IRANIAN LEADERS TO FACE SAME SHAME AS DID PINOCHET: EXPERTS
By Safa Haeri
BRUSSELS 6TH Feb. (IPS As more Iranians parties, organisations, groups, religious foundations, unions and personalities from left and right, conservatives and reformists alike, continue to close ranks behind Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, there are also more political analysts and observers who tend to see a "mischievous manipulation" from both the former President and the hard liners to restore the badly damaged image and credit of the former president in the one hand and to stop to nascent and timid democratisation process that got a shot from the last Majles elections on the other.
"There are few troubling coincidences in this otherwise bizarre affair", said Mr. Ahmad Salamatian, a prominent Iranian political analyst based in Paris.
To his observation, the unidentified accuser has filed his complaint on 10th February, the very day that in Iran electoral lists were closed, making clear that the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the leading reformist Party that backs President Khatami has refused to endorse Mr. Rafsanjani among its candidates.
"Second of March, the day the news of Judge Damien Vandermeersch's decision to have ordered the Police to investigate the complaint was leaked to the press coincides with the date that back in Tehran hundreds of ballot boxes are to be recounted officially to check charges of possible vote rigging in favour of Mr. Rafsanjani who, despite of being conservative parties number one runner, had lost his bid but was nevertheless pushed into the Majles as Tehran's last candidate, but in fact the operations, suggested by the Council of the Guardians, is a ploy to bring in more votes for this unfortunate candidate. In politics, there are very few mere coincidences, but this one is not", Mr. Salamatian told Iran Press Service.
Anyhow, a short item carried by Agence France Press on second of March was transformed quickly into a storm in Iran where from the President hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami and reformist political parties and organisations that supports him down to a multitude of Islamic associations and unions strongly denounced Brussels for "blatant interference" in Iranian internal affairs and urged Belgim to "rectify its "unacceptable action of face serious consequences".
More troubling was the indirect but clear threats from Ayatollah Hasan Sane'i of the notorious 15 Khordad Foundation warning Belgium of possible terrorist operations, saying "the move by the Belgian Court being within the framework of the vicious policies of the US and international Zionism, in case the Belgian government do not apologise to the Iranian nation, our reaction will not be only verbal".
Controlled by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the embattled leader of the Islamic Republic, the 15th Khordad Foundation is the same organisation that offered 2.5 millions US Dollars for the assassination of the Anglo-British novelist Salman Rushdie after he was condemned to death in 1989 by grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for his controversial book "The Satanic Verses" that Muslims in general considers as blasphemous to prophet Mohammad.
What puzzles many Iranian observers is why the man who has lodged the complaint insist on remaining unidentified.
According to the accuser's lawyer Marc Libert, the man is a "militant communist member of the outlawed Marxist Feda'iyan e Khalq, arrested in 1983 when the present leader, ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, then a hojatoleslam, was president and Mr. Rafsanjani though Speaker of the Majles, or the Consultative Assembly the real number two leader after ayatollah Khomeiny.
Quoted in the hard line English-language daily "Tehran Times", Mr. Libert has said though the whole of Iranian Islamic regime was being targeted in the complaint but directed against Mr. Rafsanjani because of his considerable role in the power structure.
In Brussels, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that a local magistrate had opened a case against Mr. Rafsanjani, but denied reports that an arrest warrant had been issued against him.
"It is possible that the original plan was to leak the news the very day the complaint was filed, but either Judge Vandermeer who is not a new comer, is known for his seriousness and avoids mediatisation, did not allowed or just because the mayonnaise was not ready", Mr. Salamatian further added in an effort to say the Chairman of the Expediency Council might have orchestrated the whole issue.
Taking into account the fact that from an almost lunched political figure Mr. Rafsanjani turned overnight a "living martyr", the very symbol of the Islamic Republic being investigated for alleged crimes against humanity in the one hand and finding out that so far the "crime" has profited him", many political analysts who talked to IPS reached the same conclusion.
Noting that all leader-controlled organisations and institutions, among them the Council of the Guardians, the Judiciary, the Speaker and 181 MPs of the outgoing Majles, the Association of Qom's Teachers and many other have all issued copy-carbon statements, observers also believe that the anti-Belgian, anti-Western campaign "must have the blessings" of Mr. Khameneh'i as well.
"Coming in the aftermath of (Augusto) Pinochet syndrom and fearing this camel can well one day knock at their own doors, the conservative leaders of the Islamic Republic with Mr. Khameneh'i at their helm are taking their disposition", Mr. Kambiz Rusta, the Co-ordinator of the Berlin-based Iranian Tribunal of Crimes Agains Humanity told IPS.
That explains why Judge Vandermeersch's decision has united all Iranian leaders and personalities, including the both the reformists and Islamic revolutionaries who until now were accusing the former president of corruption, abuse of power, mismanagement, assassination of political and intellectual dissidents in Iran and abroad have closed ranks, defending Mr. Rafsanjani.
What is more troubling for Iranian leaders is that the action in Brussels is taken by the very same Judge that lodged a law suite against the former Chilean dictator, brought Mrs Edith Cresson, former French Socialist Prime Minister and the EU's High Commissioner to justice and allowed Belgium the new Belgian government to become the EU's human rights flag bearer, spearheading the boycott of the new Austrian coalition government.
The Belgian lawsuit is based on the same principle as the attempts to bring Pinochet to justice -- that people who commit the most heinous crimes, whether against other nationals or their own citizens, should be open to prosecution world wide, observed Mr. Paul Taylor of Reuters news agency.
"The fact is that none of the Iranian leaders or political personalities under this regime, being conservatives or so-called reformists of the type of President Khatami or his younger brother, Mohammad Reza, a UK-educated doctor, acknowledges the rights of the citizen to justice nor have they nay idea of an independent Justice as there is no such a notion in Islam", Mr. Rusta argued.
"What happened these days in Belgium is the reaction of enemies of Iran and enemies of international peace and stability pouring their anger on the noble, magnanimous and proud people of Iran", President Khatami told the visiting Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini.
"What Belgium did was abnormal, a behaviour outside diplomatic norms and international law", Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told a joint news conference with his visiting Italian counterpart, Lamberto Dini.
"Surely, it cannot be supported by other EU members" Dini, on a two-day visit underscoring ties between Iran and the European Union. Belgium does not represent the bloc", Mr. Dini was reported by Iranian official news agency IRNA to have said.
[Sources in Rome said Monday evening that opposition is likely to ask the government of providing explanation on Mr. Dini's alleged anti-Belgian statement, in case he has said what the Iranian agency has quoted him, as this would be regarded as an act of hostility towards a EU founding member contrary to the organisation's charter.]
Observers also noted that the new tension in relations between Tehran and Brussels has taken an international dimension at a time that European Foreign Ministers are "queuing up" to visit Iran in following the landslide victory scored by pro-Khatami factions in the Majles elections.
"This victory has opened new opportunities for foreign investors as it should create better political stability, as seen by the visits of Mr. Dini and Mr. Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, to be followed by their British and French counterparts. The new Majles would contribute to the policy of détente undertaken by Mr. Khatami with outside world, including in the Middle East, where Iran is expected to put an end to its involvement with the Peace Process. But this tension, fanned by the conservatives, is surely aimed at destroying all hopes, aimed at proving that Mr. Khatami is powerless, with or without a friendly Legislative", said one Tehran journalist who asked not to be identified "due present circumstances.
Anyhow, the complaint has become an Irano-Iranian affair, with the conservatives accusing the reformists of having "sided" with Iranian counter-revolutionaries and world arrogance and Israel in accusing Mr. Rafsanjani of torture, assassination and crime against humanity.
Blowing to the same trumpet, the reformists, while pointing at Israel, the United States and International Zionism, counter-charges the conservatives to take pretext from a decision taken by a Belgian Judge manipulated by European Jewish circles to make for their humiliating defeat at the polls and stop reforms to come by when the new Majles dominated by the reformists starts working.
The disclosure in January 1999 that high ranking officials at the Intelligence Ministry had murdered at least 6 leading Iranian political and intellectual dissidents, the public trial of senior officers of the revolutionary guards, a first in the history of the Islamic Republic, the "inadmissible effrontery" of a segment the press in taking the lead to denounce wrongdoing of the officials, including Mr. Rafsanjani, to question the unquestionable position of the leader, to openly accuse the former Intelligence Minister of masterminding the murder of more than eighty Iranian opponents inside and outside Iran when Mr. Rafsanjani was president etc are seen by Iranian observers as "as many reasons for the ruling conservatives to stop the process from getting out of control".
"The fact that such investigations have taken place at all, that the findings have been made public and that there are calls for more such probes shows how far Iran has changed since the early years after the 1979 Islamic revolution", one analyst pointed out.
Mrs. Shirin Edbadi, an outspoken lawyer for the victims of the Intelligence Ministry suggested the new reformists-controlled Majles to establish an independent commission to follow-up investigations on all unresolved murder cases, including those perpetrated under Mr. Rafsanjani's tenure of power.
"The outcry in Iran aimed at stopping the action of the Justice in Belgium, pressures applied on Judge Vandermeersch to close the file, threats against the Belgian government etc, all reminder of what the Iranian leaders did during the Mykonos trial in Germany are bound to fail, as it did with German Justice. The leaders of the Islamic Republic must know that crimes would never go unpunished and sooner or latter they would face the same situation as the one faced by Pinochet", promised Dr. Karim Lahiji of the League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran. RAFSANJANI INVESTIGATIONS 7300