LINKING STUDENTS TO BANNED GROUPS

LINKING STUDENTS TO BANNED GROUPS, KHAMENEH’I PLAYS RUSSIAN ROULETTE

By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor

PARIS 26 Mar. (IPS) The arrest of Mr. Ebrahim Sheykh, an influent member of the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU) on the first working day of the new Iranian year of 1380 shows Ayatollah Ali Khamenehe'i is determined to continue to the end his plan aimed at shutting once for all the reform movement, checking the growing students dissidence and eradicate the Islamist-nationalists, according to Iranian political analysts.

Mr. Sheykh, a member of the Central Council of the Union of Islamic Students Associations better known as the OCU, the largest and oldest of all Iranian students organisations, was arrested Sunday and send to prison on the orders of the Tehran's Islamic revolution Court, the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) said.

Quoting his brother Mohsen, ISNA said Mr. Sheykh was to appear before the Islamic revolution court as an "independent witness" over the case of Mr. Ali Afshari, another leading member of the OCU, but was arrested on the spot and transferred to an undisclosed place.

Arrested some months ago on charges of having taken part in the now famous Berlin Conference of April 2000 and sentenced to five-year jail term, Mr. Afshari was transferred to an undisclosed prison handed by the Revolutionary guards, specialising in "getting" confessions from the inmates by applying corporal and psychological tortures.

Mr. Ezzatollah Sahabi, the 75 years-old Editor of the banned "Iran Farda" bi-weekly and active member of the Iran Freedom Movement (IFM) who was taken to the same place was reported by his family that he suffered such intense psychological pressures that he was unable to recognise his closest relatives.

Conservative-controlled publications had reported that Mr. Afshari "confessed" that some members of the OCU had closed tanks with the Islamist-nationalists and were engaged in activities against the security of the State and planning to topple the regime.

This was exactly the same charges the Islamic revolution tribunal had retained against 21 personalities of both sexes, among them journalists, politicians, scholars and intellectuals affiliated with the Nationalist-religious and IFM, arrested during a raid mounted on 11 March on the house of Mr. Mohammad Basteh-Negar, an IFM activist.

One of Iran’s oldest political organisation led by the late Mehdi Bazargan, appointed by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to form the first provisory government of the Islamic Republic in 1979, IFM was tolerated to exist but banned from official activities.

Because of the influence both IFM and the Islamist-nationalists exercises on the general public, but particularly the students, the intellectuals and the young clerics, the orthodox clergy considers them as the most and greatest threat to their survival, hence the official ban pronounced against them.

The crackdown on the current that includes influential personalities like reformist clerics such as Mohsen Kadivar, Abdollah Noori, the former Interior Minister sentenced to five years jail on charges of offending the leader and questioning Islam’s basic principles, Hasan Yusefi-Eshkevari, condemned to death on the same charges plus propaganda and activities against Islamic Republic or Dr. Abdolkarim Soroosh, a known Islamist thinker etc. was ordered by Ayatollah Ali Khamenehe'i, the regime’s fundamentalist leader.

Though accepting the present Iranian Constitution, the bulk of the Islamist-nationalists as well as IFM however favours the separation of the faith from politics and rejects the concept of "velayat faqih", or the absolute rule of a senior cleric over the people, regarded as minors needing the guardianship of a Tutor, a role endorsed now by the egocentric and narcissist Khamenehe'i.

Coming on the eve of the departure of Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami, the embattled Iranian President for Moscow and hours after, from the tribune of the Majles (parliament), he had once again urged the conservatives to stop their offensive against the reformers, the leader-controlled Judiciary had also shut four more reformist publications, bringing to 35 the number of independent publications closed, denounced by Mr. Khamenehe'i of becoming "bases of the enemy".

The "confessions" attributed to Mr. Afshari, the clampdown imposed on the nationalist-religious and the arrest of Mr. Sheykh shows that the conservatives are now aiming at the core of pro-Khatami reformists in order to force them to "choose" their camp: To stay in the leadership as some of the "khodi" (those who are with us, the insiders) or "qeyr khodi", or those who are not among us, and by consequence are the enemy’s collaborators.

This is exactly the scenario the conservatives played for the Islamist-nationalists, first labelled as "the third current", to become "qeyr khodi" and finally denounced openly as "strangers".

In a statement released Saturday, the Islamic Propaganda Organisation, a body controlled by the conservatives hawks in the League of Islamic Coalition urged the reformists of "taking their distance" with the Islamist-nationalists.

Though the OCU is a staunch supporter of the reforms promised by Mr. Khatami but never uphold, but it had gradually turned into one of the most serious and outspoken critic of a President who has turned blind eyes to the humiliations constantly inflicted by hard-liners on both the students as well as to his most loyal supporters.
But now that conservatives have linked the bulk of the students with the banned nationalist-religious and the IFM, it seems that Mr. Khamenehe'i has decided to extend the scope of the offensive on the reformists, a decision that, according to many Iranian political analysts, could have grave consequences for the future of the regime he leads.

"Mr. Khamenehe'i is playing the Russian roulette, with the difference that the gun he has taken is full of bullets", commented one observer. ENDS EBRAHIM SHEYKH ARRESTED 26301