DOMESTIC

Dissident group arrested

Kayhan Havai, Sept. 4 - "Niyaz, the director general of the Intelligence Dept. in Mazandaran Province, said members of an anti-revolutionary group called 'Kaveh' have been arrested." They had distributed statements and circulars against Khomein i and the present clerical rulers throughout the province, according to Niyaz. He said several of the group's members had been arrested in June. The Iranian resistance had carried out a nationwide publicity campaign against the regime during June, this year. Niyaz also spoke of arresting two "spy teams", but did not elaborate on the cases.

100 "spies" arrested

Kayhan Havai, Sept. 4 - The regime's Intelligence Minister "Fallahian disclosed that security forces had arrested 137 Iraqi and American spies who are waiting for trial." He added, "several terrorists had also been captured." Fallahian did not g ive any information on the identity of the people involved.

Strong defenses against opponents

Reuter, Sept. 12 - Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, warned would-be aggressors "We have now built a solid defense industry and no one would find it beneficial to make a move on us," Rafsanjani told a banquet hosted by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on We dnesday night.

Tehran radio, Sept. 12 - This afternoon 40,000 Guards, organized in five divisions and 80 combat and logistics battalions, began the largest Revolutionary Guards maneuvers in a region with an area of 3,500 hectares in the province of Eastern Azerbaijan .

The Guards Corps Commander in Chief, Mohsen Rezaii, once again emphasized on the readiness of combat forces to defend the achievements of the Revolution."

Reuter, Sept. 14 - Brigadier Rahim Ebrahimi, deputy commander of ground forces for intelligence and operations, told the English-language Tehran Times that the Islamic Republic's forces, with their experience in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, could crack d own on any aggression against Iranian territory.

"Islamisizing" the universities

Iran Zamin News Agency, Sept. 10 - In a meeting with his representatives in the universities, Khamenei, the regime's leader, emphasized on further "Islamization" of these educational institutions, for, as he put it, the "future of the country and the revolution depends on it." The so called "Islamization of the universities" is to be implemented during a span of three years. The plan includes the purging of university lecturers who have differing views from those of the regime and are not willing to comply. Some 40% of 65,000 students admitted to the universities will be chosen from among the zealous supporters of the regime. Around 25,000, they will be exempt from taking entrance exams. The remaining 40,000 students are chosen from among more than o ne and a half million students applying to enter universities.

Five publicly hanged

AFP, Sept. 12 - Five men were publicly hanged in northwestern Iran. The daily Kayhan announced on Thursday that the said individuals were charged for sexual assaulting a teenage boy.

FOREIGN

Rajavi urges defense of children's rights

Iran Zamin, Sept. 9 - In a message to the World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation Of Children, held in the Swedish capital, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian Resistance President-elect, urged the participants not to remain silent vis-a-vis the crimes of the mullahs' medieval dictatorship toward children and to spare no effort in compelling this regime to abide by the congress's ratifications and abolish inhuman laws affecting innocent and defenseless girl children.

PUK radio in Iran

Sept. 14 (AFP) - Kurdish sources announced that Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was to resume its radio broadcasts, interrupted in Iraq because of clashes, from Iran.

Mojahedin deny involvement

PMI Press Office, Aug. 31 - A spokesman for the People's Mojahedin of Iran categorically denied baseless propaganda stemming from the Iranian regime about the involvement of the Mojahedin's military forces in the fighting between rival Kurdish factions in northern Iraq. Such absurd claims serve only to cover up the clerical regime's large-scale intervention in Iraqi Kurdistan and its dispatch of thousands of Revolutionary Guards Corps to control the region, the spokesman added. Neither the National Lib eration Army, nor the Mojahedin have any presence in the northern region of Iraq.

In a bogus news broadcasts and in state-controlled newspapers such as Kayhan Havai , on September 11, the Iranian regime alleged that the Mojahedin were involved in the fighting between Iraqi Kurdish rivals in northern Iraq.

Reuter, Sept. 14 - Arab Foreign Ministers condemned on Saturday Turkish, Iranian or any other intervention in northern Iraq. They also called for early implementation of Iraq's oil-for-food deal with the United Nations as a means to spare the Iraqi people any further suffering from UN. sanctions.

South Africa-Iran

NCR Secretariat, Sept. 14 - NCR President Massoud Rajavi, condemned the visit to South Africa by Hashemi Rafsanjani, and the reception given to him by the South African President, Mr. Nelson Mandela.

Mr. Rajavi described comments by the South African President that human rights have improved in Iran as most shocking and inaccurate. He added: Overlooking the deteriorating human rights situation of 70 million Iranians, in order to receive oil and pet ty economic concessions, by Mr. Mandela, who personally suffered imprisonment and torture and witnessed the slaughter of his fellow comrades-in-arms, is beyond expectation.

AP, Sept. 14 - President Nelson Mandela met with Iran's president on Friday despite criticism from South Africans. Opposition parties and human rights groups argued Hashemi Rafsanjani should never have been invited to the country given Iran's record on human rights and its alleged support of international terrorism.

Reuter, Sept. 12 - A government source said South Africa agreed to Rafsanjani's request for a visit to protect a potentially lucrative trade opportunity. "Iran has promised to help us redress our trade imbalance with the Middle East both directly and b y providing us with a gateway to the region," the source said.

The Mykonos trial

Reuter, Sept. 12 - A Berlin court trying four men suspected of carrying out a political assassination on Iran's orders said on Thursday that Tehran was obstructing the trial. Presiding judge Frithjof Kubsch said the court had tried to take evidence fro m a witness in Tehran last month, but that he has failed to turn up because of an "obvious delaying tactic" by Iran and would not now be heard. "The court refuses to cooperate with an attempt by a third party to influence the course of the trial," Kubsch said.

"The Minister of Intelligence Ali Fallahian described the 'Mykonos' trial as a 'political soap opera' saying that it would have an adverse impact on bilateral relations of the two countries," reported weekly Kayhan Havai on September 4.

AFP, Sept. 13 - German Foreign Minister, Klaus Kinkel, expects to restart the "critical dialogue," in a meeting with Velayati, during the UN General Assembly. According to Kinkel, the two ministers will specially talk about the Mykonos Court procedure s.

Refugees disappear in Turkey

Radio France, June 24 - The UN High Commission for Refugees announced that 21 Iranian asylum-seekers, including 20 Bahais, disappeared on August 7 in Turkey when authorities told them to register themselves at the border where they had come from. Accor ding to eye witnesses women and children were crying not to be returned to Iran.

FEATURE

"Iran sending troops into Iraqi Kurdistan," The Associated Press, September. 7, 1996

By: Yalman Onaran

Editor's Note: The first link in the chain of events that led to U.S. missile strikes against Iraq this week was an Iranian incursion into northern Iraq. An Associated Press reporter was the first to speak with refugees who said they witnessed the Iran ian attack.

Diana (Iraq)- The 200 refugees squeezed into a school say they fled not from Kurdish rebels or Saddam Hussein's army, but from shelling by the Iranian army. "I saw it with my own eyes. They were Iranian troops, not Talebani guerrillas," Fatima Abdullah Mostafa said Friday two of her eight children clinging to her shirt. "They were speaking Farsi, not Kurdish, and wore uniforms I'd never seen before." attracted little notice, in part because it appears to have been concentrated in the rugged extreme north atop the Zozik mountains, not far from where the borders of Iran, Iraq and Turkey meet.

One young refugee said Iranian troops started shelling his village of Kasra on Aug. 16, when the two Kurdish factions resumed their 20-year-old fight for northern Iraq. "They shelled us for three days, then they attacked," Hamet Hidir Ibrahim said. "There were at least 200 Iranian troops along with (PUK) guerrillas. At least 100 people were killed." the clothes I'm wearing are not mine. Good people here gave me those." All of Mrs. Mostafa's eight children made it with her, but she said her husband and two of her cousins were captured by the Iranians.

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