Early January 1999, the Ministry, under heavy pressures from the public opinion and the press, acknowledged that some of its high-ranking officers were directly involved in the savage murders of Dariush Foruhar, the leader of the secularist Iranian People’s Party (IPP) and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari, writer Mohammad Mokhtari, poet and human rights activist Mohammad Ja’far Puyandeh and researcher Majid Sharif.

Mr. Foruhar and his wife were stabbed to death at their modest residence in central Tehran in late November 1989, preceded by Mr. Piruz Davani, a leftist political dissident close to the IPP and followed by the three intellectuals.

As the case was changing hands, transferred from the Intelligence Ministry to Islamic revolution tribunal before being passed to the Judiciary Organisation of the Armed Forces, the authorities blamed the murders on a "rogue gang" led by Sa’id Emami, alias Eslami, the first deputy Intelligence Minister for national security affairs in charge of eliminating dissidents and opponents of the regime both inside and outside Iran.

From the outset, two major question propped up and was asked relentlessly by the public in general and a newly emerging independent and aggressive press in particular: "Who issued the religious orders, or fatwa, legitimising the killings and what are the logics explaining the physical elimination of the dissidents?

When Mr. Emami, the man who was identified by the authorities as the "mastermind" of the killings was reported to have committed suicide in prison, the first question was also answered by some of his close colleagues and associates whom immediately said he was assassinated in order of preventing the identities of the high-ranking religious who would have authorised the murders being divulged.

Both Ganji and Baqi are now in prison, with the first one sentenced to ten years of imprisonment and five years of exile in a remote southern village for alleged "activities against national security and offence against the leader".

Contesting the competence of the military court and observing many irregularities in the voluminous documents, most important of them the absence of "confessions" made by Emami to interrogators and contradictory statements by remaining defendants like Kazemi and Alikhani, families of the victims announced their boycott of the court hearing that, for "national security purposes", were held behind closed doors.

"Considering the unremitting efforts deployed by the Judiciary to limit the killings to a "rogue gang" working on its own and without knowledge of their superior, let alone specific authorisation from their superior, one reaches the obvious conclusion than the assassinations had very probably the blessing of Mr. Khameneh'i", said Dr. Karim Lahiji, the Paris-based Chairman of the Iranian League of Human Rights.

In his view, this "important element" may explain why Khatami "washed his hands" and kept silence despite his firm promises that he would "spare no effort" in bringing to justice all the men involved, "regardless of their ranks and positions"

"We are not seeking sheer vengeance, but the truth to emerge, to be told. Simple truth as like who are those who issued the authorisations (for the murders) and why? Said Ms. Parastou Foruhar, the elder daughter of the slain Foruhar couple.

"Justice would be best served when in force and in this case, justice has not been respected. Maybe some feel satisfied and think that the case is over, but they are mistaken, for people would not allow such a gross injustice", she added.

Why the court limited the killings to four cases only while more than hundred people were killed under Hahsemi Rafsanjani’s presidency by the same so-called "rogue gang".

The Presiding Judge of Bench 5 of Tehran Military Court Mohammad-Reza Aghighi stressed that he acted in "complete independence" while issuing the verdicts for the 18 defendants in the `serial murders' trials.

Asked by the official news agency IRNA about the degree of his independence on issuing the verdicts, Aghighi said, "In parts of the verdicts, the Head of the Judiciary Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi had a different opinion based on his own religious conclusions, but I did not follow his opinion and applied my own conclusions."

He added, "In Islamic judicial teachings, the independence of the judge has been strongly emphasised and no authority has been given the right to interfere in a judge's decisions."

According to the verdicts as announced by Judge Aghighi quoted by IRNA, the first and second defendants Seyed Mostafa Kazemi and Mehrdad Alikhani received four times life imprisonment each;

The third defendant Ali (Reza) Roshani was sentenced to death twice and the fourth and the fifth defendants Mahmoud Jafarzadeh and Ali (Mostafa) Mohseni were sentenced to death once;

Morteza Haqani, Iraj Amouzegar and Alireza Akbarian, the seventh, ninth and thirteenth defendants respectively, were acquitted;

Hamid Rassouli and Mohammad Azizi, the sixth and the eight defendants were sentenced each to life imprisonment twice while Abolfazl Moslemi, the tenth defendant was sentenced to eight years imprisonment;

Mohammad Hossein Asna Ashar and Ali Safa’i-Pour, the eleventh and twelfth defendants each was sentenced to seven years in prison while Morteza Fallah, the fourteenth defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment,

Mostafa Hashemi, Ali Nazeri, Asghar Sayyah and Khosro Barati, the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth defendants were sentenced to 8 years and six months, 2 years and six months, 6 years and 10 years in prison respectively.

Appeals can be made on all the verdicts to the country's Supreme Court. The judge of the court will announce the details of the verdicts later, Aghighi said.

Only two of the suspects pleaded not guilty in the case that was held behind closed doors because of what was called national security concerns.

The others all confessed to some role in the murders of nationalist leader Dariush Foruhar and his wife as well as outspoken writers Mohammad Ja’far Puyandeh and Mohammad-Ali Mokhtari, IRNA added.

 "Some in the conservative camp might feel satisfied at the verdicts and the case closed once for all, but sooner or later, it would unfold as a hanging rope, if not for the regime, but at least around the neck of some of the present clerical leaders", commented one reformist journalist expressing the view of many Iranians. ENDS MURDERS VERDICTS 28101