VERDICTS ON SERIAL MURDERS MEET WITH PUBLIC PROTESTS

                                                                      
PARIS 29 Jan (IPS)    Vehement and indignant protests against the verdicts issued Saturday for the 18 officials of the Iranian security services accused of killing at least five prominent political and intellectual dissidents fused from all over Iran and abroad.

In its ruling, the military court condemned to life imprisonment Mostafa Kazemi and Mehrdad Alikhani, two high-ranking officials of the Information (Intelligence) ministry who said had decided the killings but three other lower ranking employees who said they executed the orders were sentenced to death.

Dariush Foruhar, the leader of the nationalist and secularist Iranian People's Party and his wife Parvaneh, writer Mohammad Mokhtari, poet and human rights activist Mohammad Ja'far Puyandeh and researcher Majid Sharif were savagely assassinated late November 1998 by agents of the Information Ministry.

Jurist and lawyers observed that according to Iranian Islam-based laws, the judge must not make difference between the one who give orders for killing and those who execute the orders.

They also noted that despite the fact that in their confessions, Kazemi and Alikhani had openly named former Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi as having issued the assassination orders, yet the court acquitted him, saying he had sworn to his innocence in the case.

Mr. Najafabadi was in charge of the Intelligence ministry at the time of the murders, but due to mounting pressures from the public, he was ousted by President Mohammad Khatami.

But according to Dr. Karim Lahiji, the president of the Paris-based League of Iranian Human Rights, not wanting any clergyman being involved with this sinister affair, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i has ordered the military court to take Mr. Najafabadi  off the hook.

Many observers believe that Mr. Khameneh'i, a fundamentalist, might have approved of the religious orders issued by some of his entourage authorising the physical elimination of elements hard line clerics considers as atheists and apostates endangering Islam.

The authorities say the assassinations were the work of a "rogue gang" inside the security services led by a Sa'id Emami, a senior Deputy Intelligence minister who is reported to have committed suicide in prison.

But investigative journalists like Akbar Ganji, now in prison, jurists, experts and lawyers are convinced that Mr. Emami received orders for the murders from high-ranking religious authorities associated to the leader.

"Those crimes were not decided by one or two members of the Intelligence ministry and carried by few others under their command, but are the work of a huge and complex organisation that would study carefully each case and secure proper authorisations before executing", pointed out Mr. Nasrer Zarafshan, a lawyer for the families of two victims.

Mr. Zarafshan was arrested days before the start of the trials, as families for the victims had boycotted the hearings, describing the military court as being incompetent to judge the case.

Ms. Parastou Foruhar, the elder daughter of the slain couple and Mr. Siavosh Mokhtari, the son of the assassinated intellectual both expressed dismay and reiterated what they wanted was not vengeance, but the truth, "naked truth" to emerge. "The case would be closed once all those behind the assassinations are identified and no one is killed for expressing his opinions", said Mr. Molhtari.

"It is of vital importance to see the hands behind the murders, to know the logics, to go to the roots of the crime, to understand on which basis, and who, has decided the tragic death of innocent people? noted Mrs. Simin Behbahani, Iran's leading and respected national poet.

What cast serious doubts on the judgment was that the hearings were held behind closed doors.

Observers said not only the sentences did not satisfied any but few hard liners, but they raised more questions, as summed up by the Islamic Iran Participation Party (IIPP), the largest of Iranian pro-reform political formations supporting President Khatami.

In a statement issued Sunday, the party expressed its dissatisfaction with the verdicts, saying "how come a petty operational agent of a government office, who has carried out a mission ordered by a senior official and still believes that he has not committed a crime but has been a soldier in a holy war, receives a punishment which is harsher than that of his commander?''                                                         

The IIPP then asks the Judiciary a series of questions, including what has been the motives and the theories behind the murders? Are the serial murders limited to the four cases investigated in the court? Have the culprit not committed other crimes in 1998 or say ten years before that?, a reference to the tens of opponents and dissidents of all walks assassinated inside and outside Iran during the eight years of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani's presidency.

Was the band not involved in economic corruption? Are those who have ordered or committed the crimes limited
to the 18 people tried? Are the rumors on moral decadence of these people or their contacts with the foreigners true?, a reference to the leader's claims that the killings were the work of foreign agents.                   

"The judge and the head of the Judiciary know that this case is not subject to limitation of time and as long as all its dimensions are not lit up with the light of awareness and truth, the nation will continue to ask questions about it", the Party said, adding "the sun of truth will further light up the atmosphere of the country due to the increasing awareness of people".

Meanwhile, and continuing the "strangulation" of the reformists, the Judiciary ordered Sunday the arrest of Mr. Naqi Afshari, the Editor of "Hadis", published in Qazvin, 150 Kms West of Tehran and Mr. Hoda Saber, a member of the editorial board of he banned Iran Farda bi-weekly.

Mr. Afshari is the father of Ali Afshari, the outspoken students leader who is sentenced to five years  imprisonment for his participation at the controversial Berlin Conference the regime says was held to topple the Islamic Republic.

The Judiciary felt offended by a cartoon showing the balance of the angel of Justice being unbalanced, tilting to one side only.

In another development, Mr. Hamid Loqmanian, a reformist deputy who was arrested early Sunday morning was reported freed hours later, after strong protest from the reformist fraction of the Majles. ENDS VERDICTS SERIAL MURDERS 29101