, the voice of the most rational defenders of the system. Reform, repent, or bow to the inevitable demise, he warned. A jury of clerics, including Hosseinian condemned him to 5 years imprisonment, thus making sure he could not stand for the Majles elections.
Nuri was of course careful to avoid mentioning any abuses before 1988 and thus circumventing the role of his faction in the mass executions of 1981-3 and the massacre of political prisoners in 1988 when the so-called Imam line faction was on top. Another pro-reformist journalist – Jalali Pour – was more direct. Those were the “thermidor” years when the Islamic revolution was justified in eliminating its rivals.
The pressure for more revelations was unrelenting. There were again hints that Khamenei’ was at the centre of the serial murders, or as a Majles deputy put it “everyone is saying that they know who it is but no one dares to name names”. Alireza Alavi-Tabar, on the editorial board of pro-Khatami Sobhe Emruz, wrote in November that Said Emami was on the seventh layer in the murder chain, and Kazemi on the eighth. Who, he was saying, are in the other six layers?
A bomb outside the holy shrine in Mashad in September, which killed two persons, was blamed on the remnants of Emami’s gang – operating under the name of the Fadi’an of Pure Mohammedan Islam. It was a plot to destabilise the state. They promised to show the video of their confessions – which kept being postponed – for security reasons.
As time passed it seemed that the regime’s tactic was to stall. The investigation was passed like football from one group to another. The judiciary passed the buck to the National Security Council, who passed it on to the judicial organisation of the armed forces. The Majles set up a commission. It all degenerated into a farce. As people gave up hope of any miracles from above a number of prominent writers set up a Committee to Defend the Victims of the Murders on the anniversary of the murders.
Preparations for the Majles elections transformed the serial murders into an electoral issue. Students groups objected to the fact that while those who had attacked them in their dormitories in July, beating, killing and destroying and unleashing six days of demonstrations, have not been tried, while the authorities did not lose any time in making mass arrests of students, many of whom remain in prison, some with death or long prison sentences on their head.
Increasingly attention focused on Rafsanjani who had manoeuvred himself into a bridge between the more conciliatory elements of the two warring factions. Abbas Abdi, a member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, made the most barbed remarks. When it came to the serial murders, the conspiracy to eliminate the cream of Iranian literati by plunging their bus into a ravine and the abduction, torture and false self incrimination of writer Faraj Sarkuhi (iran bulletin nos 14& 15-16) there are only four possibilities as far as Rafsanjani is concerned. As executive president he was aware and gave the command, or he knew and approved but did not command, or he knew and disapproved but did nothing to stop, or he had no knowledge. This last is the worse.
When Rafsanjani went ahead and offered himself as the leader of a “centre” that will heal the rifts, the attacks became more savage. Journalist Akbar Ganji, in an article titled His excellency in red garment (Sobhe Emruz, January 2000) attacked Rafsanjani’s role in prolonging the Iran-Iraq war. He ridiculed Rafsanjani’s claim that during his tenure as president the information ministry had its “cleanest period”. “During his eight years of rule approximately eighty persons were murdered by suspicious circles and for political reasons the most prominent of these being the murder of Sa’idi Sirjani, Engineer Barazandeh and …. Moreover the abduction of Faraj Sarkuhi and the plot to plunge the bus carrying writers took place in the same period”. Rafsanjani made his reply two days later in the Friday prayer sermon: “How filthy are those people who eat the bread of the revolution”. Khatami remained characteristically subdued during these exchanges.
In further revelations Gangi claimed (Sobhe Emruz, February) that the circle of murderers are alive and kicking and have even planned his elimination, down to the method of assassination – he was to be stabbed during a public meeting. He claimed that they had planed to bomb the memorial service to the murdered and rid themselves of the other-thinkers once and for all.
A week earlier Emadeddin Baghi – a journalist from Fath - in an interview revealed that military prosecutor Niazi had visited Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandon Hassan and admitted that the information ministry had been behind the sudden and unexplained death of Khomeini’s son Ahmad. He also detailed the deaths of Hamid Sanjari and Fatemeh Ghaem-Maghami and revealed that the mullah who had signed the fatwa for the murder of Piruz Davani sits on the jury of the clerical court – the same court which tried Abdollah Nuri. He said in the same that Fallahian and at least three others formed a committee of terror which masterminded the assassination of exiled Iranians – confirming the verdict of the Berlin Mykonos trial for the 1992 murder of Kurdish leaders. In that trial Rafsanjani, Khamenei, ex-foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Pasdaran commander Mohsen Rezai were said to have formed a “special committee” to oversee extrajudicial executions.
As the election drew near the ultra-conservatives found themselves in a totally novel situation. On the one hand they were desperate to control the next Majles, and the best tactic was to create a new centre around Rafsanjani and exclude those on the fringes of both factions, using every legal and semi-legal loophole they could. Yet increasingly they had to confront a population which resorted to illegal means to protest.
Youth openly defied the regime, even in the holy month of Ramadan. Riots took place in Eslam Shahr and Ramhormoz, with buildings and cars being burnt. Workers blocked trunk roads. Thousand rioted in Tabriz in January when a popular Azari candidate was banned from standing. Hundreds were arrested and 17 demonstrators were wounded. Students in numerous Teheran and provincial universities held protest meetings, or sit-ins. Students imprisoned in Evin went on hunger strike. The regime, which originally claimed that it was too dark to identify the attackers of the dormitories finally arrested 95 security forces on the charge of attacking the students last July.
The fact is the regime, which not long ago could liquidate anyone it wished with ease, can no longer kill through legal channels. A number of death sentences were announced on those involved in last July’s student demonstrations, but they were either commuted or not carried out. The only way was to go back to the well-oiled methods of liquidation. This in January a student, Medi Khani- Pour, was stabbed to death in his home in Sabzevar in what was seen as a political murder.
The most telling incident showing the total rejection of state violence by the populace took place in Teheran’s Imam Hossein Square on the eve of the Millenium. A 17-year old boy stood there with a noose round his neck while for half an hour thousands of onlookers interceded to stop the hanging. Morteza Amini had been arrested for killing a Basiji (mobilization) troop commander who had protested at him breaking the fast in public in the holy month of Ramadan. His trial and conviction had been rushed in under a week. He was to be made an example. The regime’s inability to carry out his exemplary punishment may be prophetic – especially in the aftermath of a landslide victory by the pro-reform candidates in the Majles.
The humiliating defeat of Rafsanjani in the Majles elections opens the way to his prosecution for both financial corruption and for being behind many of the murderous crimes committed by the Islamic regime [1].
The other side was unlikely to take it lying down. The assassination attempt on the life of Said Hajjarian, former deputy intelligence minister and Evin interrogator, and now a key Khatami ally is only the beginning.
Mehdi
Kia, March 2000
Footnote
1. For a summary see Robert Fisk's article in The Independent March 8