From the Daily Star Lebanon:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/10_09_03_e.asp A killing Iran might not be able to shake
An authoritarian state is like the universe in that much of its mass consists of dark matter. The beast hiding behind the facade can be glimpsed only in brief flashes provoked by lighting from occasional political thunderstorms. These last longer when the authoritarian state is weak and when its society contains democratic components. That?s why a great deal of the murky operations of the Iranian judiciary will be exposed before the storm blows over the recent death of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who died on July 10 as a result of injuries sustained while being interrogated in an Iranian prison.
One can contrast the episode with what happened 17 years ago during the Iran-Contra affair. In November 1986, a rogue clergyman named Mehdi Hashemi embarrassed Iran?s government by leaking the story of its clandestine contacts with the US to a Lebanese magazine. He was swiftly tried and put to death, but damage control was not optimal. In exposing the gun-slinging ayatollah?s shadowy career, the state also exposed itself as one in which activities similar to his could go unpunished if the perpetrators did not defy the system. But the revelations were too oblique, scant and controlled to compare to scandals that in democratic systems interrupt illegal activities and occasionally bring down governments. The clergyman?s trial did not amount to a ?Hashemigate.?
At the outset of President Mohammad Khatami?s first term in 1997-98, a band of state-sponsored assassins who had done away with scores of undesirables under the previous government concluded that the reformers lacked the backbone to interfere with their activities. This encouraged them to continue with the business of assassinating dissidents, ending with the grisly murder of the renowned nationalist politician Daryoush Forouhar and his wife. But Khatami stood firm (for the first and last time in his presidency), and as a result the perpetrators were brought to justice and the information ministry uncovered as the den of their nefarious activities.
However, the light went out as soon as Khatami?s government faltered in its his resolve to see the case through. As a result the lines of command leading up from the perpetrators were never officially explored. What followed would make a mafia don blush: the ringleader was found dead (allegedly by suicide) and the trials of the accused were so rigged by the partisan judiciary as to preclude reference to those who had ordered the assassinations. Subsequently, Saeed Hajjarian, a veteran information official and reformist who headed a committee that captured the culprits, was assassinated. Akar Ganji, a top journalist investigating the political network of the murderers, was imprisoned on trumped up charges.
Once again, although the modus operandi of the ?shadow government? that had ordered the killings remained in the limelight for a much longer period than during the trial of Hashemi, a ?Forouhargate? never materialized.
The murder of Kazemi at the hands of the right-wing judiciary however, may very well turn into a ?Kazemigate.? To begin with, the victim?s Canadian nationality ensures the investigation will not be compromised as a result of insider deals. The murder is now cast as an international crisis along with Iran?s nuclear ambitions and the role Tehran may have played in the attack on the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. Therefore, it cannot be snuffed out for partisan and personal reasons, or in the name of preserving the honor of ?the holy order of the Islamic Republic.?
Furthermore, the murder of Kazemi was different from previous scandals in that it occurred on the active fault lines of Iran?s reform-right-wing divide. After seven years of oppression by the right, such reform leaders as the parliamentarian Mohsen Armin (who regularly and publicly challenges the judiciary?s fabrications about Kazemi?s death) have little to lose by hanging tough on this issue. They consider the judiciary a brutal and dastardly organization that has perverted the cause of justice in order to crush both reform and dissent. Khatami?s information ministry has also refused to play the scapegoat and obtained the release of two of its employees wrongfully arrested by the judges as the main suspects in this case.
The coming Kazemigate will direct a powerful searchlight at the violent and secret world that Akbar Ganji has called Iran?s ?dungeon of ghosts.? It could also focus the world?s attention on the intractable problem of torture in Iran. But its disclosures will not be as devastating to the system as a Forouhargate might have been. Unlike those killings, Kazemi?s murder does not seem to have been part of a larger scheme. Nor is it likely that the lines of command will lead all the way up to the top of the system.
However, at the very least some illustrious right-wing heads must roll, starting with that of the notorious judge Saeed Mortazavi, who personally supervised Kazemi?s interrogation and later attempted to cover up her death by issuing false statements about its circumstances and causes. We can also expect a heavy blow to the right-wing judiciary for its perverted, proto-legal campaign against the democratic movement and for its brutalization and torture of dissidents.
Ahmad Sadri is a professor of sociology at Lake Forest College in Illinois. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR
Thank you for that article, many excellent points.