Back to Brief on Iran
TEHRAN—…Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi, leader of the Iran Freedom Movement, was summoned to the Islamic Court Sunday evening, associated said….Dr. Yazdi hasn't communicated with associates since phoning them that night….
The court that brought in Dr. Yazdi is closely aligned with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The arrest may deepen the divisions between Ayatollah Khamenei and the country's elected leader, President Mohammad Khatami….
President Khatami has sought to play down his differences with Ayatollah Khamenei. But others, including student activists and a few religious figures, have been pushing him toward a confrontation. Last month, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, an Iranian religious figure who once was in line to be supreme leader, gave a lecture painting Iran's presidential election as a repudiation of Ayatollah Khamenei….
In reaction, a mob pillaged Ayatollah Montazeri's home and office in Qom, Iran's theological center. Street demonstrations were held throughout Iran in support of Ayatollah Khamenei, who said critics of the country's theocratic system were guilty of "acts of treason."…
Dr. Yazdi's detainment could be a warning by Ayatollah Khamenei that he won't hesitate to move against critics now that most of the international press corps has left Tehran after the OIC meeting….
Ayatollah Montazeri isn't the only cleric critical of Ayatollah Khamenei, though….some mullahs have long doubted Ayatollah Khamenei's religious credentials, and suggest a committee be set up to replace the single leader….
In particular, the top cleric in Isfahan is reported to have given a stern warning Friday to the officially tolerated vigilantes who have ransacked newspaper offices in that city, which is a stronghold of President Khatami….
Putting Ayatollah Montazeri on trial would be a risky move, though. As one of seven top religious authorities in Iran, he has silent adherents throughout the country….
Mr. Khatami and Ayatollah Khamenei may face more conflicts next year….
Police Probe Iranian Link In US Murders,
United Press International, December 18
ISLAMABAD—Pakistani and U.S. investigators probing the murders of four Americans in Karachi last month are looking at a possible Iranian link.
Officials at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad have confirmed local reports Thursday that investigators are interrogating Iranians for their possible involvement in the deaths.
Reports say police in Karachi arrested more than a dozen Iranians last week. Some have since been released but police are still holding six as possible suspects. Police traced telephone calls to the apartment where the Iranians lived.
A terrorist attack last month in Karachi,
a southern port city, left four Houston oil company employees dead….
Women Resist Raw Deal in Islamic Iran, Reuter, December 15
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Women were in the vanguard of the Iranian revolution that ousted the Shah 18 years ago, but they have had a raw deal in the Islamic republic and are increasingly demanding greater rights.
Few of the countless thousands of women who poured into the streets, defying the Shah's soldiers to demonstrate for change, can have imagined that the revolution would turn the clock back more than half a century for their sex.
Yet that, according to feminist lawyer Mehrangiz Kar, is exactly what happened.
"The family protection law enacted in the last four years of the Shah's regime, which improved many things for women, was abolished and they returned to the previous law approved 66 years earlier," she told Reuters in an interview….
In the name of Islam, the ruling Shi'ite Muslim clergy reinstated laws that give men an absolute right to divorce their wives without having to produce any justification and, in the vast majority of cases, custody over the children.
Women are entitled to keep boys only up to the age of two and girls until seven. After that the father has the right to custody….
"Although the mother has a very lofty place in Iranian literature and religious tradition, legally she is next to nothing," Kar said.
Women are barred from serving as judges, although there were many on the bench before the revolution. They face explicit discrimination in the criminal law and an unwritten "glass ceiling" in employment.
A woman's evidence in court is worth only half a man's, Kar said, and for some offenses, women's evidence is not admissible at all….
Blood money for a murdered woman is only half that for a man. Moreover, in an Islamic version of Catch 22, if a murdered woman's family insists on her male killer's execution, her relatives have to pay his family the full blood money in compensation, Kar said.