IRANIANS COMMEMORATED THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE SERIAL MURDERS
TEHRAN, 23 Nov. (IPS) Hundreds of Iranians
commemorated Sunday the fifth anniversary of the savage murders of several
influential and popular political and intellectual dissidents by high-ranking
officials of the Intelligence Ministry and called greater political freedom,
justice and above all, secularism.
Mr. Darioosh Foroohar, the 70 years-old leader of the Iranian People’s Party (IPP), a small but one of Iran’s oldest political organisation and his wife, Parvaneh, were "slaughtered" on 22 November 1998 by the Ministry’s agents. Mrs. Foroohar was stabbed 23 times and her breasts cut while her charismatic husband was decapited as a deputy Intelligence minister and four of his close colleagues were supervising the killings.
A day latter, three prominent writer, poet and human rights activists, namely Mohammad Mokhtari, Mohammad Ja’far Pooyandeh and Majid Sharif were found dead, as a companion of the Foroohars, Mr. Pirooz Davani, abducted earlier, could not be traced.
A number of leading scholars, journalists, lawyers, artists and intellectuals, including Mrs. Shirin Ebadi this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner attended the ceremonies, held in a mosque.
Many in the crowd chanted slogans including "referendum, referendum", "political prisoners should be freed", "freedom, Republic", "participation in elections: treason" and "Khatami, Khatami, resignation, resignation", according to eyewitnesses.
There were also brief clashes between photographers and the mourners with plainclothes members of the hard line Islamic vigilante group Ansar Hezbollah, armed with knives, clubs and chains and corresponding with talky-walky, correspondents for the French news agency AFP and the independent Iranian Students news agency ISNA at the scene reported.
But police armed with batons were also out in force to prevent any serious violence and at times, stopped the vigilante to disturb the ceremonies.
In a short speech, Ms. Parastoo Foroohar the daughter of the murdered couple said the families of the victims were not after revenge, but justice and repeated that after five years of constant efforts to have the real culprits who ordered the assassinations identified, nothing had been done.
The authorities blamed the killings of "rogue elements" from the Intelligence Ministry, led by Mr. Sa’id Emami, a senior deputy minister who killed himself in prison.
But as 10 other agents arrested for their participation in the murders were released, several influential journalists and scholars, including Mr. Akbar Ganji, Mohammad Qoochani, Emadeddin Baqi and Hojjatoleslam Mohsen kadivar were jailed after they tried to investigate the case, known as "Serial murders".
"The show that Iran's judiciary put on in the name of justice was a double blow against the dead and those left behind," she told the gathering. "It was an oppression of a nation seeking justice", she told the crowd.
Mr. Ganji and Mr. Naser Zarafshan, an outspoken lawyer defending the case of the Serial Murders on behalf of Ms Parastoo and her brother, Arash, are still in jail."The people who objected to this distorted case and insisted on revealing the truth had to pay a very heavy price," she added, pointing to a wave of arrests of dissidents and the shut down of pro-reform newspapers by the judiciary.
The killings, she said amid warm applauses from the audience, had been exploited as part of "political leverage between rival political groups" while "justice was sacrificed for expediency".
Mr Kadivar, a cleric who calls fro reforms in Islam who is also the head of the Iranian Centre for the Protection of Journalists, said the family had been left with little other choice but to lodge a complaint with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
"Five years ago, I went to prison, accused of having protested to the way the (Judiciary) was handling the case of the serial murders. Today, I’m sad to have nothing to add to my earlier position on that matter", he observed, adding: "unfortunately, no one except the families of the victims is interested to the case".
In his view, the fact that the real culprits – those who ordered the assassinations as well as those who carried them -- have not been clearly identified does not guarantee that such tragedies would not be repeated.
Other orators like Mr. Ali Akbar Mo’infar, an Oil Minister in the first post revolutionary government called for a radical change in the Constitution.
"We warn from here all the criminals who ordered the murders, those who executed the orders, that the case is open and would not be closed until the culprits, whoever they are in no matter position are identified and receive proper punishment", said Mr. Mohammad Hoseyn Shahveysi, a close friend and companion of the Foroohars. ENDS SERIAL MURDERS ANNIVERSARY 231103