BRIEF ON IRAN
No. 913
Wednesday, June 3, 1998
Representative Office of
The National Council of Resistance of Iran
Washington, DC

Huge Explosion Rocks Revolutionary Prosecutor's Office in Tehran, Iran Zamin News Agency, June 2

The Mojahedin Command Headquarters inside Iran reported that today, about 2:00 p.m. local time, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Prosecutor's Office in downtown Tehran was destroyed in a huge explosion by military units of the People's Mojahedin. Scores of torturers and interrogators were killed or wounded and the building was demolished.

The Revolutionary Prosecutor's Office in Tehran is the headquarters of the clerical regime's most criminal interrogators and torturers who in the last 17 years have savagely tortured and sent before firing squads tens of thousands of political prisoners in Evin, Gohardasht and Qezel-Hessar prisons and in the regime's "safe houses."

The operation was in retaliation for the slaying of Mojahedin member Hadi Homayoun and seven other Mojahedin in Ilam (western Iran), on November 2 by agents of the Intelligence Ministry and the Prosecutor's Office.

The operation was carried out on the eve of June 20th, the day of Iranian martyrs and political prisoners and the anniversary of Khomeini's death.

 

Dozens of Interrogators and Torturers Killed and Injured by Blast in Revolutionary Court - Resistance, Reuter, June 2

TEHRAN - An explosion killed two people and injured six others at an Islamic revolutionary court in Tehran on Tuesday, Iran's official news agency IRNA said.

In Baghdad, the Iraq-based Iranian armed opposition group Mujahideen Khalq said its forces inside Iran were responsible for the blast, which it said killed and injured "dozens."

IRNA said the blast was caused by negligence during the handling of explosives being used as evidence in a case.

Mujahideen Khalq spokesman Farid Soleimani told Reuters in Dubai by telephone from Baghdad: "In a bombing...at the Islamic revolutionary court, dozens of the regime's interrogators and torturers were killed and injured."

Soleimani said the operation came as a response to the killing of eight Mujahideen Khalq fighters in clashes with Iranian government forces in western Iran in November.

"The Mujahideen's operational forces returned safely to their bases after (Tuesday's) operation," he said.

Iranian state television earlier showed piles of rubble, shattered computers and office equipment and heaps of mangled metal at the site of the explosion, which it said occurred in the reception area of the court building, located near Tehran's central Qasr prison.

Witnesses earlier said there were many casualties from the blast. "I saw tens of ambulances carrying 60 to 70 people," one witness said.

 

Mullahs' Parliament Summons Foreign Minister Over US Visits, Agence France Presse, June 2

TEHRAN - Iran's conservative-dominated parliament has summoned Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi to explain recent visits by American "political and security elements," the press reported Tuesday.

"The foreign minister will appear before a parliamentary committee, probably next week, to provide explanations of the visits," the normally reliable conservative daily Farda reported Tuesday.

"We have recently witnessed the presence in Iran of American citizens, political and security elements in particular," the MPs said according to a text of the question they tabled published by the daily Jomhuri Eslami.

"Why has the foreign minister granted entry visas to these individuals?"

The MPs singled out for criticism a recent "secret" visit, confirmed by the government, by the Australian-American media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

The MPs said Murdoch was "one of the main pillars of Zionism and ringleaders of cultural invasion in the world who is under prosecution in countries such as China and India."

The MPs said the media magnate had used his visit to Iran "to assess Iran's atmosphere and to plot his cultural assault."

There has also been an outcry in Iran's conservative press in recent days about a reported visit by Washington's last defense attaché here before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Conservative newspapers also took exception to a reported visit by Judith Kipper of the US think-tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Both Americans made 10-day visits to Iran during which they met officials from several government ministries, the newspapers said.

At Tehran University, where the capital's main Friday prayers are held, flyposters ask the faithful: "Did you know that the former military attaché of the US embassy in Tehran is in Iran on a visit?"
 

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