Police Round Up "Immodestly-Dressed" Women in Iran, Agence France Presse, April 9

TEHRAN - Iranian police on Wednesday carried out spot checks on women's dress in Tehran, arresting around a dozen women and girls judged not to be sufficiently covered up.

Police stopped female passers-by in Vanak square in the capital's well-off northern suburbs and made them get into a parked police car if they had broken strict Islamic dress codes.

Those arrested, mostly young girls, had to pay a fine or be taken to a police station.

The authorities here are trying to enforce rules on women brought in after the 1979 Islamic revolution, which include the wearing of a black chador or dark-coloured coat and scarf and no heavy make-up.

Reviving Judicial Police Force, Tehran Radio, April 5

The head of the Judiciary, Mohammad Yazdi, announced that reviving the judicial police force is one of the priorities of the judiciary this year.

Speaking to a meeting of religious judges and prosecutors, Yazdi said that the force will be used to enforce decrees by the judiciary.

Former Political Prisoners Re-arrested, Iran Zamin News Agency, April 7

According to reports from Mashad, in northeastern Iran, the mullahs' regime has re-arrested a number of recently released political prisoners. Twelve former political prisoners have disappeared in the past few weeks, according to reports from their families, who have no word on the fate of the missing.

Economy at the Whim of the Mullahs, The Christian Science Monitor, April 9

…The government, under pressure to diversify the economy beyond oil exports, has long promised support for private business. Yet entrepreneurs and free-market advocates complain that, in practice, government controls do more to hinder than help their businesses.

"Government procedures are tedious and should be removed," says Ali Shams Ardekani, secretary-general of the Iranian chamber of commerce. "Tax incentives are not good enough. It's no wonder the Iranian economy is 85-percent controlled by the government."

… "It's not so much that the rules are harsh - although they are - but more that they change all the time," complains one Iranian entrepreneur. "They change on the whim of ministers and customs officials." …

The United States imposed an economic embargo on Iran in 1995, creating an uncertain business climate in which few private entrepreneurs are prepared to invest.

Regime in the Dock in German Murder Trial, Reuter, April 9

BONN - A Berlin judge rules on Thursday whether one Iranian and four Lebanese were responsible for the gangland-style killing of a group of Kurdish Iranian dissidents by two masked men with machineguns in 1992.

But the real drama will focus on whether judge Frithjof Kubsch names the men whom the prosecution says ordered and approved the shootings -- Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

At stake are relations between Iran and Germany, its biggest trading partner and most important friend in the West. Bonn has doggedly insisted on maintaining amicable relations with Tehran while its major allies accuse the Iranians of state terrorism…

Bonn is bracing for repercussions. Depending on the trial's outcome, a wholesale review of bilateral ties may be necessary, the Foreign Ministry says…

[In a related report from Dubai, Reuter reported that "the German Foreign Ministry has warned Germans not to travel to Iran unless absolutely necessary and to remain in constant contact with the embassy in Tehran."]

Saudi Bomb Suspect Changes His Alibi - Again, Reuter, April 9

DUBAI - … A Saudi dissident held in Canada for his alleged role in last year's bombing that killed 19 U.S. airmen in the kingdom… has repeatedly denied any role in the truck bombing. But he has changed his line on where he was at the time of the blast, telling a Canadian newspaper he was in Qom, a key Shi'ite learning centre in Iran, after first saying he was in Syria…

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