BRIEF ON IRAN	 
	Representative Office of 
	The National Council of Resistance of Iran
	No. 549	
	Monday, December 1, 1996 
 
 
 
3421 M Street NW #1032, Washington, DC 20007 
 
 
 


U.N. Committee Condemns Iran's Human Rights 
Violation, The Associated Press, Nov. 30   
 
	A U.N. committee has criticized Iran for its 
human rights policy, including a "high number" of 
executions, restrictions on freedom of expression and 
policies which allegedly discriminate against 
women. 
	The human rights committee on Friday 
voted 78-26 in favor of the resolution, with 49 
abstentions. It now goes to the full General 
Assembly, where it is expected to be approved. 
	General Assembly resolutions are 
nonbinding but reflect international opinion on 
issues. 
	The resolution, sponsored primarily by 
European countries, "deplores the continuing, 
politically motivated violence" against religious 
minorities in Iran and urges the government to 
refrain from harassing Iranians abroad.... 
	In Paris, the opposition National Council of 
Resistance in Iran hailed the vote. Council President 
Massoud Rajavi said the Islamic regime established 
by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 "is 
the world's worst violator of human rights" and a 
"principal exporter of terrorism."... 
	[Mr. Rajavi added that: "experience has 
demonstrated that although such resolutions 
condemning the regime are essential, they are 
certainly not enough to confront so criminal a 
regime. Hence, the time has come for the General 
Assembly to refer the matter of horrific human rights 
violations and terrorism by the mullahs to the U.N. 
Security Council, for consideration of practical, 
specific punitive measures against this regime."] 
 
 
Iranian Cleric Reminds Germans of Rushdie Death 
Threats, Baltimore Sun, November 30   
 
	A leading cleric criticized German 
prosecutors yesterday for bringing terrorism charges 
against Iranian leaders and warned them to 
remember Salman Rushdie, the author Tehran 
ordered killed for allegedly insulting Islam. 
	"You saw what fate befell Salman Rushdie 
after his insults and impudence," Ayatollah Ahmad 
Jannati said in a sermon broadcast on Iranian radio. 
	The British author was forced into hiding 
when Iran's late revolutionary leader, Ayatollah 
Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a ruling in 1989 saying 
Rushdie should be killed for what he said about 
Islam in a novel. 
 
 
Tehran's Involvement in Terrorism, The Washington 
Post, December 1 
 
	BAALBEK, Lebanon—...At stone-walled 
compounds and makeshift classrooms dug into 
mountain caves, the officials say, Hezbollah... is 
teaching the craft of irregular war. According to the 
officials, the instructors also include members of 
Iran's Revolutionary Guard.... 
	Iran, which intelligence agencies say still 
maintains a modest number of Revolutionary Guards 
here, funds Hezbollah at a rate estimated by U.S. and 
Israeli officials at about $80 million a year.... 
	The man most responsible for translating 
that motto ["Death to America. Death to Israel"] into 
action, according to Lebanese, U.S. and Israeli 
officials, is only an occasional visitor here now. 
Imad Mughniyeh, chief of Hezbollah's Special 
Security Apparatus, was born in the southern 
Lebanese town of Tir Dibas...but moved with his 
family to Tehran several years ago. 
	Under U.S. indictment for a hijacking 
murder in 1985, Mughniyeh is believed responsible 
for many of the hostage-takings and truck bombings 
that plagued Western governments in Lebanon in the 
1980s. 
	"Classically he comes here secretly, using a 
false Iranian diplomatic passport," said a Lebanese 
official who has monitored Mughniyeh for years.... 
 
 
Overview 
Iran Writers' Situation, The Washington Post, 
November 29 
 
	Not all state persecution of writers is a 
high-profile international affair like the death 
sentence against Salman Rushdie. A quieter and 
more ominous series of events has been taking place, 
also in Iran, aimed at writers in that country rather 
than abroad. Two years ago, after the suspicious 
death in jail of a satirist named Ali Akhar Saidi 
Sirjani, 134 Iranian writers signed a declaration 
calling for an end to censorship.... In the past month, 
following signs of a more general tightening, one of 
the 134 was found dead under mysterious 
circumstances, and a second disappeared and is 
thought to be either in custody or dead as well.... 
	But the methodical murder of writers on a 
list, if that is what is happening, is more alarming. 
Significantly, both the recently "disappeared" writers 
in Iran were among those who could travel, and thus 
conveyed information about the situation for writers 
there to those outside. One, Farraj Sarkoohi, editor 
of the independent journal Enough, disappeared 
Nov. 3 while trying to leave to visit relatives in 
Germany; the government at first insisted he had left 
the country, but others say he has been sighted in 
custody. The second, Ghaffar Hosseini, was found 
dead Nov. 11 in his apartment of what was officially 
reported as a heart attack but that others suspected 
was foul play....