KILLER OF HAJJARIAN SENTENCED TO 15 YEARS BY ISLAMIC COURT
TEHRAN 17th May (IPS) With a speed seen rarely in the Iranian courts, the Islamic Revolution tribunal that was judging the suspects in the attempted assassination of Mr. Sa'id Hajjarian, the Publisher of the banned daily "Sobhe Emrouz" and an close friend of President Khatami sentenced the gunman who shot him to 15 years of imprisonment and two other suspects to 10 and seven years.
The hasty trial, another parody of the Islam-based Iranian Justice was immediately denounced by reformists and friends of Mr. Hajjarian, who was shot on 12th March as he came o0ut of his car in front of the Tehran City Council by a young man identified latter as Mr. Sa'id Asgar and reported to be a chemistry student from the Islamic Free University.
Apart from Mr. Asghar, four defendants, including Mr. Mohsen Majidi, Mohammad Ali Moqaddami, Safar Maqsoudi and Ali Pour Chalu'i received 10 to 3 years or prison for their role in the attack.
Three other accused were acquitted, the official news agency IRNA said.
Analysts said the reason behind the Judiciary to speed up the trial of Mr. Hajjarian's case was to stop reformists and friends of the victim, including the President, to push for the identification of the religious sources who ordered the Revolutionary Guards to arrange the assassination of the outspoken Publisher, himself a former Deputy Intelligence Minister.
In a statement published after the sentences, the pro-Khatami Islamic Iran Participation Party expressed its "astonishment" at the indifference with which the tribunal handled the case, never pushing the suspects to identify those who ordered them to assassinate Mr. Hajjarian, considered as the "architect" of the surprise triumph of Mr. Khatami in the presidential elections of 1997 and the landslide victory of the reformist in the last February parliamentary race.
According to investigations published in the reformist and independent press before they were all shut on orders from Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the lamed leader of the Islamic Republic, the suspects were hired by the Intelligence unit of the Revolutionary Guards to assassinate Mr. Hajjarian.
The aim behind the killing of the prominent reformist theoretician was to create chaos in the country, proclaim a state of emergency, remove the President and install former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as the Head of a Provisory Crisis Cabinet.
But since Mr. Hajjarian survived miraculously the shooting that took place at very close range, the project backfired on the initiators.
Mr. Hajjarian left hospital ten days ago and is convalescing in Northern Tehran, but the bullet is still in the nape of his neck, making his movement difficult.
To stop a repetition of the murder of five political and intellectuals dissidents in November 1998 by senior members of the Intelligence Ministry and the shame it brought both to the conservatives and the regime as a whole, Ayatollah Khameneh'i ordered a news black out and urged the Judiciary to arrange for a speedy trial of the suspects.
Though from the start it emerged that some of the murderers were members of a zealot religious gang involved in the assassination of reformists described to them by their leaders as atheists, the tribunal never tried to bring the suspects to identify their mentors.
The same, the judge, who under Islamic laws, is the same as the president, and the prosecutor, never asked Mr. Moqqadam, the driver of the powerful motorcycle where he had got such an engine which is normally reserved in Iran for security forces, Revolutionary Guards patrols, the Police and Intelligence Ministry.
Observers noted that during the trial started on 25th of April, the suspects, though admitting to their crime, yet never expressed any regret over it, looked jovial and indifferent to the outcome. ENDS HAJJARIAN TRIAL ENDS 17500