Replies

Entire world are looking at Iran's election process, Karroubi

Jan 27, 2004, 03:17

Speaker Mehdi Karroubi said on Monday that the entire world are looking at the process of the seventh parliamentary election and the extent of public participation in the polls.

In a meeting with members of the headquarters in charge of celebrating the ten-day Fajr (February 1-11), Karroubi said that the late Imam Khomeini attached high importance to people's presence in the election.

In the first year after victory of the Islamic revolution, the late Imam Khomeini invited people five times to hold election, Because he believed that the people themselves should lay the foundation of the Islamic Republic.

"On the early days after victory of the Islamic revolution, the late Imam Khomeini could have selected the president or other top officials, but, he wanted the people to do the job themselves thanks to the democratic nature of the Islamic Republic.

"The Iranian people want to make sure that their personality is respected and that they will punish those who may be responsible for insulting them or their thoughts," Karroubi said.

"We should make effort to hold ten-day dawn celebrations magnificently. As long as we are getting away from the time of victory of the Islamic revolution and the imposed war era, certain issues are losing their weight, even those loyal to the values of the Islamic Revolution are currently being alienated," he said.

"Our friends and enemies will consider two matters in the next month:
1. How the system respects the people's constitutional rights by creating no illegal obstacles to their representatives and
2. Presence of people in the election," Karroubi said.

"There are two ways for a government to remain in power, it should either rely on people or rely on foreign powers. There is not a third option to remain in power," he said.

"The public support for the late Imam Khomeini played a key role in his leadership. Despite the difficulty of losing him, at least nine million people gathered at Tehran Mosalla to take part in the funeral procession from Mosalla to Behesht-e Zahra cemetery," Karroubi said.

"Unfortunately, part of people's expectations from the Islamic Republic has not been realized. Their political and economic rights have not been respected. We should stick to the slogan of independence, freedom and the Islamic Republic, otherwise, we will lead a gloomy life," he said.

Prior to Karroubi's remarks, the head of the headquarters in charge of celebrating ten-day Fajr (Dawn) said that 400 teams will organize the celebrations of 25th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution throughout the country.

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_1501.shtml

Iran and Castro: October surprises

Washington Times
Constantine C. Menges
1.27.2004

The clerical dictatorship in Iran wants the defeat of President Bush because his commitment to political democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq and his endorsement of freedom for the people of Iran threatens a regime that knows it is deeply unpopular. Mr. Castro also wants to see Bush defeated because his determination to help democratic allies could threaten the emerging pro-Castro axis in Latin America. Both dictatorships have plans that could result in visible and sharp foreign policy setbacks that might cost President Bush the 2004 election.

Although vulnerable at home the Iranian clerical regime has since 1979 been, in the words of the U.S. government, the "most active state sponsor of terrorism." Since the removal of the Taliban in November 2001, Iran has used its covert and propaganda assets to destabilize Afghanistan. Iran is also is highly active in helping pro-Iranian-Shi'ite extremist group take power in Iraq using elements of the Shi'ite clergy, an Iranian-funded political movement with an armed wing, a radical pro-Iranian cleric and a massive propaganda operation (39 radio and television stations).

This might succeed through a variety of means by October 2004. If so, it would be a major foreign policy defeat if the Bush administration's liberation of Iraq were to result in "two Irans."

In parallel with this ongoing but still mostly unrecognized Iranian covert action, there are reliable reports of numbers of Iranian-supported Hezbollah terrorists infiltrating into Iraq from their bases in Syrian-occupied Lebanon. It is quite likely they are planning massive terrorist attacks on U.S. forces for the spring, summer and fall of 2004 as well as the taking of U.S. hostages.

These hostages would likely be made available to the media with the intention of demonstrating the failure of the Bush policy and of creating public sympathy in the U.S. for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

In the Americas, Mr. Castro has been using a deceptive political strategy and long-established relations with radical leaders who are not formally communist to establish a new axis with governments friendly to him. These now include 231 million people ruled by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Lula da Silva in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador and the shadow power of Evo Morales and Felipe Quispe in Bolivia, who recently removed the elected president.

The Organization of American States expelled Mr. Castro in 1962 because of his support for terrorism and armed subversion against a number of countries including Colombia, where the communist guerrillas continue their fight to take power. In June 2004, the OAS will meet in Ecuador to choose a new secretary general. Right now, it is very likely the candidate favored by Mr. Castro and his friends — Mr. Chavez, Mr. da Silva, Mr. Gutierrez— will be selected. This is partly because the combination of 44 years of Cuban covert and open political operations and millions of dollars in discount price oil sales provided by Mr. Chavez to Caribbean and other countries are likely to produce the needed votes.

It is also because the pro-Castro axis will back a "respectable" candidate who will have committed in advance or who will be seen as persuadable on the next step — the readmission of the Castro regime to the OAS. This would likely occur in October 2004 perhaps with Mr. Castro holding a press conference in Washington D.C. and then walking in triumph past the White House to the OAS to be greeted by thunderous applause.

Fortunately, there are political counter strategies, which can still prevent both these negative October surprises.

Constantine C. Menges, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, is a former special presidential assistant for national security affairs. His forthcoming book is "2008: The Preventable War — The Strategic Challenge of China and Russia."

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040126-083602-5200r.htm

U.S. Media Shuts Its Eyes Again as Journalist Exposes Islamic Regime

January 26, 2004
Radio Sedaye Iran
Alireza Sabouri

Near the end of 2003, London-based Channel 4 aired the controversial documentary "Forbidden Iran" presented by the international news magazine Frontline. The film includes a harrowing report from inside Iran, where, a Canadian reporter, Jane Kokan, risks her life to secretly film shocking evidence of a government sponsored reign of terror.

In "Forbidden Iran" Kokan escapes the constant surveillance of the Iranian authorities to record exclusive interviews detailing the systematic torture and execution of students opposed to the Islamic Republic regime. The documentary was graphic enough to contain some horrific scenes of stoning, eye-poking and dismembering of human limbs. This is the story which a brave Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian journalist of Iranian descent, was working on when she was captured, tortured and murdered by the Islamic Republic regime.

It was a surprise that this film was being aired in Britain, a country whose government continues to help preserve, engage and conduct vast financial negotiations with the Islamic Republic regime at the expense of 70 million Iranians who desire its obliteration. Accordingly, one could only imagine the delight of Iranians around the world when it was announced that "Forbidden Iran" was to be aired in the United States in January of 2004.

There was hope that perhaps the broadcast would also illuminate the true nature of the Islamic Republic regime for many U.S. based journalists who passively continue to play a part in the regime's agenda by depicting its dynamics as a struggle for democracy by so-called "reformists" against conservatives.

The only question that remained was which of the major U.S. based networks would be the first to air the film. Would it be NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox, or CNBC ?

The answer: None of the above, but rather your local PBS station which would air an edited, although still revealing, version of the film. Need one say more?

Following the PBS broadcast of " Forbidden Iran," there was no mention of the film on any major local or national media outlet, except for the various U.S. based Farsi language television and radio shows. There was no mention of the film either by the usual self-appointed Iran experts in the media, such as Elaine Sciolino, Robin Wright, or Christianne Amanpour. Could it be that the film contradicted years worth of reporting by these individuals, who professed that they had access to the genuine truth of events in Iran? That is something to think about.

One can recall the feeding frenzy of many distinguished U.S. networks and journalists during the 1978-1979 period of turmoil in Iran prior to the establishment of the Islamic regime. How can anyone forget the images of ABC's Peter Jennings chatting with Ayatollah Khomeini during his Air France flight into Tehran? It also brings to mind the exaggerated claims by the leaders of the Islamic revolution and a disinformation campaign against the Iranian monarchy, not to mention western media reports, that the Imperial regime was guilty of "mass murders."

These allegations were finally challenged by a former researcher at the Martyrs Foundation (Bonyad Shahid). The findings by Emad al-Din Baghi caused a stir in the Islamic Republic and were banned from publication, for they boldly question the true number of casualties (3,164 for all political armed struggles in over 16 years between 1963 and 1979) suffered by the anti-Shah movement. The reason given was that to pursue the matter would run contrary to the statements made by the late Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors who claimed that "60,000 men, women and children were martyred by the Shah's regime."

Needless to say, none of the above mentioned distinguished members and networks of the press have followed up on the inaccuracies of their prior reports. More important, however, is the fact that today, they shut their eyes and ears to the images and voices of 70 million Iranians who have experienced the tragedies of the "story" they fueled and covered in the late seventies.

In the same regard, it is ironic that today, as Iranians are about to initiate a second mass boycott in less than a year of upcoming pseudo-elections staged by the Islamic theocracy, the majority of journalists of western media are reporting on yet another imaginary struggle for democracy by so-called "reformists" against conservatives.

In fact, the January 12, 2004, edition of the Los Angeles Times featured a front page picture and article of the so-called pre-election crisis in the Islamic Republic majlis between liberal-minded reformist candidates and conservatives in the Guardian Council. This is the same Los Angeles Times which did not print a single word about "Forbidden Iran" after it was aired.

It appears that western media has generally failed in anyway to question the status quo in Iran. In other words, it has failed in recognizing what so many Iranians already know: there can be no democracy within a theocracy which, by definition, requires a marriage between religion and government.

Those who believe that "liberalism" can exist within the framework of this theocratic regime have forgotten that the first pillar of "liberalism" is the preservation of human rights, human life, liberty, and freedom. A form of government whose foundation and constitution does not respect human life, that stones women and men to death, that dismembers the hands and arms of its opponents, tortures and rapes children and takes away human dignity, liberty, and freedom should not be ever be labeled as such.

To tolerate such a government, be they so-called "reformist" or conservative, and accept it as the legitimate representative of Iran's people and culture, as has been done in the past 25 years by western governments and media, is to refute one's own values.

In March of 2003, municipal elections in Iran drew less than twelve percent of eligible voters and February 2004 is shaping up to be no different. Despite the growing media awareness of the orchestrated political soap-opera in Iran, the February elections in Iran have become a moot point for Iranians. It is simply a desperate attempt by a regime that knows that its citizens hold it in the lowest regard and want nothing more than to see it dissolved.

When the situation in Iran is at issue, it is important to remember that the Iranian regime is not embraced at all by the vast majority of citizens in Iran. Iranians have become disillusioned with the non-agenda of the so-called "reformist" camp.

The people of Iran want to see the world stand firm against the Islamic regime. What is important for the people of Iran after so many years of suffering is to see the international community, for a change, shift their focus on them rather than trying to cut a deal with the current regime or appease such a regime. They seek international intervention only through moral support and accurate reporting of their struggle to bring about a national referendum to select a secular democratic alternative completely separate from any Islamic theocracy.

As for the media, true journalists should take another look at the constitution of the Islamic Republic and ask themselves how much longer are they willing to help legitimize a regime and form of government that is not representative of its people and is riddled with prejudicial laws.

http://www.krsi.net/news/detail.asp?NewsID=545

Enlisting American Investors in the Fight Against WMD Proliferation

January 27, 2004
Center for Security Policy
centerforsecuritypolicy.org

Just when it appeared that neither intelligence operations nor inspections nor international arms and export control regimes can be relied upon to protect us from the nexus of terror and WMD proliferation, concerned citizens have received some important words of encouragement – from an unlikely source: CBS’ popular TV news magazine, “60 Minutes.”

On Sunday night, “60 Minutes” called the attention of its millions of American viewers to a dirty little secret: “Just about everyone with a 401(k) pension plan or mutual fund has money invested in companies that are doing business in so-called rogue states. In other words, there are U.S. companies that are helping drive the economies of countries like Iran, Syria and Libya that have sponsored terrorists.”

Citing a powerful commercial data base developed by Conflict Securities Advisory Group (CSAG), the news program established that roughly 400 publicly traded companies – some headquartered in this country, many more overseas – are effectively enabling terrorism. One of those who told “60 Minutes” he felt “anger” that investors were unwittingly helping our enemies was William Thompson, New York City’s comptroller, a job that makes him responsible for $80 billion in city workers’ pension funds.

Reporter Lesley Stahl spoke to Thompson about Iran, whose leaders he notes earn “most of their revenues through their oil industry.” She asked: “So what is the connection between that oil business and terrorism and weapons of mass destruction?” The Comptroller responded: “The Iranian Government is receiving dollars from it. And then turning around and exporting terrorism around the world. It benefits terrorism. At least that's our belief.”

With the help of CSAG’s software, Thompson was able to determine that several prominent American companies held in his pension funds’ portfolios had subsidiaries in countries like Iran. As “60 Minutes” noted, he began to investigate their activities “at the request of New York City's police and firemen, who were outraged when they learned where their retirement money was going.” Thompson said, “The members of the Fire Department and the Police Department, after September 11th, given the fact that hundreds of them died in the World Trade Center as a result of a terrorist attack, had greater sensitivity than almost anybody. And they were the ones who kind of took the lead on this.”

American investors – both individual and institutional – have a further, compelling reason for following the lead of New York’s heroic police and firefighters: CSAG’s President, Roger Robinson (a colleague and friend from the Reagan White House) warns that investors could see share value seriously depressed by the negative publicity and popular hostility that ensues as companies’ ties to terrorist regimes come to light.

Robinson told “60 Minutes,”: “We're certainly alerting investors to a genuine new risk category in the markets, every bit as legitimate as environmental risk was through Three Mile Island, Exxon Valdez and superfund legislation....Investors, we think, have a right to know. Remember, this is their retirement dollars. They should have a sense [from] those who invest on their behalf: Are there genuine risks there?”

In short, Americans with funds in the stock market have an opportunity to do well while doing good. They can reduce material risk to their retirement funds while signaling to companies that seek to secure or retain their investments not to do business – either directly or through cut-outs – with terrorist-sponsoring and/or proliferating regimes.

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=today

Sex Slave Jihad

January 27, 2004
FrontPageMagazine.com
Donna M. Hughes

A measure of Islamic fundamentalists’ success in controlling society is the depth and totality with which they suppress the freedom and rights of women. In Iran for 25 years, the ruling mullahs have enforced humiliating and sadistic rules and punishments on women and girls, enslaving them in a gender apartheid system of segregation, forced veiling, second-class status, lashing, and stoning to death.

Joining a global trend, the fundamentalists have added another way to dehumanize women and girls: buying and selling them for prostitution. Exact numbers of victims are impossible to obtain, but according to an official source in Tehran, there has been a 635 percent increase in the number of teenage girls in prostitution. The magnitude of this statistic conveys how rapidly this form of abuse has grown. In Tehran, there are an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in the city. The trade is also international: thousands of Iranian women and girls have been sold into sexual slavery abroad.

The head of Iran’s Interpol bureau believes that the sex slave trade is one of the most profitable activities in Iran today. This criminal trade is not conducted outside the knowledge and participation of the ruling fundamentalists. Government officials themselves are involved in buying, selling, and sexually abusing women and girls.

Many of the girls come from impoverished rural areas. Drug addiction is epidemic throughout Iran, and some addicted parents sell their children to support their habits. High unemployment 28 percent for youth 15-29 years of age and 43 percent for women 15-20 years of age is a serious factor in driving restless youth to accept risky offers for work. Slave traders take advantage of any opportunity in which women and children are vulnerable. For example, following the recent earthquake in Bam, orphaned girls have been kidnapped and taken to a known slave market in Tehran where Iranian and foreign traders meet.

Popular destinations for victims of the slave trade are the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. According to the head of the Tehran province judiciary, traffickers target girls between 13 and 17, although there are reports of some girls as young as 8 and 10, to send to Arab countries. One ring was discovered after an 18 year-old girl escaped from a basement where a group of girls were held before being sent to Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The number of Iranian women and girls who are deported from Persian Gulf countries indicates the magnitude of the trade. Upon their return to Iran, the Islamic fundamentalists blame the victims, and often physically punish and imprison them. The women are examined to determine if they have engaged in “immoral activity.” Based on the findings, officials can ban them from leaving the country again.

Police have uncovered a number of prostitution and slavery rings operating from Tehran that have sold girls to France, Britain, Turkey as well. One network based in Turkey bought smuggled Iranian women and girls, gave them fake passports, and transported them to European and Persian Gulf countries. In one case, a 16-year-old girl was smuggled to Turkey, and then sold to a 58-year-old European national for $20,000.

In the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, local police report that girls are being sold to Pakistani men as sex-slaves. The Pakistani men marry the girls, ranging in age from 12 to 20, and then sell them to brothels called “Kharabat” in Pakistan. One network was caught contacting poor families around Mashad and offering to marry girls. The girls were then taken through Afghanistan to Pakistan where they were sold to brothels.
In the southeastern border province of Sistan Baluchestan, thousands of Iranian girls reportedly have been sold to Afghani men. Their final destinations are unknown.

One factor contributing to the increase in prostitution and the sex slave trade is the number of teen girls who are running away from home. The girls are rebelling against fundamentalist imposed restrictions on their freedom, domestic abuse, and parental drug addictions. Unfortunately, in their flight to freedom, the girls find more abuse and exploitation. Ninety percent of girls who run away from home will end up in prostitution. As a result of runaways, in Tehran alone there are an estimated 25,000 street children, most of them girls. Pimps prey upon street children, runaways, and vulnerable high school girls in city parks. In one case, a woman was discovered selling Iranian girls to men in Persian Gulf countries; for four years, she had hunted down runaway girls and sold them. She even sold her own daughter for US$11,000.

Given the totalitarian rule in Iran, most organized activities are known to the authorities. The exposure of sex slave networks in Iran has shown that many mullahs and officials are involved in the sexual exploitation and trade of women and girls. Women report that in order to have a judge approve a divorce they have to have sex with him. Women who are arrested for prostitution say they must have sex with the arresting officer. There are reports of police locating young women for sex for the wealthy and powerful mullahs.

In cities, shelters have been set-up to provide assistance for runaways. Officials who run these shelters are often corrupt; they run prostitution rings using the girls from the shelter. For example in Karaj, the former head of a Revolutionary Tribunal and seven other senior officials were arrested in connection with a prostitution ring that used 12 to 18 year old girls from a shelter called the Center of Islamic Orientation.

Other instances of corruption abound. There was a judge in Karaj who was involved in a network that identified young girls to be sold abroad. And in Qom, the center for religious training in Iran, when a prostitution ring was broken up, some of the people arrested were from government agencies, including the Department of Justice.

The ruling fundamentalists have differing opinions on their official position on the sex trade: deny and hide it or recognize and accommodate it. In 2002, a BBC journalist was deported for taking photographs of prostitutes. Officials told her: “We are deporting you … because you have taken pictures of prostitutes. This is not a true reflection of life in our Islamic Republic. We don’t have prostitutes.” Yet, earlier the same year, officials of the Social Department of the Interior Ministry suggested legalizing prostitution as a way to manage it and control the spread of HIV. They proposed setting-up brothels, called “morality houses,” and using the traditional religious custom of temporary marriage, in which a couple can marry for a short period of time, even an hour, to facilitate prostitution. Islamic fundamentalists’ ideology and practices are adaptable when it comes to controlling and using women.

Some may think a thriving sex trade in a theocracy with clerics acting as pimps is a contradiction in a country founded and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists. In fact, this is not a contradiction. First, exploitation and repression of women are closely associated. Both exist where women, individually or collectively, are denied freedom and rights. Second, the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran are not simply conservative Muslims. Islamic fundamentalism is a political movement with a political ideology that considers women inherently inferior in intellectual and moral capacity. Fundamentalists hate women’s minds and bodies. Selling women and girls for prostitution is just the dehumanizing complement to forcing women and girls to cover their bodies and hair with the veil.

In a religious dictatorship like Iran, one cannot appeal to the rule of law for justice for women and girls. Women and girls have no guarantees of freedom and rights, and no expectation of respect or dignity from the Islamic fundamentalists. Only the end of the Iranian regime will free women and girls from all the forms of slavery they suffer.

Dr. Donna M. Hughes is a Professor and holds the Carlson Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

The author wishes to acknowledge the Iranian human rights and pro-democracy activists who contributed information for this article. If any readers have information on prostitution and the sex slave trade in Iran, please contact her at dhughes@uri.edu

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11791

Kerry’s Fund-Raiser Worries Advocates Of Iran Democracy

New York Sun - By Eli Lake
Jan 27, 2004

He's faulted for Soft Line

WASHINGTON — Iranian American supporters of the effort to bring democracy to Iran are raising concerns about the resurgence of Senator Kerry’s campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, questioning the role of a Kerry fund-raiser who wants to normalize ties with Tehran.

Hassan Nemazee, an Iranian American financier based in New York, was on the board of the American Iranian Council when that organization arranged for President Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, to apologize for America’s role in the 1953 coup that brought the Shah to power in Iran.

In that speech, Ms. Albright announced the lifting of sanctions on Iranian carpets, caviar and dried fruits and nuts — a symbolic gesture that signified America’s willingness to restore diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic. Today Mr. Nemazee is one of the chief fund-raisers for Mr. Kerry.

While two months ago Mr. Kerry’s campaign seemed in disarray after he fired his campaign chief, with last week’s first-place finish in the Iowa caucus, Mr. Kerry has emerged as the front runner in his party’s race to field a challenge to President Bush this November.

In a December 3 address to the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Kerry said that if he was president, he “will be prepared early on to explore areas of mutual interest with Iran.”In that same speech he chastised the Bush administration for failing to hand over Iraqi-based insurgents to Tehran in exchange for members of Al Qaeda. “It is incomprehensible and unacceptable that this administration refuses to broker an arrangement with Iran for a mutual crackdown on both terrorist groups,” he told the council.

Mr. Kerry and his fund-raiser have drawn the criticism of many Iranians pushing for America to support Iranian democrats.

“Unfortunately Mr. Nemazee is still advising Mr. Kerry,” a spokesman for the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran,Aryo Pirooznia, told The New York Sun yesterday. “Everyone remembers in the last of year of the Clinton administration when Mr. Nemazee gave a speech at the AIC calling for the removal of all sanctions against the Islamic Republic. We will be asking any Iranian-American of principle to vote for President Bush knowing that Mr. Kerry has recently said that Iran is moving toward democracy.”

Mr. Pirooznia has in the past organized protests against the American Iranian Council, whose board Mr. Nemazee used to sit on.

Iran’s hard-line council of guardians yesterday vetoed a proposal from the Parliament that would curb the council’s power to screen candidates for the legislature. Earlier this month, the council barred thousands of “reformer” candidates from running in next month’s elections for that body.

Mr. Nemazee, who did not return three phone calls yesterday from the Sun, helped form the Iranian American Political Action Committee in 2002. That organization says it does not take a position on Iran’s relations with America. Its Web site says, “We have seen time and again that as soon as foreign policy issues are raised, great divisions appear within the community.”

The PAC focuses primarily on civil liberties issues affecting Iranian-Americans and on loosening barriers for Iranian citizens who want to get visas to visit America.

In 1999, President Clinton nominated Mr. Nemazee to be his ambassador to Argentina.The Senate Foreign Relations Committee blocked his confirmation after Forbes magazine ran a story critical of many of his business relationships.

Inside the Iranian-American community, Mr. Nemazee has a reputation for supporting the opening of trade relations with Iran.

“This is not personal, just a political difference of opinion, but Mr. Nemazee is in favor of dialogue with moderates, as far as I have observed,” a friend of the Nemazee family and an Iranian democracy activist, Shahla Samii, told the Sun. “I have been in contact with many in the younger generation. Many of the people I have contacted and most of them within Iran and outside the country do not want America to normalize ties with the Islamic Republic.”

Another activist in New York, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi,told the Sun Mr.Nemazee “is promoting a certain kind of relationship between the American government and the Islamic Republic that is completely inappropriate. He seems to put his money in places where he supports candidates who basically are not interested in confronting a government that is becoming armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and that has admitted to holding major members of Al Qaeda.”

Mr. Kerry voted in July of 2001 in favor of renewing the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which authorizes American sanctions on foreign companies investing in Iran’s oil and gas sectors.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_4768.shtml

Defector: Bin Laden Son 'Forewarned Iran of 9/11'

January 27, 2004
Reuters
Mark Trevelyan

BERLIN -- An Iranian defector, preparing to testify in Germany's second major Sept. 11 trial, said on Tuesday that a son of Osama bin Laden had personally told Iranian leaders of the planned attacks on U.S. cities in 2001.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi rejected the accusation, saying the defector was not credible and had invented his story.

The defector, who goes by the cover name Hamid Reza Zakeri, told Reuters in a telephone interview that al Qaeda had forewarned Tehran of the attacks because it wanted Iran's help in sheltering its leaders afterwards.

"I'm not saying that Iran had a hand in it (Sept. 11). I'm saying that Iran knew about it," Zakeri said.

"Iran would be the safest place for al Qaeda because it wasn't a country where the U.S. could directly or indirectly intervene" to seize al Qaeda leaders on the run after the planned attacks, he added.

Zakeri says he is a former intelligence official who defected in July 2001 and tried to warn the United States, through its embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, that a major attack would take place on or about Sept. 10.

The Iranian foreign minister, asked about the defector's assertions, told a news conference on Tuesday: "This is untrue. He has made up this information... he has made it up for fraudulent purposes. He wants to make money and his views are of no value."

Western intelligence sources have privately voiced skepticism about Zakeri's accusations, but German prosecutors have taken them seriously enough to call him as a key trial witness.

He is due to testify for the prosecution Friday in the case of Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan accused of conspiring with the al Qaeda "Hamburg cell" that provided three of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers. Another Moroccan, Mounir El Motassadeq, was convicted in Germany on similar charges last year but will hear the outcome of his appeal Thursday.

TOP-LEVEL QAEDA VISITS

Speaking by mobile phone from an undisclosed location, Zakeri said he had handled security arrangements in January 2001 for a visit of about 30 al Qaeda members to Iran, led by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Zakeri said he had previously seen Zawahiri several times since 1996 at camps used by the militant group Hizbollah in Iran. The talks took place southeast of Tehran, lasted four days and were headed on the Iranian side by a representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he said.

Four months later, in May 2001, Zakeri said he had been ordered to collect a VIP delegation arriving by army helicopter at a special base east of the Iranian capital.

This time the guest was Osama's son Saad bin Laden, accompanied by three bodyguards. Zakeri said the visit lasted three days and included late-night talks with Khamenei, ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and three other top leaders.

Zakeri said he was not part of the discussions and not privy to details of the Sept. 11 plot or the targets, but added: "I knew in general that there was an operation being prepared against Israel and the United States for September 10."

He said he passed a warning to a CIA official in Baku, but "they didn't take me seriously."

Zakeri said he had not wanted to testify in the Mzoudi case, but had been drawn in after telling German investigators he had received information by email from someone else relating to al Qaeda activity in Germany.

He said he was under close German police protection after contacts in Iran had warned him his life was in danger.

"They said: 'They sent the people already, and they are very close to the door.' I know what that means. It means they are very close to kill me. But already I informed the German authorities and the German police... I'm all right, hopefully I'm safe," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4220296

Ex Mossad, Shabak chiefs: Ron Arad is alive

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Jan. 26, 2004

Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit said on Channel 2 Monday night that he believes Ron Arad is alive and that Israel has done everything possible to locate him.

"My assessment is that Ron Arad is alive," Shavit said.

During my term, before me, and after me, everything possible was done to find him. Not one stone was left unturned. Intelligence tried to find where is he and what happened to him, and to bring him home," the former Mossad boss said.

Shavit was the head of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996.

Arad bailed out of his Phantom jet over Lebanon in 1986. Arad was quickly captured and spent the better part of the next 18 months in Amal militia leader Mustafa Dirani's trunk, before the latter 'sold' him to Hizbullah. There has been no concrete information regarding Arad's fate since, and Iran adamantly denies any connection to the affair.

"Without a doubt he was transferred from Lebanon to the Iranians. The Iranians wanted him as a bargaining chip. They thought he was a very valuable asset. After a while though, he became a burden to them. Iran is a bigger country than Europe, and its not a problem to hide a single man there," Shavit said.

Former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Perry, who served on and directed groups searching for Israeli MIAs, said that the working assumptions of the intelligence braches was that Ron Arad is alive.

"That was our working assumption. Over the years we received bits of information about him. Some saying that he was alive, some that he was dead. Some information pointed that he was being held in Iran," Perry said on Channel 2 Monday.

Perry said he supported and welcomed the coming prisoner exchange deal with the Hizbullah, but added that he had just one major reservation.

"Israel must not release Mustafa Dirani. Dirani was the last person we know that interrogated Arad and handed him over to the Iranians. Morally speaking, we should not release him," Perry said.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1075114460221&p=1008596981749

Iran, Europe are Part of Hizballah's POW Sting Operation

January 27, 2004
DEBKAfile
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

The Israeli-Hizballah POW-abductees-DIA deal going into effect Thursday is even more lopsided than first reported, as discovered by DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources from unpublished elements of the accord. Tuesday, January 27, the Israeli government published the lists of prisoners to be released two days hence for the bodies of three Israeli soldiers kidnapped three years ago by the Hizballah on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border and businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum.

It includes 371 Palestinian prisoners and 60 detainees, 30 Lebanese and Arabs, and 1 German plus 59 bodies. Extra Palestinians were listed to top the figure up to 400 in case appeals to Israel’s Supreme Court in the next 48 hours block some of the releases.

However Part One of the deal is dwarfed by Part Two, according to the fresh revelations obtained exclusively by DEBKAfile’s sources. They also demystify some puzzling remarks dropped in the last three days: Saturday, January 24, the German mediator, Ernest Uhrlau, thanked Iran for its contribution (!); 24 hours later, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, reversing a long-held claim, announced that the missing Israeli navigator Ron Arad was not in Iran but Lebanon.

Our sources have discovered that not only Germany, but France, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece and the Netherlands are “contributing” to the victory parade the Hizballah chief is stage-managing in Lebanon to celebrate the successful outcome of the deal. These European countries are preparing to release Iranian, pro-Iranian, pro-Syrian Lebanese, Hizballah and other prisoners under sentence for assorted terror-linked crimes dating from the 1980s, mostly against American and Israeli targets.

However, in a second round of releases, Israel will pay up too by setting free thousands of Palestinians, including men convicted or detained for murdering Israelis, on top of the 400 going to their West Bank and Gaza Strip homes Thursday.

Israel’s reward will be information attesting to the fate of its missing airman.

Over a TV talk show Monday night, two former Shin Beit directors, Shabtai Shavit and Yaacov Peri, spoke persuasively about the need to pull back from Part Two of the deal before it gets out of hand. They questioned prime minister Ariel Sharon’s claim that the transaction was moral when even the German mediator has not been told whether the information on offer proves the navigator is alive or dead. Like a majority of Israelis, his family is against handing over terrorist killers for his remains, certain that they will soon return to their old ways and gained a further incentive to continue kidnapping Israelis.

It has gradually dawned on informed Israeli circles that Part Two is the outcome of the German mediator actively assisting Iran and the Hizballah chief to use the POW deal for a sting operation against Israel. He has struck a secret side deal with Tehran to open a great many European prison gates to Iranian, pro-Iranian, pro-Syrian, Lebanese and possibly Palestinians convicted of terrorism. Israel has been drawn over its head into the arrangement by the lure of unspecified information about a serviceman who fell captive 18 years ago. Part One of the POW deal therefore may now be labeled “the small transaction” because Part Two is ballooning out of hand from a single name, that of the Druse Nahariya killer, Samir Kuntar.

The fallout is already palpable:

1. The Hizballah chief has begun boasting about how he sprang more Palestinian prisoners from Israeli confinement than all the Palestinian leaders, from Yasser Arafat to Abu Mazen, and Arab rulers rolled together. He is therefore claiming the adulation of the Palestinian and Arab masses and the right to force international diplomats to reckon with him as a strong regional voice in any future Middle East steps and decisions. For the Europeans, a new and forceful representative of the Palestinian people takes the place of the discredited Arafat.

2. Sharon and his defense minister Shaul Mofaz, who refused to negotiate with Arafat but agreed to engage Nasrallah, will find it hard to continue dismissing him as a mere terrorist chief.

3. The Europeans have nailed two birds with a single shot: First , Israeli concessions have enabled them to extend their protection to the Hizballah and its chief in case the United States takes action against a group listed officially in Washington as a terrorist organization. Second , for the same price, Europe has built itself a new bridge to Tehran, whose hard line leaders will be grateful to find relief from much of the international pressure weighing on their sophisticated weapons, including nuclear programs.

DEBKAfile’s sources with access to the text of the Israel-Hizballah agreement mediated by Germany were surprised by the gaps. There is no provision for either contingency of Arad being discovered alive - however unlikely, or being proven dead. In both cases, Israel is committed to freeing thousands of Palestinians. One source said: “Had there been any chance of recovering Arad alive, the price might have had a modicum of logic. But if Hizballah and Iran come up with proof that he is dead, Israel is trapped in a blind commitment and can hardly turn round and say we are reneging on the deal because you murdered our airman.”

In the interests of morality as well as avoiding the Hizballah-German-Iranian trap, Sharon and Mofaz would have done better to heed the last wish of Batya Arad, the aviator’s mother, who said on her deathbed: “If my son is dead, not a single terrorist should be given away for his body.”

Interestingly no comment has come from Washington on the European ramifications of the POW swap even though notorious murderers of Americans may go free. DEBKAfile’s Washington sources note that last week Sharon said Israel was wiling to iron out of the security barrier separating the West Bank and Israel the enclaves winding round the Jordan Valley, Ariel, Beit Arieh and Gush Etzion. In a conversation with the Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer Monday, January 26, he said he was considering re-routing the fence, whose construction has slowed down in the last week. Mofaz has meanwhile set up a special defense ministry team to take care of Palestinian humanitarian needs.

When these developments are added to the prospect of thousands of Palestinians being turned loose from Israeli prison in the coming weeks, including convicted murderers, the Israeli government looks as though it is in the midst of a sweeping policy change as regards the Palestinians. This departure, which coincides with the arrival of John Wolf, a senior state department official, may be Sharon’s way of meeting the Bush administration halfway in its demands with regard to the barrier and the need to address the human problems of the Palestinian people.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=776

In condemnation of "Babak Shahr" massacre

SMCCDI (Public Statement)
Jan 26, 2004

Freedom loving noble nation of Iran,

Once again the inhumane and anti constituent government of Islamic Republic committed another felonious crime as its barbaric forces of suppression cruelly murdered several of the deprived and dispossessed residents and workers of City of Babakshahr and Khatoonabad village, both located in Kerman province that is still trying to recover from that deadly recent earthquake. On Saturday and Sunday, 24-25 Jan.2004, these suppressive forces that were comprised of the diehard Bassidji goons and special elements of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, answered the noble people who had gathered to demand jobs to sustain their lives with bullets and bloody crackdown, the only answer that could be expected from the incompetent and murderous heads of the hated Islamic Republic regime.

According to the latest updates, at least 8 protestors were shot to death and tens of others were wounded and arrested. This barbaric atrocity of regime’s killers took on such unprecedented dimensions that now the regime’s ostentatious military commanders claim that "some unidentified people committed the massacre after the special units had withdrawn from the area!"

Such a statement is naturally expected from a system which its own "president”" always refers to the secularist freedom fighting students as “a bunch of hooligans and hoodlums” or "spies" and denies existence of any "political prisoner" in the dark dungeons of its oppression apparatus and in Europe he claims that there is only one news reporter in custody!

The ludicrous statements of the military commanders about the massacre they committed shouldn’t seem strange either. Those utterances are testaments to the wicked and deceiving nature of an illegitimate and crumbling regime which they have sold their souls and conscience to. A regime which sees its only way of survival in maintaining the support of its European allies and partners in crime and repays the favor by generously giving them the nation’s wealth and natural resources while trying to perpetrate to the world the fraud of "justice and civil society" in Iran.

Yes indeed, in one hand, as Mohammad Khatami kisses up to the supreme leader and tries to hawk his "national hope" and as the so-called "reformers’" products meet a dull market among the citizens, the faction known as the hardliner conservatives, to fend off their eventual demise, comes up with oddities such as "unidentified individuals," "irresponsible elements," or "unknown groups." Other examples of their baseless excuses range from the attack and plunder of the "help and necessities sent to the victims of the Bam earthquake" to “the murderers of babakshahr city and Khatoon village." And on the other hand this new mass murder occurs at a time when we witness quiet closures of evermore factories and production facilities of our country and rampant privatizations which have eliminated jobs of thousands of Iranian workers or practically destroyed Iran’s industrial foundations or have put them at the disposal of foreign companies and governments. No doubt these types of anti-national practices, meaning destruction and or transference of ownerships of Iran’s new industries, are results of implementations of incorrect policies and negative functioning of the entire ruling class of the Islamic Republic and or assortment of embezzlements by government executives and the children of the ruling clique; "PetroPars" and "StatOil" can be named as such examples.

Thus, with aim to save Iran and Iranians, it is in reaction to such daily increasing crimes, plunders, and trickeries of this unholy oligarchic-fascist-religious terrorist mob, and to profiteering futile actions of their European partners, that our country’s entire collection of "responsible and progressive political forces" must unite as soon as possible. They must, by earning the trust of all of our countrymen, in general workers’ laborers, teachers, and students, and by taking advantage of the present favorable international climate, induce the needed wave to bring about the final change in our homeland. Unfortunately, so far the expansion of the trend of people’s spontaneous and costly (in terms of lives lost and destroyed) movements have been much too fast for the slow moving caravan of the opposition factions abroad. Factions whose so-called intellectuals have not been able to correctly read and analyze the situation and have rather continually been an impediment to union of the opposition forces outside of Iran’s borders…

Therefore, now more than ever, our country’s “collective responsible and progressive political forces” must set aside such impeding people and set aside their own differences and “100%” demands and rely on and uphold their common denominator, which is the just demands of the arisen nation of Iran, The Third Force. They must come together to accelerate mobilization of the masses and liberation of Iran by forming a non-ideological council for furthering such eminent objectives as unity of totality of secular forces that will replace the entirety of the Islamic Republic with a national and democratic structure by means of a public and true referendum.

At this time, as the "Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran" (SMCCDI) extend their most heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of the massacre of Babakshahr and khatoon and all the freedom loving and noble citizens of Iran, especially to the workers and laborers of this land, they announce their support and sympathy to them and all the wounded and arrested.

This committee, with belief in the need for mobilization of masses and unity of all the progressive and secular forces in order to achieve liberation from the rotten regime of mullahs, invites the freedom loving and noble nation of Iran who cleverly and clearly demonstrated their indignation of the ruling parties of the regime and did not participate in their puppet shows, to stay in their houses on "Friday the 1st Esfand 1382" (February 20th 2004), in a destiny making act of civil disobedebience and in order to ever stigmatize the illegitimate nature of the ruling regime, turn that day into an historical day of protest. That undoubtedly will result very positively in the arena of global pressure on the ruling system just as did at the time of the sham elections of cities and townships when it met people’s widespread boycott.

Be it that the all out boycott of the puppet show known as the Seventh Islamic Parliament elections brings about the total disgrace, seclusion, and abolishment of the of the Islamic Republic.

Long Live Freedom !

Long Live Secularism !

Established be Democracy !

January 26, 2004 (6th Bahman 1382)

The "Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran" (SMCCDI)

http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_3113.shtml

BREAKING RANKS, KHATAMI SAYS ELECTIONS WOULD TAKE PLACE ON TIME

TEHRAN, 27 Jan. (IPS)

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami broke rank Tuesday with his reformist camp by stating firmly that elections for the next Majles, or parliament "would be held on time".

"No force, being it local or foreign, would prevent the elections for the seventh Majles of the Islamic Republic to be organized on the schedule time", Mr. Khatami told journalist while bidding farewell to his Austrian guest.

His firm statement came as a shock to the reformist lawmakers rejected by the Council of the Guardians to run for the next Legislative exercise, due on 20 February, urging the Government to consider delaying the elections in case the Guardians insist on their decision.

Mr. Khatami’s declaration was also a rebuke to the Government’s official spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh who, on Monday, had assured journalists that there would be no elections if they are not "fair, free and just, offering equal chances to all the hopefuls".

Next to suggesting a delayed elections, rejected deputies did also proposed a mass resignation of the entire Government and reformist faction of the Majles or a national referendum on the issue in case the CG insisted on its disqualifications that includes the President’s younger brother, Dr Mohammad Reza Khatami as well as all senior tenors of the reformists camp both inside and outside the House.

"Once again, Khatami betrayed both the people and his camp by bowing to the conservatives, taking the side of the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, who effectively control the CG", one Iranian analyst told Iran Press Service on condition of anonymity.

"Ever since he came to power seven years ago, Khatami always sided with Mr. Khameneh’i on every major power struggle opposing the reformists to the ruling conservatives", the analyst pointed out.

Coming as some 50 students from the Office for Consolidating Unity, the Iranian student’s largest organization joined the bulk of reformist MMs (Members of the Majles) in their sit-in, now in its 17th day, protesting the CG’s decision to bar more than 3.000 candidates, including some 80 incumbent reformist lawmakers, from presenting themselves to the electorate.

The students decided to support the lawmakers despite recriminations against the reformists in general and the those in the Parliament in particular, not forgetting the President himself, for their lack of support for the students during their historic uprising of July 1999, their protests against the death sentence pronounced by the Judiciary against professor Hashem Aqajari and their last demonstrations in the summer of 2002, according to a dispatch by the French news agency AFP, quoting Mr. Abdollah Mo’meni, a member of the OCU Executive Committee.

To diffuse the crisis that some analysts describes as a "storm in a tea cup" because of the indifference shown by the general public, Ayatollah Khameneh’I, who last week had urged the 12-members Council to "review" the disqualifications, met last night with the heads of three powers.

As a result, a four-ministers committee comprising those of Information (Intelligence), Mines and Industries, Trade and Oil was formed Tuesday to find a solution for the crisis.

According to the Majles Speaker Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Karroobi, the Committee has until Thursday to submit its conclusions. But a spokesman for the protesters repeated Tuesday that in case they do not get a satisfactory answer from the CG, they would resign on Sunday.

In fact, in a letter to the Interior Minister Hojjatoleslam Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari, the Secretary of the CG, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati observed that lawmakers could not be automatically validated because they had received approval in earlier elections.

But considering the fact that the Guardians rejected outright an "urgent" proposal of the reformists-controlled Majles to help finding a solution and has yet to respond to the leader’s order to review the disqualifications, many analysts expressed doubt that the Committee would support the protesters.

Meanwhile, Grand Ayatollah Hoseyali Montazeri, Iran and one of the Shi’a Muslim’s most senior religious authority expressed solidarity with the disqualified lawmakers and at the same time urged the CG to "stop at once its illegal, unjust and irrational attitude that damages Islam, the Islamic revolution and the Iranian people".

Because of his harsh criticism of the present leaders, most particularly Ayatollah Khameneh’i, Mr. Montazeri was placed under house arrest for more than five years in his residence in the city of Qom and prevented from teaching. Though he recovered partial and conditional freedom, but he continued his timely criticim, that also includes the embattled President Khatami.

ENDS IRAN DISQUALIFICATIONS 27104

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2004/Jan_04/iran_disqualifications_27104.htm