LEGISLATIVE CHALLENGING JUDICIARY

By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor

PARIS 12 Jan. (IPS)    With president both the lamed leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i and the embattled President Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami resting, the reformist-dominated Majles (parliament) has become the main force standing more and more visibly to the conservatives, voicing people's demands for justice and equity, according to Iranian political analysts.

In two successive move, each considered as a "bombshell" from a parliament that many thought was "tamed" by the leader after the famous letter he sent to the House on 6th August ordering deputies not to debate a motion aimed at reviewing a controversial and repressive press law, various Majles Committees, including the National Security and Justice have defaulted the powerful Judiciary that acts as the political and police arms of the leader against reformists.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Affairs and National Security Committee, meeting in closed doors session, heard a report on the "serial murders" prepared by some of its members and observed that there were "many points of serious divergences" with the official documents used by a military court trying 18 official agents of the Information (Intelligence) Ministry alleged to have "decided and carried out" the assassination of four prominent politicians and intellectuals.

The trial was held behind closed doors for unexplained "security reasons" at the Judiciary Organisation of the Armed Forces (JOAF) and without the participation of the victims families and their lawyers, as they had boycotted the trial, explaining that not only the military court was incompetent, but also important documents, including confessions and interrogations of the main accused, Mr. Sa'id Emami, a former senior deputy Intelligence ministry whom the authorities say was the master brain behind the assassinations, were missing from the files.

Arrested early January 1999 with 18 other colleagues after the Ministry admitted to the participation of its agents in the killing of Mr. Dariush Foruhar, the leader of the secularist Iranian People's Party and his wife Parvaneh, writer Mohammad Mokhtari, poet, human rights activist and translator Mohammad Ja'far Puyandeh, researcher Majid Sharif and political activist Piruz Davani perpetrated late November 1998, Mr. Emami reportedly committed suicide in prison.

According to informed sources, Mr. Emami had "confessed" that religious orders for the physical elimination of secularist dissident politicians and intellectuals considered as "apostates, atheists or threats to the Isalmic Republic" were issued either by the Minister, Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian, or senior clerics, namely Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati or Ayatollah Mohammad Khaz'ali, all three known hard-line orthodox clerics very close to ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i.

But friends of Mr. Emami insist that he had been killed in order to prevent divulgation of the identities of the men who issued the religious orders, or fatwas, for the murders, as in such a likelihood, the very survival of the theocratic system would be at stake.

Dissidents and opposition sources also say the authorities are adamant at limiting the serial murders to four cases only while more than hundred prominent politicians, intellectuals, scholars and opponents of the regime have been murdered both inside and outside Iran during the eight years of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's presidency with Hojjatoleslam Fallahian as his Intelligence Minister.

Deputy National Security Committee Chairman Ali Shakkuri-Rad complained that the Judiciary refused to co-operate with members of the Committee investigating the case, that JOAF did not allowed them to court, that they were barred from reading the court documents and finally some officials had not answered Committee's invitation for giving evidence, referring to former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian and leader-appointed Head of the controversial Clergymen's Special Tribunal Hojjatoleslam Qolamhosein Mohseni-Ezheh'i, both named by investigative journalists Akbar Ganji, Emameddin Baqi and Alireza Nurizadeh as some of the men who issued killing orders.

Mr. Ganji and Mr. Baqi are in prison. Mr. Nurizadeh is living in London and files for several Iranian and Arab newspapers.

He also revealed various "flagrant contradictions" between the Committee's findings about the serial murders with the official version and urged the Judiciary to make the hearing public.

The second "bombshell" was blasted one day after when another Majles Committe known as "Article 90" endorsed complaints from four leading imprisoned journalist, namely Emameddin Baqi, a young and talented political writer and investigative journalist, Masha'allah Shamsolva'ezin, the influential editor of four banned pro-reform dailies, Ahmad Zeydabadi, an independent journalist identified with the religious-nationalist forces and Akbar Ganji, the leading investigative journalist of having caused all the havocs to the conservatives.

In a report prepared after meeting the four journalists in prison, the Committee reviewed their joint complaints against both the Judiciary and the Press Court contesting the competence of the courts, absence of the jury during trials, repeated charges, hearings behind closed doors, courts where same man acts as both prosecutor and judge, illegal use of official documents against the accused, discrimination between accused and accusers, psychological pressures, illegal and prolonged arrests, incarceration in illegal "safe houses" where prisoners are kept in total isolation, ill treatment of detainees, including forcing them in wearing prison uniforms, tempering and altering accused defence and plea judges biased against the accused, refusing the rights of the detainees to contact lawyers and meeting families, refusing them reading materials, keeping them in prison after the end of the legal detention period etc. etc.

In a strong worded communiqué, the Judiciary rejected the report as "baseless and lacking legal grounds", accused the Committee's members of not only being "ignorant" about legal and judicial matters, but also "repeating same old points" that the accused and their lawyers had "endlessly" pleaded in the banned or "rented" newspapers or voiced "using official tribunes as that of the Majles".

"After Mr. Khatami leaving the ring, apparently knocked down by Mr. Khameneh'i, it seems that Majles has decided to call the shots in challenging the Judiciary and by proxy, the leader himself", said one Iranian political analyst, observing that as a result, and in its quest to keep the upper hand, the Judiciary has issued summons against 12 MMs (member of the Majles) on the basis that no one is immune in regard of Islamic canons. ENDS LEGISLATIVE VERSUS JUDICIARY 12101