BRIEF ON IRAN
        Representative Office of
        The National Council of Resistance of Iran
        No. 381
        Monday, April 1, 1996



        3421 M Street NW #1032, Washington, DC 20007


Mr. Rajavi Describes Special Representative's Report as
Wholly Inadequate, from a statement by NCR, March 29

        In separate letters to Professor Maurice Danby
Copithorne, the Special Representative of the Commission on
Human Rights, the U.N. Secretary General, the High
Commissioner for Human Rights, President of the
Commission on Human Rights, and the President and
members of the United Nations Security Council, Mr.
Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of
Resistance of Iran, described Mr. Copithorne's report to the
fifty-second session of the commission as wholly
inadequate....
        The NCR President noted: During his trip to Tehran,
the Special Representative did not visit any political
prisoners and most of his time was devoted to meeting with
senior officials of the regime. The mullahs took him on an
orchestrated tour of Evin prison, similar to their routine for
foreign visitors. Prior to his trip, political prisoners in Evin
were transferred to other locations and the prison was
painted and prepared for his arrival. The Iranian Resistance
exposed the matter at the time.
        Mr. Rajavi stated that before the Special
Representative's trip to Iran, the Iranian Resistance's
representatives had met him and his colleagues at the
United Nations Human Rights Center in Geneva several
times and provided more than 1,600 pages of
documentation and evidence on specific cases of human
rights abuses in Iran in the last year alone. Regrettably, the
NCR President said, no mention is made in the report about
these undeniable cases of human rights abuses.
        The NCR President stressed: Last year, the situation of
human rights in Iran failed to improve. The bloody
crackdown of popular protests, including the April 1995
protest in south Tehran and March 1996 unrest in Bonab,
northwestern Iran, the adoption of new suppressive laws
by the mullahs' Majlis and the staging of scores of large and
small military maneuvers in most Iranian cities
dramatically escalated the atmosphere of repression
throughout the country. One can say with utmost certainty
that as far as violating the most basic human rights of the
Iranian people are concerned, 1995 proved to be one of the
worst years of the mullahs' evil reign in Iran....
        Mr. Rajavi noted that the report contains no replies to
the 15 fundamental questions he had posed to the Special
Representative in a letter before his trip to Tehran. The NCR
President had asked Mr. Copithorne to question the Iranian
regime's authorities about the number of massacred
political prisoners in autumn 1988, torture of political
prisoners, including the rape of virgin girls before their
execution and the killings of pregnant women, the
multitudes of mass graves, the assassination of the
Resistance's activists abroad, etc.
        Mr. Rajavi said: The U.N. special rapporteurs on the
freedom of expression and on religious intolerance who also
visited Iran, as well as international human rights
organizations such as the Human Rights Watch, whose
representative traveled to Tehran, and the United States
Department of State's annual human rights report and the
British Parliamentary Human Rights Group all underscored
in no uncertain terms the persisting deterioration of the
situation of human rights in Iran, particularly the denial of
the freedom of expression and the suppression of religious
minorities....
        Mr. Rajavi called on the fifty-second session of the
U.N. Human Rights Commission to adopt, despite the obvious
shortcomings of the submitted report, a strongly-worded
resolution based on the irrefutable documents on the
Khomeini regime's violations of the most basic rights of the
Iranian people and export of terrorism and fundamentalism
beyond Iran's borders. He further urged the UNHRC to refer
the issue of severe and continuing human rights abuses in
Iran to the United Nations Security Council.


"Rushdie's Death Sentence Must Be Carried Out", Associated
Press, March 30

        LONDON - Despite signals to the contrary, the 7-year-
old Iranian death sentence against author Salman Rushdie
remains in force, a British Muslim leader said today.
        The sentence by the late Iranian spiritual leader
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, "was and remains an order
that must be carried out," Kalim Siddiqui told the so-called
Muslim parliament, which serves as the voice of Britain's
Islamic community....
        Meanwhile, Rushdie today again urged the West to
impose economic sanctions against Iran.
        "Iran is at a very weak moment internationally and
there would be great benefit from being very firm, because
Iran's financial and political position is very poor," he said....