It is now six months since Dariush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari were literally butchered in their home, followed soon by the abduction and murders of dissenting writers Majid Sharif, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Ja’afar Puyandeh. It now appears that death squads in that wave of terror were also to blame for the death of many others including Fatemeh Ghaemi.

The commission of enquiry set up by president Khatami has been as vocal as a morgue. The official version, after some clumsy blame-throwing, and bending to intense pressure from inside and outside Iran, was that rogue elements within the information (intelligence) ministry were behind these killings. The minister was forced to resign. An investigative team was set up. Some arrests were made and referred to a court of justice. And there everything stopped.

In the past such crimes were swiftly sweeped under the carpet, This time it was not that easy for the regime to do what it has always done for a two reasons: protests inside and outside the country and the split within the ruling elites. The protest within the country was overt. Thousands attended the funeral of Foruhar and his wife and shouted anti-government slogans [see Eagle Eye], although the funeral of the two murdered writers was more muted. Outside Iran over 500 prominent Iranian and non-Iranians from a wide political and ideological spectrum signed a statement accusing Khamenei’ for being at the centre of these crimes, and holding those at the top of the Iranian regime responsible for these crimes. It was an unprecedented consensus of opinion: "We accuse" said:

"… After every "suspicious death" the finger pointed to the owners of real political power. An example was the finding of guilt by a Berlin court against the leadership of the Islamic regime for ordering the assassination of Kurdish opponents in the Mykonos restaurant in 1992.

As to the current wave of murders, undoubtedly all the leaders of the Islamic regime, including the religious ruler, the president and the head of the Expediency Council are answerable. However, … there is abundant evidence that the leadership apparatus, and at its head Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei’ is apparently the key actor."

"We Accuse" had two demands. For an independent committee to be allowed into the country to investigate the crimes. And for an independent international tribunal to try the leaders of the regime for their crimes against the people of Iran.

It was undoubtedly the pressure of public opinion inside and abroad, in the context of a power struggle between rival factions within the regime, which forced the regime to appoint a commission of enquiry into the murders. They were instructed to find the "instigators" and those who "carried out" the murders and discover their internal and "foreign" links. Yet five months into its deliberations the commission is apparently no closer to a report. Some people were arrested but no names, numbers or ranks have surfaced or even if they are still under interrogation.

Why? Simply because both the commission of enquiry and the court have been given an absurd and impossible task. The trail linking all the murders tracks back to the leaders of the regime with Seyed Ali Khamenei’ at its centre. You have to be truly ignorant or a fool to expect a court under Khamenei’s direct jurisdiction, or a commission which, in the final analysis gets its legitimacy from the religious ruler, to rule against that leadership, and point to him as the instigator of the murder of dissident politicians and writers.

For this reason, even some circles who initially were optimistic, or even euphoric, over the commission of enquiry have gradually raised their voice of protest at the way the commission and the judicial process is proceeding. There have even been hints from within the regime and its surrounding circles that Khamenei’ is the major obstacle to the workings of the commission [1].

It now seems clear to all. The commission of enquiry is dragging out the procedure ad infinitum until passions cool, anger abates, and the issue can be quietly shelved in historic amnesia. Or, as has been customary in the past, pin the crimes on a Mujahed or some terrorist "on orders from a foreign centre" who will confess all on television. This would have the added advantage of miraculously making Khamenei’s initial predictions come true: if investigators dug deep enough they would no doubt trace the connections with outside and foreign sources. Or at best one or more minor official would be tried and sentenced behind closed doors – "to protect state security". And perhaps when the present impossible conditions are over following a good-going repression, conditions where people shamelessly demand accountability, they will take the accused out of prison and applaud them as servants of the people and heroes.

Whichever of these will happen, or indeed any other scenario, one thing is clear. In its current condition, the Islamic regime is unable to entirely ignore the protests against its murderous activities being currently aired inside and outside the country. Yet no one in their right mind can expect the regime, or any of its existing institutions, to investigate the murders and punish the murderers and instigators. Or identify their roots. There is an Iranian saying: "woe on a blood which is left to stand for one night" to which we would add "and its investigation is given over to the those with bloody hands!"

And if this is true of the flagrant recent murders, what can one expect of all the other crimes committed by this regime. A mere glance at these will show their enormity. [see inset] Just one item of this is the execution of 1533 women chronicled by Reza Ghaffari in this issue. Such an absurd thought should be abandoned at once.

The idea of an international tribunal to try the regime for its crimes against its own people was proposed by iran bulletin over four years ago. Because the concept of an international tribunal was open to a number of interpretations, we made clear what we did, and what we did not, mean by such a tribunal.

It was not to be a trial by one or other international body sponsored by one or more world power. It was not a tribunal a la Hague. It was not even a tribunal by NGO sans frontieres, no matter how well meaning or independent. The tribunal we had in mind was one set up from below, made up from across the world, and from all walks of life, from those who want justice. The tribunal that can judge the crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and rulers of other countries with blood on their hands, is nothing less that a new international movement to force governments to be accountable to, and to stop crimes against, their own people. It is a movement to make crimes against ones own people a crime against all humanity. And answerable to all humanity. In this sense it of the same stable as the peace movement, the green movement, the feminist movement, the civil rights movement etc.

A movement from below will not only have the advantage of galvanising public opinion on the rights of peoples not to be abused by their own rulers, but can create an international network of solidarity for those fighting inside the various countries against state-sponsored violence directed at their own people. Finally it will help push for greater accountability from a "world order" that allows for such misdeeds by this or that favoured ally. An international tribunal from below, supported by several hundred individuals across the world respected for their integrity, is also unlikely to be thwarted by this or that legal loophole. The experience of Pinochet, who could not be prosecuted for crimes committed before the appropriate law was passed by the British Parliament, and is currently going through a lengthy appeals procedure, shows how unreliable even the best international law can be in practice.

Today the idea of an international tribunal to try criminal rulers has a broad following among Iranians and their friends. Thousands of pages of documents and affidavits have been gathered. It is time to take active and practical steps towards realising this idea.

For its part iran bulletin has taken the preliminary steps as early as 1994 as far as it relates to Iran, and the crimes committed by its rulers. We see it our task to open the debate on necessity and nature of the proposed tribunal. And on the theoretical and practical steps that need to be taken realise this idea. We invite all those with views to participate in this forum: on the actual concepts involved and on the practicalities of achieving this task.

We will also publish documents relating to the crimes of the Islamic Republic on a regular basis. And to introduce witnesses to these atrocities to the English language readership. We have done this in the form of interviews, translations of parts of their books, articles and accounts of their experience and observations. These have appeared under the generic title of witness in previous issues of iran bulletin [2] and continues in this issue. We also invite anyone who had access to such documents, and wants to help us publish and disseminate them, to contact us. These will form an important part of the documentation for the tribunal.

footnotes

1. Many pro-Khatami newspapers have leaked bits of information linking the killings not only to the information ministry, but the Revolutionary Guards corps and by orders from the top levels of government.

2. Memoirs from released prisoners are beginning to appear. See for example Parvaneh Alizadeh Look closely, it is real (Paris October 1987), Reza Ghaffari An eye witness report of the Islamic regime’s prisons in Iran, [iran bulletin no 17 1988, no 1 for excerpts], Fariba Azad, Memories of Prison [iran bulletin nos 17 and 18 for excerpts], the poignant account by Monireh Baradaran (M Raha) The simple truth Hanover 1992 [excerpts in iran bulletin no 19, 1999] and her interview with iran bulletin or the report by the German engineer quoted from Focus in iran bulletin Autumn 1994. See also Iran, Human Rights Abuse. Iranian Political Prisoners Action Committee,1989

INSET:

1978: Setting fire to Abadan’s Rex Cinema during the revolution killing over 600;

1979: Torching Teheran’s red light district (Shahr-e No) and with it a number of its inhabitants;

1979 onwards: Bombed, shelled and massacred Iranian Kurdistan, mass destruction and deportation of villages;

1979: Bloody attack on the Turkemen people who had called for cultural autonomy;

1979-1999: persecution, arrest and execution of many of the Bahai’ faith and persecution and murder of Christians.

1979-1998: Sent assassination teams to liquidate countless opponents abroad;

1980-83: Mass arrests and torture, and execution of tens of thousands of political opponents, sometimes one to two hundred daily;

1981-88: In a war they called a "divine blessing" cleansed minefields with the bodies of innocent, duped children;

1988: Massacre of thousands of existing political prisoners, a calculated –political-ideological cleansing, of the country’s prisons;

1994-99: Disappearance and murder of a number of writers and opposition politicians.

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