Back to Brief on Iran
Frankfurt prosecutor Job Tillmann told German television on Sunday that a former Iranian intelligence official has said the bombing of an airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie was ordered and masterminded by Iran and not Libya.
Tillmann said he had questioned the former top official known as "source C" during his investigations into whether the bomb was brought to London via Frankfurt airport.
All 259 people aboard the Pan Am plane,
as well as 11 Lockerbie residents, lost their lives in the disaster on
December 21, 1988.
Court Won't Free Ex-Tehran Mayor, The Associated Press, December 22
An Iranian court has rejected an appeal by the former mayor of Tehran who was sentenced to five years in jail for corruption.
Gholamhossein Karbaschi's appeal was reviewed by three judges, and the "charges and the cases of conviction remain the same," Iran's official news agency reported Tuesday. It quoted judiciary spokesman Fotovat Nasiri-Savadkouhi.
The Islamic Republic News Agency did not say when the ruling was made.
Karbaschi was sentenced in July and had been allowed to remain free on bail pending appeal. IRNA did not say if he had now been jailed, and judiciary officials could not be reached for comment.
Karbaschi, an ally of President Mohammad Khatami, was a target of hard-line political rivals, and was found guilty of embezzlement during his eight years as Tehran's mayor. He was sentenced to three years in prison for embezzlement and two years for misappropriation of government money.
He was also ordered to pay $500,000 in fines and compensation to the city and banned from holding any government job for 20 years.
During his trial, Karbaschi admitted
to making mistakes, but denied stealing public money.
Iranian Dissident Cleric Back in The Public Eye, Reuter, December 22
An Iranian dissident cleric, now under house arrest after a spectacular fall from grace, has returned to the public eye.
In a letter to a new daily, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri issued a plea for political pluralism and civil rights within Iran's Islamic system.
The senior theologian's appearance in the Khordad newspaper on Monday is likely to rekindle heated debate on the role of clerical rule, an issue that has seen Montazeri demonized for challenging the very foundations of Iran's ruling establishment.
Montazeri completed his alienation from ruling circles last year with an authoritative critique of the institution of supreme clerical rule —"velayat-e faqih"— and its current officeholder Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Another Khatami Ally Arrested in The Growing Power Struggle, Agence France Presse, December 21
Supporters of Iranian President Mohmmad Khatami protested on Monday over the arrest of a political ally and former deputy parliamentary speaker, Assadollah Bayat, on fraud charges.
Bayat, a cleric and deputy parliamentary speaker between 1989 and 1993, was arrested last week after a court found him guilty of fraud and forging official documents.
According to judicial officials, Bayat was convicted of his alleged crime in July 1997 and sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 30,000 dollars.
But the cleric, who himself presided over a revolutionary court in the early 1980s, ignored court orders to show up for further proceedings.
The special clergy court was created after the 1979 Islamic revolution to try offenses committed by clerics.
Last week, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed a new head of the court, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei.
Ejei presided over the trial in June and July of Ghlam-Hossein Karbaschi, Tehran's mayor and another Khatami ally, who was sentenced to five years in prison and 60 lashes of the whip after being convicted of corruption.