BRIEF ON IRAN
No. 1284
Friday, December 3, 1999
Representative Office of
The National  Council of Resistance of Iran
Washington, DC


"Amnesty Bill": A Ridiculous Scheme to Evade International Censure, Iran Zamin News Agency, December 2

The state-controlled media reported that a number of deputies in the mullahs' illegitimate Majlis presented a bill according to which "all those who have left the country on various pretexts after the glorious Islamic revolution and those affiliated with counterrevolutionary grouplets will be given amnesty if they ask for general amnesty and receive pardon." The bill underscored that "the amnesty does not cover those who have engaged in terrorism..."

Tabling this bill is a transparent scheme by the clerics to beguile international public opinion and thwart international condemnation. The United Nations Third Committee adopted a resolution on November 18, condemning the continuing, flagrant human rights abuses and continuing torture and execution in Iran.

This ridiculous act coming at a time when the regime has imprisoned such figures as Abdollah Nouri, who for the past 20 years held highest positions in the regime's suppressive organs such the guards corps and the interior ministry, does not deceive anyone in Iran.
 

Discredited Stage-managing in Ahwaz, Iran Zamin News Agency, December 2

In a ridiculous act of stage-managing five days after the Mojahedin's operational units inside Iran pounded Khuzistan province's General Director of Intelligence, the mullahs' Intelligence Ministry took a number of journalists from Tehran on a guided tour of a hospital and a location in Ahwaz, on Tuesday, November 30, claiming that a number of civilians had been injured as a result of the Mojahedin's attack on a university.

The clerical regime's five-day delay in taking the journalists to see the "wounded" and the "damages" is a clear testament to the false nature of these claims. If the mullahs were telling the truth, why did they not take the journalists to the location the same night or the day after the incident, a routine practice everywhere else in the world?

The contradictions in official positions and in the state-run media reports demonstrate clearly the mullahs' preposterous stage-managing.

As the Mojahedin have declared repeatedly, the organization's operational units inside Iran have never targeted civilian centers or population. On many occasions in the past, the clerical regime has resorted to such transparent theatrics to cover up it crimes and setbacks.

The heinous murder of Christian leaders and the bombing of the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashad in 1994 and the mullahs' attempts to blame them on the Mojahedin are among such cases. In recent months, a number of officials and the state-run media admitted that the Intelligence Ministry had perpetrated these crimes.

In late November, the clerical regime announced that the Intelligence Ministry agents were responsible for the criminal explosion in September in a large square in the city of Mashad that killed two innocent civilians and wounded several more.
 

Mullahs' Mismanagement and Y2k Disruptions, Reuters, December 2

TEHRAN - A senior official warned Iranians on Thursday about possible disruptions in oil, power, telecommunications and other public services due to the millennium computer bug, state television reported.

"People should be ready...for certain disruptions in public services and mass media should draw the public's attention to this world crisis," the television quoted Mohammad Sepehri-Rad, secretary of the state High Council of Informatics, as saying.

"Sensitive sectors such as oil, power, communications, water, medicine and transport are exposed to disruptions and steps have been taken to deal with this," said Sepehri-Rad, who heads Iran's Y2K compliance program.
 

Nouri's Case Deepens Factional Infighting, Reuters, December 2

TEHRAN - Several top theologians have thrown their weight behind jailed cleric Abdollah Nouri.

Tensions between the state and the seminaries have erupted into the open with the Special Court for Clergy's conviction of Nouri on dissent charges last month.

A group of clerics, meanwhile, dismissed the Special Court for clergy as unconstitutional -- implicitly challenging Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who recently defended the panel as a lawful body.

"The sentencing of Nouri was issued by a court which ... everybody knows to be in open contradiction with the constitution," said a statement issued by the League of Teachers of the Qom seminaries.

Iran's supreme ruler Ali Khamenei, who controls the special court, said last month that the court, which operates independently of the judiciary, was lawful.

"It is an appropriate, legal and necessary court... The objections raised against it are not valid," Khamenei had said.
 

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