Back to Brief on Iran
A statement issued today by the National Council of Resistance of Iran said that about 45 days after the recent spate of hideous murders began in Tehran, last night the Ministry of Intelligence issued a statement announcing that the killers had been arrested and acknowledging that a number of Intelligence Ministry agents were among the murderers.
From the outset, the Iranian Resistance blamed the clerical regime's leaders for these murders and declared that a terrorist network consisting of Intelligence Ministry agents and the Revolutionary Guards Corps carried out these ghastly crimes, the statement said.
NCR President, Massoud Rajavi said in this respect: Although in its statement, the Intelligence Ministry has tried to put a lid on the role of the regime's leaders in these crimes and conceal the identities of those who ordered and carried out the killings, it was nonetheless compelled to admit to the full responsibility of the clerical regime's anti-human regime and all its factions, including Khatami's, in these murders.
The need for immediate international action against the terrorists ruling Iran and referring the mullahs' terrorism and human rights abuses to the United Nations Security Council is therefore greater than ever, Mr. Rajavi added.
The NCR President again called for
the dispatch of an international fact-finding mission to Iran to conduct
a comprehensive investigation into these crimes in order to bring to light
the role of the regime's leaders in this regard.
Iran State Body Blocks Law on Trade Zones, Reuter, January 6
A top Iranian state body on Wednesday blocked new legislation which would have provided investment guarantees to woo foreign funds to Iran's free trade zones, the official news agency IRNA said.
It said the Guardian Council, a body of Moslem clerics and lawyers which vets bills passed by parliament, objected to provisions in the law allowing majority-owned foreign and private banks and insurance firms in the trade zones.
The council said the provisions violated an article in Iran's constitution under which banks and insurance companies, nationalized after the 1979 Islamic revolution, must be controlled by the state, IRNA reported.
Officials have said the zones have
drawn just $300 million in foreign funds in the past five years partly
because of a lack of such guarantees.
Iran Says Foreign Payments $4.7 Bln. in 1999/2000, Reuter, January 6
Iran must pay foreign creditors $4.7 billion in the next Iranian year which starts on March 21, an Iranian Central Bank report said.
"According to statistics released by the Central Bank...$4.7 billion of the country's hard currency earnings next year must be used towards repaying foreign obligations," the Iranian news agency IRNA reported on Wednesday.
It said the report put at $22.4 billion
Iran's total foreign obligations on September 22.
Iran Rial Already Down Against Newly Arrived Euro-Central Bank, Reuter, January 5
Iran's Central Bank on Tuesday marginally raised the value of the euro against the rial, setting its main exchange rate at 3,499/3,534 rials for each euro, compared with 3,491/3,526 rials a day earlier.
A bank statement carried by the Iranian
news agency IRNA also quoted the euro at 2,043/2,055 rials, up from 2,039/2,051
rials on Monday, at Iran's other official exchange rate, which is used
only for essential state budget accounts.
Two Boys, Victims of Poverty, To Be Flogged, Reuters, January 4
An Iranian court has ordered two teenaged boys to be flogged for dressing as girls to extort money from young men, a newspaper reported on Monday.
The daily Qods said the boys, both 15, were dressed as girls and wearing make up when arrested on a popular park promenade in the southern city of Shiraz.
The Islamic court sentenced the two to an unspecified number of lashes.