Khatami's government reaffirms fatwa for Rushdie's murder

Quoting the Guidance Minister, Ata'ollah Mohajerani, the clerical regime's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance reiterated in a statement that "the fatwa for the murder of Salman Rushdie is still in force." The statement categorically denied reports in some western media about a pledge by Mohajerani that the regime will give written guarantees that it will not murder Salman Rushdie.

On Wednesday, December 17, in an interview with the Norwegian Ch. 2 television, the mullahs' Foreign Ministry spokesman reaffirmed the death decree for Rushdie and the translators and publishers of his book. Earlier, the regime's Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharrazi had insisted that the fatwa was irreversible.

The repeated emphasis by officials of the Khatami government on the death decree for Salman Rushdie reaffirms that export of terrorism and fundamentalism are part and parcel with the foreign policy of Iran's theocratic regime and all its internal factions.

These remarks, the regime's terrorist actions against the Mojahedin's headquarters in Baghdad and against the supporters of the Iranian Resistance in foreign countries, and the assassination of dissident Iranian Kurds in the Iraqi Kurdistan in the past two weeks reflect that holding the Islamic Conference summit in Tehran has emboldened the clerical regime in Iran to continue its terrorist and fundamentalist policies.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
December 21, 1997

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