ARREST OF DISSIDENTS CONTINUE UNABATED
PARIS-TEHRAN 19 Feb. (IPS) Arrest of dissidents, mostly journalists, intellectuals, artists, lawyers and students continue unabated, despite a wave of protests from Iranian lawmakers, government officials and the Associations for the Defence of Journalists and human rights as well as international organisations, including the Paris-based press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) and the Rome-based Association of Iranian Journalists Abroad.
Though in surface the new wave of intimidation waged against the intelligentsia and students is carried out the Office of Public Places (OPP) that, as part of the Law Enforcement Forces (LEF), deals with shops and shop owners, public parks, bazaars etc, but all those summoned say they underwent thorough, heavy handed interrogations that regarded their personal lives and activities by interrogators that are from the intelligence and security services, urging them to stop their activities, using the most vulgar words and a deliberate insulting manners".
The latest known victims are student activists Mohammad Sa’idzadeh and Farzad Hamidi, lawyers Naser Zarafshan and Mohammad Ali Safari, film director, Bahram Beyza’i, artist Mrs Aidin Aqdashloo, philosopher Dariush Shayegan, journalists Mrs. Nooshabeh Amiri, Ali Dehbashi, Mohammad Bloori, Firooz Gooran, Mohammad Heydari, Sekineh Heydari and Hooshang Asadi and photojournalist Kaveh Golestan.
Mr. Safari, a well-known former parliamentary journalist turned lawyer defending dissidents, including Mr. Abbas Amir-Entezam, Iran and probably world’s oldest political prisoner after the Islamic revolution, died Wednesday morning of heart attack he suffered on his return from an interrogation at the OPP, sources said.
A source at the LEF confirmed Wednesday that all summons had been carried on orders from the Judiciary, a power that, like the LEF ad others, is directly controlled by the leader of the regime, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i.
In a letter to Intelligence and Interior ministries, Deputy Islamic Guidance Minister protested to the arrests and called on his colleagues to put an end to the "most illegal action" (of the OPP), observing that the continuation of the summunings would "dangerously harm" relations between the intellectuals with both the LEF and the Judiciary.
However, informed sources said the summons and arrests of dissidents goes on, regardless of protests from officials, including the Islamic Guidance Minister and some lawmakers.
In an interview with the Persian service of Radio France Internationale, Ms Azadeh Poorzand, the daughter of Siamak Poorzand, first journalist to be summoned by the OPP two months ago, said no one in the entire Khatami government and the Judiciary dared to answer her inquiries and letters concerning the fate of her father.
"They tell me there are 15 OPP, they laugh at me when I say I’m calling from Washington or keep calling words, ridiculing or snubbing me", she told the Radio.
Ms. Mahin Poorzand, a sister to Siamak, for her part, said that at one point, she had been told by the jailers that her brother had received and imported into the country four billions US Dollars to be given to other dissidents.
"I wonder if these people knows exactly how many zeros are in a billion, or how one can import four billions Dollars in a suitcase? She said, adding that her brother was living in an old, rented house and has only a 30-years old car that he does not know what to do with it.
Contacted by telephone, most of the summoned people refused to talk on the phone, saying they preferred to keep silent "at this moment".
But Mr. Gooran and some others who asked not to be named confirmed that once at the OPP, they would be conducted in a basement where people who "were obviously very well informed" interrogated them.
With one exception or two, they also confirmed that the interrogators were using a deliberate insulting and humiliating words, ordering them to stop their activities, including talking to foreign radio stations or writing in newspapers.
"They also wanted to now how much Mr. Poorzand had paid me", Mr. Gooran added, confirming what Mrs. Mahin Poorzand had said about the authorities charging his brother for having received 4 billions US Dollars.
Official sources told Tehran newspapers that the Interior Ministry had protested to the LEF about the arrests and had asked for explanations, but so far there has been no convincing answer.
"Mr. Za’idzadeh was arrested on Saturday by the plainclothes men and beaten badly and threaten to be killed "before being dumped in the street" while Mr. Hamidi had been detained just before the anniversary of the Islamic revolution on 11 February, despite his poor health conditions created following other forced interrogations, the Los Angeles-based Students Movement Co-ordinating Committee Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI) said in a statement issued Sunday.
"In addition, Tens of students remain in the jails of the regime in uncertain conditions", it further added,
"Iran's conservative authorities have "probably" arrested a dozen students, including some in charge of student publications, confirmed a senior government official, who criticised the crackdown as "illogical."
"Twelve students, some of them in charge of student publications, have been summoned and probably arrested during the past 15 days," deputy minister of research and technology Mr. Qolam-Reza Zarifian said Sunday.
"Unfortunately nowadays more students are being summoned, and we have been witnessing illogical acts by some extremist groups and some judicial institutions toward students", said Zarifian, quoted by the state IRNA agency.
"According to the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCCR), there are committees in the universities that are responsible for dealing with violations of laws by students", he said.
President Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami heads the SCCR.
Mr. Zarifian called on legal officials "to act lawfully and react against extremist groups" saying that the crackdown "will make the students disappointed and frustrated."
Late last month, Iranian student leader Heshamtollah Tabarzadi, a former radical Islamist who turned hostile to the Islamic regime's conservative clergy, was arrested and interrogated, his lawyer said.
Tabarzadi was also the editor-in-chief of reformist Student's Message weekly, one of dozens of pro-reform publications shut down by the conservative-led courts following a crackdown launched in April 2000.
Students and intellectuals were among the strongest supporters of Mr. Khatami in the 1997 and 2001 presidential elections, giving him landslide victory over his conservative challengers. ENDS ARRESTS CONTINUES 22202