In a letter to the head of the Judiciary, the Iraqi-born Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi, the lawmakers expressed "deep and serious concern" about the "unlawful actions" of this power that, in their view, "not only is distancing itself from justice and verity, but also is an instrument of expansion of injustice, oppression and discrimination".

It cites the case of Mr. Akbar Ganji, the journalist who is condemned to ten years imprisonment and five years of exile as an example of this "one sided justice" and demands whether Mr. Ganji’s harsh sentence is not because his revelations about some high-ranking officials in the murders of Iranian dissident politicians and intellectuals?

"We are worried. Worried for Iran, for Islam, for the revolution, for people’s neglected rights and worried for the Islamic republic. This is the reason why today we call on you, Mr. Shahrudi, not to allow those who are rejected by the people to make their nests in the ruins you had promised to rebuilt or to allow the fate that plagued the Information Minister be repeated in the Judiciary", the letter warned.

The MMs (Member of the Majles) also warned the Judiciary and the leader-controlled Television against creating a new series called "hoviyyat-2" consisting of shots, interviews, confessions etc aimed at humiliating, insulting, belittling and ridiculing dissidents.

A similar project, worked out jointly by Hojjatoleslam Ruhollah Hoseinian, a close friend of Mr. Sa’id Emami and Mr. Hosein Shariatmadari, an official interrogator who is also Editor of the evening daily "Keyhan", was on air for several months under previous presidency.

Many of the men tormented in the program were latter killed.

Head and chief justice of the controversial Clergymen’s Special Tribunal (CST), Mr. Mohseni Ezheh’i had been formally accused by Mr. Akbar Ganji, the leading investigative journalist now serving a ten years imprisonment to have personally ordered the assassination of Mr. Piruz Davani, a leftist activist killed in November 1998 with five other prominent politicians and intellectuals.

Headquartered at the Eshratabad prison, the new intelligence unit is run by most of the agents and officials that used to work with Mr. Emami, the former Deputy Intelligence Minister authorities said was responsible for the "serial murders".

Mr. Emami, a close collaborator of former Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian under the previous Administration of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was arrested after, under pressure from the press and the public, the Ministry admitted for the first time that its agents, including Mr. Emami, were directly involved in the murders.

Mr. Emami committed suicide in prison, but his friends who now are running the leader’s special intelligence unit say he had been assassinated.

Informed sources named Mr. Hoseinian, Mr. Shariatmadari, and Mr. Purmohammadi, another interrogator-torturer as some of the men transferred to Mr. Khameneh’is intelligence team.

Sentenced respectively to five and four and half year imprisonment for their participation at a conference in Berlin last April that the clerical authorities have branded as anti-Islamic and aimed at overthrowing the Islamic Republic, the two men were taken out of Evin prison last month and transferred to another place no one, including their families and lawyers, knows anything about.

As to the young Montazeri, he was arrested a month ago, accused of putting the political memories of his dissident father, Grand Ayatollah Hoseinali Montazeri, who is under house arrest, on an internet site.