Iranian Alert -- DAY 38 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movment in Iran from being reported.

From jamming satellite broadcasts, to prohibiting news reporters from covering any demonstrations to shutting down all cell phones and even hiring foreign security to control the population, the regime is doing everything in its power to keep the popular movement from expressing its demand for an end of the regime.

These efforts by the regime, while successful in the short term, do not resolve the fundamental reasons why this regime is crumbling from within.

Iran is a country ready for a regime change. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary.

Please continue to join us here, post your news stories and comments to this thread.

LEADER APPOINTED PROSECUTOR MORTAZAVI MURDERED ZAHRA KAZEMI

PARIS 17 July (IPS) It is now becoming clear that the man who caused the death of Ms. Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-born, Canadian photojournalist is Mr. Sa’id Mortazavi, promoted recently by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the Islamic Republic as the Prosecutor of Tehran and the Islamic Revolution tribunal.

Ms. Kazemi, 54, was detained on 23 June in front of the Evin prison and died in hospital on 11 July of what Iranian officials admitted Wednesday as brain hemorrhage due to "blows" received on her head during interrogations at the Intelligence Ministry.

At first, Iranian authorities said the photographer died from a brain stroke, but on Wednesday, and under mounting pressures from the international human rights and press organizations, Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Ali Abtahi, President Mohammad Khatami’s deputy for legal and parliamentary affairs confirmed for the first time officially that Ms. Kazemi died of brain bleeding "due to blows on her head".

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said during a conference call with media on Wednesday that he had been told by his Iranian counterpart that Ms. Kazemi died of a fractured skull; although how she got the fatal injury had not been determined.

"The incident has no outcome other than tarnishing our international image at a time when we are in deep crisis at home and abroad", Abtahi told journalists.

Informed sources, speaking on conditions of anonymity, revealed Thursday that the arrest of Ms. Kazemi was ordered by Mr. Mortazavi who personally interrogated the photojournalist and beat her "frequently" in order "to force her to reveal the country that had sent her to Iran for espionage".

"Mortazavi personally beat on Kazemi’s head with his shoe", the French daily "Liberation" reported on Thursday, quoting "well-informed Iranian sources.

"The men who arrested Ms. Kazemi were plainclothes thugs belonging to Mr. Mortazavi, who interrogated her at his own office. During the 3-4 days she was there, the photographer was under constant tortures and savagely beaten up by Mr. Mortazavi and other interrogators from the Judiciary", confirmed Dr. Karim Lahji, an outstanding Iranian jurist and lawyer based in Paris.

"She was handed over to the Information Ministry after she suffered injuries. There, people, seeing her bad physical state, send her to the medical department, where doctors immediately decided to transfer her to the Baqiatollah hospital, where she went into coma before dying", added Lahiji, who now acts as defence for Ms. Kazemi’s 26 years-old Stephen Hachemi.

Both the Iranian Islamic Human Rights Committee and the Majles’ Foreign Affairs and Security Committee have also confirmed that Ms. Kazemi was under the custody of the leader-controlled Judiciary and Tehran’s prosecutor, interrogated and tortured before being handed over to the Information Ministry.

Informed sources told Iran Press Service that at least four Iranian journalists, namely Reza Alijani, Hoda Saber, Taqi Rahmani and Amir Teyrani, all close to the Nationalist-religious movements, are in Mortazavi’s custody and tortured.

Rejecting demands by the Canadian government, Stephen Hachemi and Iranian and international human rights and press groups for the transfer of Ms. Katemi’s body to Montreal for autopsy, Iranian government’s official spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said on Wednesday that once identified and arrested, the would be culprits would be handed over to the Judiciary, meaning to Judge Mortazavi, the very man that murdered the journalist.

Tehran, which insists adamantly that Ms. Kazemi is an Iranian citizen and never mention her Canadian citizenship, have so far rejected the demands, but promised Ottawa that they would do "all they can" to have the culprits punished according to Iranian laws.

"If proved that she was spying, then there would be no culprits", one Iranian journalist noted, reminding that the Iranian Judiciary would eventually take up that accusation to absolve itself from charges of manslaughter.

Iranian conservatives-controlled newspapers have criticised Mr. Khatami for naming an investigation committee in the case of Ms. Kazemi’s death and imply indirectly that she might have been a spy, since she had been arrested while taking pictures near the notorious Evin prison, a restricted area.

"If crimes have been committed, we are demanding of the Iranian government to punish those who committed the crime and we will push that case", Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said after meeting Chilean President Ricardo Lagos.

"Because if it is the case, it's completely unacceptable that a journalist goes there to do professional work and is threatened that way".

In response to a statement by Chretien earlier this week that Canada-Iran relations would be affected if Iran does not transfer Kazemi's body to Canada, Ramezanzadeh said Chretien has not considered international law.

"Kazemi is an Iranian and therefore subject to national law", Ramezanzadeh observed.

But jurists say since Kazemi is also a Canadian citizen, therefore Canada has the right to ask for the body to be returned to her homeland.

In faxes to both the lamed and unpopular Iranian leader and the powerless president, the Rome-based Association of Iranian Journalists Abroad (AIJA) said it holds Mr. Khameneh'i as the "only person responsible for the murder of Ms. Kazemi and asked both men to say:

Who ordered the arrest of Ms. Kazemi?

Who were those who arrested her?

Why the authorities did not report on her arrest?

Where she had been held and who were the interrogators?

Why she was hospitalized in a hospital belonging to the Revolutionary Guards?

Other Iranian experts, speaking to the reformers-controlled "Emrooz" (Today) internet newspaper, asked: Was the photojournalist beaten up and if the answer if positive, why?

Was she also beaten while in prison?

Where was she held before being transferred to hospital?

Why the authorities first claimed Ms. Kazemi died on brain stroke?

Why it was Mortazavi who wrote the news about the death and passed it to Mr. (Mohammad Hoseyn) Khoshvaqt to be published in the name of the Guidance Ministry?

What are the connections between the death of Ms. Kazemi with Mr. Mortazavi?

If the photographer was Iranian, why it was the General Director (of the Guidance Ministry) in charge of Foreign Press that announced the death?

Which organs want the body be buried the soonest possible?

Why it was announced that Ms. Kazemi was a spy? Were the accusations examined? And by which organs? ENDS JOURNALIST DIES 17703

http://www.iran-press-service.com/

Kuwait Confirms al-Qaeda Spokesman is in Iran

July 17, 2003
BBC Monitoring
Frank Gardner

Kuwait has acknowledged for the first time that one of its former citizens, the al-Qaeda spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, is in Iranian custody.

There had been earlier unconfirmed reports that Iran was holding him but on Thursday, Kuwait's official news agency, Kuna, confirmed to the BBC that the Kuwaiti Government had turned down an offer by Iran to extradite Mr Abu Ghaith to Kuwait.

The Kuwaiti Interior Minister, Sheikh Nawaf al-Sabah, was quoted as saying his country did not want to take charge of the al-Qaeda spokesman.

He said his Kuwaiti citizenship had been withdrawn after the attacks of 11 September.

Wanted man

British government officials said on Thursday they were aware that Iran was holding a number of al-Qaeda suspects.

But they said they could not confirm if Mr Abu Ghaith was amongst them.

It is not clear when he was captured, but he has certainly been a key figure in al-Qaeda's leadership.

He has appeared on several video and audio tapes, claiming responsibility for al-Qaeda attacks.

The tapes have a large audience in the Gulf.

After the attacks of 11 September, Mr Abu Ghaith promised "a storm of aeroplanes" would hit American targets.

He is one of America's most wanted al-Qaeda suspects.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3074785.stm

No Family Fight
The Iranian struggle for freedom.

By Mohammad Parvin
July 17, 2003, 9:15 a.m.
National Review Online

A Persian proverb accurately characterizes the current U.S. policy toward Iran: "Pushing away with feet while pulling forward with hands." On the one hand, President Bush rightly recognizes the Iranian mullahcracy as a terrorist regime and acknowledges the struggle of the Iranian people to overthrow it. At the same time, his secretary of state, Colin Powell, expresses opposing views quite frequently. In his shocking July 3 remarks, Powell called the recent uprising in Iran a "family fight" and cautioned that President Mohammad Khatami had been elected in a free election. In the process of justifying his erroneous assessment of the elections in Iran, he insulted the Iranian people by saying that: "President Khatami was elected by his people, not in an American kind of election, but in an election, essentially tapped into the desires of the people."

Powell, of course, has it all wrong. Either his knowledge about Iran is very limited or he has been won over by the Islamic Republic of Iran's (IRI) lobby groups. The recent uprising in Iran was anything but a "family fight."

Secretary Powell, haven't you heard the Iranian people's slogans in recent demonstrations, reported by many Western correspondents? Does "Death to Khamenei" or "Shame on Khatami" signify a "family fight"? How else do you expect the people to show their hatred for this terrorist regime and its frightening repression? How many students have to be arrested, tortured, and executed before you acknowledge that the Iranian people do not want this regime? Did you notice that the majority of Iranians stayed away from the recent elections in Iran, in spite of fierce campaign and constant appeals by Khatami?

Powell should acknowledge that human rights and the principles of democracy are universal and must be applied to the Iranian people the same way that they are applied to the Americans.

The U.S. Department of State has identified Iran as one of the top terrorist regimes in the world. What else do you need to be convinced that IRI is a terrorist regime and should not be supported by the U.S. and the world community? This regime has been condemned eight times by a U.S. federal court for terror counts against the U.S. citizens. This regime has been involved in many terrorist acts — including bombings of a Jewish center in Argentina and of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed, among others, U.S. Marines. Iranian dissidents have been assassinated, even abroad, by agents of the Iranian government.

The oil companies' lobby groups and their Iranian fronts — such as the American Iranian Council (AIC) and a whole host of other individuals-and many U.S. lawmakers painted the U.S./Iran relationship as a black-and-white one. They set up a U.S. military-intervention scenario against Iran and conclude (very conveniently) that to avoid disastrous battlefield consequences, the U.S. should establish dialogue and trade with IRI instead!

The ideal course — which is desired by freedom-loving Iranians and serves the best interests of the United States — is to be found in neither of these two ways.

The humane alternative is for the U.S. to recognize the Iranian people's struggle for democracy and formally declare that it does not recognize the Islamic regime of Iran as the representative of the Iranian people. The U.S. should allow the people of Iran regain their freedom — and change the regime on their own.

— Mohammad Parvin is an adjunct professor at California State University and director of the Mission for Establishment of Human Rights in Iran.

http://nationalreview.com/comment/comment-parvin071703.asp

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

AL-DA'WAH OFFICIAL DISCUSSES PARTY SPLIT.

Khudir Ja'afar from the Islamic Al-Da'wah party discussed the status of his party following reports of an internal split between those members inside Iraq and those in the diaspora, in an interview with the London-based "Al-Hayat" daily, published on 15 July.

Ja'afar indicated in the interview that while differences exist between the two groups, it should not be interpreted as a split within the party, saying, "We called ourselves the internal organization because we aimed our activity toward inside Iraq. We are two branches of the same party and are in agreement on almost all matters." He added that the differences that exist "are not of a political nature but of an administrative dimension," and said efforts were under way to settle them.

Asked which religious leadership the group follows, al-Ja'afar stressed that Al-Da'wah's "understanding of political action doesn't call for a religious leadership." He said that the party is supported by Ayatollah Kazim al-Ha'iri, but cautioned that it does not subscribe any one person to a single leadership role. "Some of us follow [Muqtada] al-Sadr, while others follow [Muhammad Baqir] al-Hakim or [Grand Ayatollah Ali] al-Sistani," he added. Regarding the position of the Al-Najaf Hawzah (religious seminary) vis-à-vis other hawzahs he said, "The Hawzah is one; there is no Hawzah that is mute while another speaks. We believe that Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, the founder of Al-Da'wah Party deepened Islamic thought, while Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr expanded the horizon of the Islamic movement and turned it into a popular current. It is the Sadr school in its two branches."

Regarding the Vilayet Al-Faqih (rule of the jurists), Ja'afar told "Al-Hayat," "We call for upholding the Vilayet Al-Faqih," but, he added, "it is not necessary that the Faqih who rules in Iran should be the same to rule in Iraq or Lebanon. We support the multiplicity of the Vilayet Al-Fakih. Ja'afar said that the Al-Da'wah would participate in a coalition government in Iraq, as long as that government draws its legitimacy from the Iraqi people. He called on the U.S.-led coalition forces to remain in Iraq until order is established, saying, "If the Americans withdraw, the regime will immediately be restored to power." (Kathleen Ridolfo)

Source: RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT Vol. 6, No. 31, 17 July 2003

Comment:
Bad news for the killers of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who was hacked to death near the holy shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf by Jamaat al-Sadr al-Thani led by the thug Moqtada Sadr i.e. followers of the late Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al Sadr.

Police warn Iranians against travelling to Iraq

Tehran, July 17, IRNA -- Police on Wednesday warned Iranians against travelling to Iraq due to the "special and extraordinary situation" of that country.

The advisory came as police announced that 22 Iranians, who had illegally ventured into Iraq, were killed in recent months, obviously after a US-led invasion started to unseat Saddam Hussein.

Twelve others were injured after being beaten up in the period, the police information office said, adding "the existing situation in Iraq is so that any unpalatable incident may happen any time".

It also cited cases of harassment and verbal insult. Those killed either took up routes across hard passes or the lands which were banned to approach or were filled with mines, remaining from the 1980-1988 Iraqi-imposed war against Iran, the office added.

Iranians mostly visit Iraq for pilgrimage, where several Shia imams are buried. The former Baath regime had restricted pilgrimage to the holy sites, but little improvement has been made since Saddam's collapse.

This is because the US-led invasion of Iraq has plunged the country into insecurity and chaos, with looting, robbery and harassment as well as other forms of crimes being rampant.

Iranian officials had warned against visiting Iraq in the run-up to U.S.-led invasion. Tehran closed its borders with Iraq as the attack began.

Meanwhile, the fate of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Baghdad now remains in limbo in the absence of a genuine Iraqi authority in the country since the Islamic Republic, which strongly opposed the invasion, holds no ties with the invading sides.

Police in the western border city of Sanandaj said last month that they had arrested two Iraqi women who tried to sneak into Iran with two sacks containing alcohol as well as two airguns.

The women, however, were Iraqi refugees in the Islamic Republic, who were returning after visiting their relatives in northern Iraq, a provincial governor said.

There are more than 200,000 Iraqi refugees in Iran now, with UN officials saying the figure accounts for more than half of the Iraqi refugee population in the world. Iranian officials have charged that US-led coalition in Iraq were hindering the process of repatriating refugees. BH/JB End

http://www.irna.ir/en/tnews/030718005932.etn06.shtml

Comment: Beware of heavily armed females

Western corporations abet dictatorships

By Prima News Agency
Jul 17, 2003

IRAN. Iranian authorities have reportedly purchased from western companies special electronic devices for jamming foreign television broadcasts and for monitoring ‘inbound’ phone calls from abroad. The German “Siemens” and the Japanese “NEC” are said to be among the suppliers.

According to the Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI), the Swedish “Ericsson” and the French “Alcatel” used to be the main suppliers of such devices. Now other companies replaced them. The SMCCDI reported that in June of this year German and South Korean technicians installed in Tehran and Esfahan jamming devices to block signals of television companies set by Iranian emigrants in the United States. Their broadcasts which could be received in Iran only through satellite dishes have become extremely popular in Iran. During some programs TV presenters get many live phone calls from Iran and answer them on air.

The SMCCDI reported that German telecommunication experts have installed in the Farah Abad telecommunication center equipment which allows the Islamic regime to have an unprecedented control of inbound calls to Iran from abroad, to register all phone numbers which receive calls from abroad, and store phone numbers, used by abroad based opponents to the regime. The Farah Abad telecommunication center was placed under the control of the intelligence office of the Revolution Guards.

On July 15, Kenneth Tomlinson, who oversees the Voice of America as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, said that Cuban authorities have been jamming signals of the two Persian channels, Azadi Television and Pars Television, that broadcast into Iran, according to The Associated Press. Azadi and Pars are the Los-Angeles-based television channels founded by Iranian emigrants.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1213.shtml

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