BRIEF ON IRAN
No. 624
Monday, March 31, 1997
	
Representative Office of
The National Council of Resistance of Iran
Washington, DC


Wife of Jailed Writer Appeals for His Release, Agence France Presse, March 27

	PARIS - The wife of imprisoned Iranian dissident writer Faraj Sarkouhi
appealed Thursday for the international community to apply pressure on
Tehran to release her husband.
	"I ask you to raise public opinion by any means possible so that pressure
can be applied on governments who have contact with Iran to gain the release
of Faraj so that he can travel overseas," Farideh Sarkouhi told a press
conference at the Paris headquarters of the International Federation of
Human Rights Leagues....
	Sarkouhi, 49, who in October 1994 was among 134 writers and journalists who
signed a petition for more freedom of expression in Iran, disappeared last
November as he was about to take a flight to Germany....


Mullahs Harboring Saudi Bombing Mastermind, The Miami Herald, March 30
	WASHINGTON - The alleged mastermind behind the bombing that killed 19 U.S.
airmen in Saudi Arabia last year fled to Iran shortly after the attack and
lives there under the protection of its theocratic government.  According to
well-placed U.S. specialists.  
	Disclosure that the top Saudi Shiite operative in the June 25, 1996, truck
bombing of the Khobar Towers military residence near Dhahran has a safe
haven inside Iran adds to the growing evidence that Iran played a major role
in the attack....
	Mughassil [the alleged mastermind according to Canadian court document
filed in Ottawa] allegedly fled to Syria after the attack and then crossing
into Iran, a U.S. counter-terrorism specialist familiar with details of the
Saudi and FBI investigations into the bombing said Friday.  Inside Iran, the
source said, Mughassil "lives under the protection of, as a guest of, the
Iranian government."...
	The Canadian document was filed in a deportation hearing against another
suspect in the bombing...  Sayegh, U.S. sources said, coordinated the
movement of the Saudi Shiites recruited by an Iranian intelligence operative...


Overview

Cracking the Whip on Rights
Intolerance Reaches New Heights
The Christian Science Monitor, March 28

	TEHRAN - The warning came as a phone call from a friend: Police were
swooping down on her neighborhood, a Tehran woman was told; they were
hunting illegal satellite dishes.
	She rushed upstairs to the roof, dismantled her prized satellite dish, and
hid it away in the nick of time. "Dr. Zhivago" was the last thing she had seen.
	"Our government attacked us," she said later, tightening a veil around her
face. "Things are not getting any better."
	Such crackdowns against "decadent Western culture" are a periodic
occurrence in Iran's capital...
	In poor and crowded south Tehran, the volunteer Partisans of the Party of
God are quick to question and briefly detain a foreign visitor whose
translator is a well-covered woman....
	Both sides of town, however, can be subject to the reassertion of strict
Islamic rules....
	Authorities have created a junkyard of the mangled dishes just off a main
Tehran thoroughfare. The pile is testament to a renewed official war against
"cultural aggression," and also to the thousands here who boldly, secretly,
set up and switch on CNN and BBC every night.
	The fine is 1 million rials ($250). But for many, disillusioned by what
they see as the self-serving rule of the mullahs, it's worth the risk....
	But the fight against such "decadence" is widespread, according to a United
Nations human rights report released last October that concluded that Iran's
social climate "is becoming less tolerant."
	The UN report cited the banning of newspapers, the break-up of private
meetings, and an increase in executions of criminals....
	Iranians note a more stringent adherence to rules since Iran's spiritual
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decried the "perverse resistance" of
intellectuals to the Islamic Republic.
	The dress code for women has toughened up...
	"Un-Islamic" elements have reportedly been purged from the education system.
	Newspaper editors have been imprisoned, and a prime-time TV show denounces
intellectuals as Western spies, merging their faces with the image of a $100
American bill.
	Even the newspaper of the Islamic Students Society, said to be backed by
members of Iran's hierarchy, was suspended last year for criticizing officials.