IRANIAN JUDICIARY SAY IFM NOT PLOTTING AGAINST THE REGIME

TEHRAN 23 Dec. (IPS) The statement by the Hojjatoeslam Assadollah Mobasheri, Head of the Islamic Revolution Tribunal (IRT) of Tehran, announcing that the Nationalist-religious and the Iran Freedom Movement (IFM) are not considered as groups "plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic" of Iran is seen as a "great achievement" by the European Union and its policy of "positive engaging" the regime of the ruling Iranian ayatollahs.

In recent declarations, Mr. Mobbasheri had explained that the IFM and the Nationalist-religious had not been involved in "active plots" aimed at overthrowing the Islamic Republic.

His remarks to the independent Students News Agency ISNA was immediately interpreted as a "U-turn" by the regime’s Judiciary and a step-back from the ruling conservatives.

However, he was contradicted Sunday by his official spokesman who confirmed that the groups remain accused of activities against the security of the regime.

More than 60 senior activists of the Nationalist-religious groups and members of the IFM, some of them very old and in poor health, were rounded up nightly at their residences in Tehran and several major cities on the eve of the Iranian year of 1379 (mid-March 2000), accused of plotting secretly to topple the present theocracy by way of armed uprising and replacing it with a secular regime.

The Islamic Revolution Tribunal, which deals with matters related to national security, also pronounced both groups as illegal and banned them from all political activities.

The Information (Intelligence) Minister, Hojjatoleslam Ali Yoonesi, had told lawmakers that in his view, none of the groups were involved in such an activity and none of the detained could be considered as "plotters".

Asked by ISNA why, in its statements at the time of the mass arrest of Nationalist-religious and the IFM members, the Islamic Revolution Court had tagged tem as "seditious" movements aiming "toppling" the ruling system, Mr. Mobbasheri explained, "statement is different from verdict, the last decision belonging to the judge".

"What Mr. Mobbasheri has said was that the IFM was not aiming at toppling the Islamic Republic by ways of arms and violence, which amounts to fighting God, but by pacific methods, such as cultural infiltration and propaganda", the IRT’s Public Relation Department said in its rather laconic explanations that reminds of George Orwell’s "Doubble Speak".

But neither the spokesman, nor Mr. Mobbasheri explained why then the IFM and the Nationals-religious had been declared illegal and their activities banned?

According to both Iranian and EU sources and diplomats, the European delegation had reiterated that the conclusion of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with Tehran could not be separated from the Iranian side paying full respect for human rights.

The "list" of conditions put by the EU to the Iranians also included freeing political prisoners, abolishing torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners, ending the ban imposed on more than eighty Iranian independent and reform-seeking publications, responding positively to the Iranian people’s aspirations fro democratic principles, disengaging from support provided to hard line Arab and Palestinian groups opposed to peace with Israel and renouncing to built a nuclear arsenal.

"It is wrong to think that concerning the present Iranian regime, the Americans and the Europeans are opposed to each other. I think that they represents the two sides of the same coin", commented Mr. Ahmad Ahrar, an influential Iranian political analyst and columnist.

"Thinking that the Europeans could influence the Iranian clerics without having firm backing from Washington is a wishful thinking. Each side of the Atlantic played his own role, leaving to the Iranian people to do the rest", he added.

Mr. Ahmad Zeydabadi, an independent journalist close to the Nationalist-religious confirmed, observing that making contradictory statements is "very usual" for the Iranian Judiciary.