IRANIAN AUTHORITIES ALLOWED TWO STUDENTS ACTIVISTS OUT
PARIS 31 May (IPS) Two outspoken activist leaders of secularist Iranian students reached freedom outside Iran in less than one month, allowed by the authorities to leave the country legally.
Hamid Alizadeh, a leader of the Organisation for the Defence of Freedom (DOF) and Ms. Maloos Radnia, better known as Mariam Shancy, close to the National Union of Iranian Students and Alumni, reached Turkey and Sweden, using their own passports, obtained against an undisclosed sum of deposit money.
Some Iranian student’s organisations abroad, including the Los Angeles-based Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI), had claimed that Ms. Radnia had successfully escaped from Iran and intends to seek political asylum in Sweden.
But in an interview with the Persian service of the Prague-based, US-Funded Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, Ms. Shancy said she had left Iran on her own, using her passport and the most legal means.
Ms. Shansy was arrested following the July 1999 uprising of Iranian students alongside Mr. Manoochehr Mohammadi and Mr. Hamid Alizadeh.
The six-days unrest that shook the Islamic regime of Iran to the bones came after Law Enforcement Forces backed by Islamic vigilante and Special Forces of the Intelligence Ministry attacked by surprise at night students who had earlier protested peacefully in their dormitory the closure of Salam newspaper, the pioneer of Iranian reformist publications, closed on orders of Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the lamed leader of the Islamic Republic.
Arrested by the authorities alongside other students and subject to tortures while in prison, both Ms. Shancy and Mr. Mohammadi were shown later on the leader-controlled Iranian Television, with their tumefied visages bearing marks of injuries, "confessing" to "contacts" with Iranian "counter-revolutionaries" abroad, receiving money and spying equipments from them, "antigovernment propaganda against the Islamic Republic", "subversive activities", and "aiming at toppling the sacred Islamic regime of Iran".
But while Ms. Shansy escaped from death penalty following an unprecedented wave of international protest and the intervention of organism such as the "United Nations" and "Amnesty International", Mr. Mohammadi was given a 13 years jail sentence.
Mr. Alizadeh reached Ankara early this month, travelling by bus in the company of his wife, Marzieh and their three children.
He had been kept in Evin prison, where he was in contact with other leading political prisoners, students and journalists including some most influential of them, like Akbar Ganji, Emameddin Baqi, Latif Safari, Masha’allah Shamsolva’ezin, Ali Afshari and Ezzatollah Sahhabi.
Speaking to Iran Press Service in t he Turkish Capital, Mr. Alizadeh described the situation of the Islamic regime on the eve of the forthcoming presidential elections as "explosive" and warned the authorities that if they fail to heed and hear the public, particularly the young and the students, they could face the same fate as either the former Romanian dictator Ceausescu or Milosevic of Yugoslavia.
"The Islamic Republic is on the losing either way: It will lose if it open up, as demanded by the public, it will lose if it decides to impose more clampdown, to close the already suffocating political atmosphere", Mr. Alizadeh said, talking on the future of the present Iranian system.
He confirmed that some of the prisoners, namely Afshari, Sahhabi, Shamsolva’ezin and Hojjatoleslam Hasan Yusefi-Eshkevari, the outspoken Islamist reformer were all transferred to a special prison "to be prepared for TV confessions". ENDS SHANCY ESCAPED 31501