ANOTHER POLITICAL ACTIVIST GONE MISSING AT TEHRAN AIRPORT
PARIS 9 Jun. (IPS) An Iranian political activist, Mr. Mehran Abdolbaqi has gone missing since 6 of June, according to a statement from the Iranian People’s Party, one of Iran’s oldest secularist political organisation.
Mr. Abdolbaqi was abducted from Mehrabad Airport three days ago as he was boarding a plane bound for Germany, where his brother lives, the IPP said, adding that the activist had been just freed from prison.
The small but popular IPP was led by Mr. Dariush Froohar, who was savagely murdered alongside his wife, Parvaneh, in their house in Tehran on late November 1998 by high-ranking agents of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, carrying out orders by some senior ruling clerics.
The same gang, in what became known as the "serial murders", had also assassinated four other intellectuals, human rights activists and political dissidents, Mr. Mohammad Mokhtari, Mohammad Ja’far Pooyandeh, Pirooz Davani and Ja’far Sharif.
Mr. Abdolbaghi was arrested and convicted to 9 year in prison for his participation at the July 1999 students unprecedented demonstrations against the Islamic Republic and its clerical leaders, particularly Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the regime, but the sentence had been reduced to three years jail by an Appeal Court.
The 6-days protest movement was triggered after Law Enforcement Forces and Islamist thugs, assisted by plainclothes members of the Intelligence Ministry attacked nightly students who had earlier in the evening protested against the closure of "Salam" daily, the forerunner of the Iranian independent publications that emerged after the victory of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997 presidential elections.
The demonstrations were eventually brutally crushed on orders from Mr. Khameneh’i, approved by Mr. Khatami, and hundreds of students were taken prisoners.
In its statement, the IPP said it fears that Mr. Abdolbaqi would be reserved the same fate as had Mr. Faraj Sarkoohi, a dissidents writer and intellectual, who disappeared from Mehrabad airport three years ago while going to join his wife in Germany.
At first, clerical authorities in Tehran claimed Mr. Sarkoohi had arrived at destination, but the German officials said they had no record of him arriving there. Mr. Sarkoohi suddenly reappeared and during an impromptu press conference held at the airport, said that he had gone to Germany, but didn’t show up to his wife and had instead travelled to Tajikistan to apply visa for Canada etc etc.
However, it emerged later that he had never left Iran, but was kept in an undisclosed jail.
Abduction by the clerics-led authorities is nothing new in Islamic Republic, the latest case being that of Mr. Siamk Poorzand, a 73 years old journalist abducted in November 2001 at his sister’s doorsteps. Kept incognito for more than 2 months, he also suddenly reported to have been tried by a court at Mehrabad, where he had "confessed to spying, attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic, receiving 4 billions US Dollars from foreign intelligence agencies to bribe Iranian journalists and having contacts with Iranian counter-revolutionaries etc. IRANIAN MISSING 9602