The reformist daily "Asre Azadegan", in an article published Thursday, severely criticised the Iranian Foreign Ministry for its "irresponsible attitude" in summoning the Belgian Ambassador in Tehran to lodge a protest against Brussels concerning Mr. Rafsanjani, observing that there had been no charges, no warrant, no insult against the former President nor the Iranian people.

As reported from the outset by Iran Press Service, more and more journalists and observers in Tehran tend to believe that the whole incident could be the work of Mr. Rafsanjani himself in order to boast his badly lost prestige and damaged political credit.

"Under the new Foreign Minister Mr. Louis Michel, small Belgium aspire to become a great moral power giving its diplomacy a human rights dimension", wrote the French influential daily "Le Mode", adding that in several recent affairs, including that of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Brussels has the taken the lead in the European Union "to the point to annoy some of its' major partners like the UK".

In the light of Pinochet affair, the law was amended to include even people enjoying immunity in their country of origin.

In an article published Wednesday by the British daily "The Independent", Mr. Robert Fisk, twice awarded as the "best Foreign Correspondent", accuses Mr. Rafsanjani and other high ranking Iranian clerics for the murder of hundreds of Iranian dissidents.

One of the bravest of Iranian reporters, the investigative journalist Akbar Gangi who writes for Sobh e Emrous, asked ex-president Rafsanjani's influential daughter Faiza if her father knew of the suspected judicial executions. She told Gangi that her father had "no control" over the Intelligence Ministry and "no information" on the murders. Gangi recalls their conversation with a smile. "I told her that if we accepted this argument, then Mr Rafsanjani would be Cardinal Richelieu," he says. "I said it was unacceptable that Hashemi Rafsanjani had no control over the Intelligence Ministry. I wrote in my paper that if Rafsanjani really had no control, then how did he once manage to fire one of Fallahian's deputies – in a case that involved Rafsanjani's family?"

Ali Fallahian was a name uttered with fear only a decade ago in Tehran. As the head of Iranian intelligence, he held the power of life and death over thousands; and in a regime which had hanged perhaps 20,000 – some say 30,000 – of its young male and female opponents in the immediate aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war, Fallahian was not a man to be crossed. Along with at least six other named officials, some still holding positions in the clerical judiciary in Iran, he is said to have agreed to secret fatwas, ordering the murder of journalists, writers, clerics and crooks.

So was Rafsanjani one of the judicial killers during his decade-long presidency of Iran? Was he a man who had only to nod his Hojatoleslam's turban – how we in the West loved Rafsanjani, thought he was a moderate chap, a "reformer" before real reformers existed in Iran – for the needle to be filled with poison, the car "accident" arranged, the knife sharpened? And if he did not sign a death warrant, did his silence not give consent? Certainly, he wanted us all to believe that he was a man who controlled events. Was it not Rafsanjani who, in 1988, told Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that the eight-year war with Iraq must end? Did he not reveal the Iran-Contra scandal? Was this not the man who tried to liberalise the economy of Iran?

True, it was he who told Khomeini that the war was lost, that Iraqi tanks were driving through the Iranian lines unhindered that the Islamic Republic's troops were unable to withdraw their armour for lack of petrol. The old Imam remarked, after listening to Rafsanjani, that he had been forced to "eat poison". And I recall well the glee pure, unadulterated schoolboy delight – with which Rafsanjani produced photocopies of the Irish passports used by John MacFarlane, Oliver North and the other American super-spooks when they turned up in Tehran to trade anti-aircraft missiles for American hostages in Beirut. Rafsanjani even handed one of the photocopies to me; it was a real passport – Macfarlane used the first name Sean – stolen from the Irish embassy in Athens.

But I remember another Rafsanjani who took exception to a mild biographical profile I wrote of him in 1987. I had concentrated on his origins – his father was a pistachio farmer – and the next time I arrived in Tehran, I was coldly informed that I should not stay long because "some officials from the Islamic Republic would like you to leave". How soon, I asked? And an equally cold man from the Islamic Guidance ministry answered chillingly: "I cannot protect you. But I think I would probably leave tonight." I slunk out of Mehrabad airport a few hours later on a flight to Europe watched through the window of the departure lounge by the then Irish ambassador to Tehran. A few weeks later, I was back. Whoever it was, they told me, was no longer angered by my article.

One of Rafsanjani's close relatives currently controls 47 per cent of an airline link between Iran and Saudi Arabia, 22 per cent of the profits of which would go into his pocket. After one oil-and-gas deal six years ago, an investigation into internal corruption led to the arrest of several close friends of Mehdi Rafsanjani. They were forced to return up to $5m to state coffers. But Mehdi was not questioned about the extent of his involvement, let alone arrested.

Did no one dare to tangle with the family of Cardinal Richelieu? Iranian journalists who question Rafsanjani's presidential role are regularly threatened – by fax or telephone – while at least one insists that Western journalists must formally sign documents promising to send all of his interview quotations for approval before publication; The Independent declined to do so. Gangi himself admits that he does not wish to get close to the private life of Rafsanjani, although he notes that it was the former president who personally set the exchange rates between the US dollar and the Iranian riyal when he claimed to be introducing a market economy to Iran.

Or – and here we reach the darkest of all questions – was he going to name other, even higher figures in the regime? Was Emami's evidence of the Dungeon of Ghosts going to call into question the very practice of clerical rule, the leadership whom Iranians have been forced to follow unquestioningly for so many years? The election of "reformers" last month appears to have placed President Mohamed Khatami in an unchallenged position and his brother Reza, leader of the largest winning reformist party, is now speaking of investigations into the murders of Rafsanjani's decade of power.