TEHRAN - A court in Iran has arrested a prominent cleric, who backs President Mohammad Khatami, to serve a jail sentence for fraud, the official news agency IRNA reported on Thursday.

"Assadolah Bayat, who had been sentenced to a one-year jail term and 100 million rials ($33,000) on fraud and forgery charges was arrested and sent to prison," the agency quoted a statement by the Special Court of the Clergy as saying.

Bayat, a former deputy speaker of parliament, is a senior member of the pro-Khatami League of Militant Clerics.

IRNA said Bayat was arrested after he ignored a court summon to begin serving his sentence, which was handed down last year.

The report coincided with an announcement in newspapers that Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had appointed Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, a prominent conservative judge, to head the court, which deals with offenses committed by clerics.

In a controversial verdict in July, Mohseni Ejei sentenced Tehran's mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, a key Khatami ally, to five years in jail, a long-term ban from public office and a hefty fine on graft charges.
 
 

Wholesale Prices Up 11.7 Percent in Eight Months, Reuters, December 15

TEHRAN - Wholesale prices in Iran rose 11.7 percent in the first eight months of the Iranian year starting on March 21 compared with the same period last year, the official IRNA news agency reported.

IRNA said Central Bank figures showed the wholesale index rose 10.8 percent in the month from October 23 to November 21 compared to the same month in the previous year.

Consumer inflation in Iran's cities ran at an annualized rate of 19 percent in the seven months to October 22, up from 17.4 percent in the same period a year earlier.
 
 

Thousands Attend Funeral Of Murdered Writer, Agence France Presse, December 17

TEHRAN - More than 2,000 people attended the funeral on Tuesday of Mohammad Pouyandeh, one of three Iranian writers who died in mysterious circumstances this month.

Pouyandeh's body was taken to Mehrshahr, a suburb of Karaj, a town west of the capital, for burial after a funeral service in a mosque near Tehran University, witnesses said. Pouyandeh's funeral comes two days after that of Mohammad Mokhtari, another secular writer kidnapped and killed in suspicious circumstances.

Both authors had campaigned for freedom of expression and planned to form a writer's association despite opposition from the authorities.

A third writer, Majid Sharif, was found dead early this month several days after he went missing. Officials said he had died of heart attack.

Last month, nationalist opposition leader Daryush Foruhar and his wife were stabbed to death in their Tehran home by anonymous assailants.
 
 

Police Arrest People Partying, Agence France Presse, December 15

TEHRAN - Iranian police arrested a group of revelers for "depraved" behavior at a dance party in the holy Shiite Moslem city of Mashhad, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

The 24 young people, some of them women wearing make-up but not the obligatory Islamic covering, faced a lashing after being discovered drinking alcohol at the party, but the sentence was suspended, according to conservative newspaper Qods.

Police also discovered playing cards, alcohol, musical instruments and drugs in the apartment, whose owner has been detained, it said.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, unmarried men and women cannot have contact in public and alcohol is banned.
 
 

Tehran Peddlers Turn To Pollution Masks For Fast Buck, Agence France Presse, December 17
 

TEHRAN - Tehran's street peddlers have dropped their usual ware -- food coupons, illegal pop music -- and turned to pollution masks, a hot-selling item as the city is choked by severe smog.

Jahan-e-Islam newspaper said the city's burgeoning ranks of unemployed, who previously traded in such illegal items as "vulgar music" cassettes, "have temporarily turned to selling breathing masks."

Air quality reached dangerous levels in the capital the past week, forcing the authorities to take unprecedented emergency measures.

Schools have been closed in recent days.

Pollution is a major problem in many Iranian cities, where vehicles are often old and not equipped with smog-control devices.

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