DISAPPEARANCE OF Mr. KAVIANI FOLLOWS Mr. AFSHARI’S "CONFESSIONS".

DISAPPEARANCE OF Mr. KAVIANI FOLLOWS Mr. AFSHARI’S "CONFESSIONS".

TEHRAN, 25 May (IPS) Iranian journalists, dissidents and intellectuals, as well international organisations expressed "deep concern" Thursday on the fate of Mr. Hamidreza Kavian, an independent journalist who, according to his family and friends, is missing since Monday.

"He has been missing since Monday afternoon and we have no word on what's happened to him" the independent Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) quoted Wednesday his wife.

Then 33 years-old Kaviani is suffering from heart insufficiency and had been hospitalised after being on abducted by unidentified plain cloth agents reported to belong to the new security services created recently by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the fundamentalist leader of the Islamic Republic.

According to sources close to Kaviani as well as newspaper reports, the journalist was abducted by unidentified plain-clothes officers and abandoned in a Tehran street after several hours of interrogation and beating.

A prolific investigative journalist and writer, Mr. Kaviani is the author of several books, including "Interrogations On Power", in which he details at length the dubious activities of Mr. Mohsen Rafiqdoost, the former influential of the powerful Bonyad Mostaz’afin, or the Deprived Foundation, nicknamed by Iranians as a "state within the State".

"Secrets Of A Victory" was a chronology of the events leading to the landslide triumph of Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami in the 23 May 1997 presidential elections.

A court case was opened for Mr. Kaviani by the controversial, leader-controlled Clergymen’s Special Tribunal on a complaint lodged by Hojjatoleslam Ruhollah Hoseinian, a former high-ranking member of the Intelligence Ministry specialising in interrogation of dissidents, after his name appeared in "In Search Of Criminals Circle", a book in which Mr. Kaviani disclose the techniques and motives of those responsible for the murder of hundreds of dissident, particularly the assassination of five leading politicians and intellectuals in November and December 1998.

Mr. Hoseinian is one of the authors of the infamous "Hoviyyat" series aimed at mugging and slandering political and intellectual dissidents, broadcast by the leader-controlled Radio and Television under the presidency of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani with the collaboration of the Intelligence Ministry, then led by Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian, one of the candidates in the forthcoming presidential elections.

Mr. Fallahian is under an international warrant issued by Germany for his role in the assassination of Iranian dissidents, some of them murdered in Germany.

A remake of the series started recently with the so-called "interview" of Mr. Ali Afshari, an outspoken leader of the Office for Consolidating Unity, the largest of all Iranian students organisations carried last week by the Television.

In an interview with the Persian service of the Prague-based Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, Mr. Changuiz Pahlavan, a professor of Political Science who now teaches in German universities warned against the possible outcomes of the new series for Iranian dissidents, pointing to the assassination of hundreds of intellectuals and politicians that followed the broadcast of "Hoviyyat".

He was commenting on Mr. Afshari’s televised "confessions", in which the clean-shaved student talked about his "mistakes" and repeatedly insisted that the interview was carried on his own demand to offer his "apology" to the "Great leader".

After the closure of the daily "Salam", Mr. Kaviani successively joined Mr. Akbar Ganji in "Rah No" (New Path) then "Asr Ma" (Our Epoch), the official organ of the Mojahedeen of Islamic Revolution Organisation" (MIRO), a leftist but important faction of the pro-reforms Second Khordad Coalition that also supports the embattled President Khatami and "Hambastegi" (Solidarity), a new reformist publication.

The closure of Salam led to wide-spread students uprising of July 1999, after Law Enforcement Forces, backed by the Basij volunteers, the Ansar Hezbollah thugs and security services special units cracked down on students protesting the ban.

For his part, Mr. Ganji was sent to prison as part of a massive crackdown on all but few reformist publications and journalists, ordered by Mr. Khameneh'i.

Since April 2000, more than 60 independent and reform-seeking publications have been shut and a dozen of well-known journalists jailed.

More recently, the leader-controlled Islamic revolution courts outlawed the activities of both the Islamist-nationalist groups and Iran Freedom Movement and jailed 50 of their prominent leaders and activists.

In a letter to Ayatollah Mahmood Hashemi-Shahroodi, the head of the Iranian Islamic Judiciary, Mr. Robeert Menard, Secretary General of the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF, or Reporters Without Borders) expressed its deep concern about the disappearance of Mr. Kaviani and urged him to "open an inquiry into this incident which "occurs two weeks before the presidential elections".

RSF recalled that the journalist had already been kidnapped in April for several hours, and severely beaten up.

RSF has named Iran’s strongman Ayatollah Khameneh'i as "one of the world's 30 worst enemies of press freedom". ENDS KAVIANI DISAPPEARED 25501