CAIRO - An Egyptian government weekly on Sunday charged that Lebanon's anti-Israeli Hezbollah guerrilla was not a resistance movement but an "extremist" group in the pay of Iran."

"Are Hezbollah freedom fighters or agents for a non-Arab country?" asked Rose el-Yussef magazine in a report devoted to the Lebanese Moslem Shiite guerrilla.

"The extremists are only doing this as part of overt and covert action on behalf of Iran in the region," it said.

Rose el-Yussef charged that Iran was backing Hezbollah and Hamas, in a bid "to keep an influential position in the region and to increase its influence on the international scene."
 

Top Cleric Warns of Internet, Satellite Threat, Reuters, January 22
 

TEHRAN - A top Iranian cleric warned on Friday against the "threat" of the Internet and satellite television to Iranian society.

"The danger of the Internet and satellites that broadcast from a close range threatens us...They broadcast disgraceful, immoral pictures and threaten all humanity and morality and chastity," said Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the secretary of the powerful Guardian Council.

In his sermon, broadcast on Tehran radio, Jannati warned that if due action was not taken, "Islam and the revolution would be damaged and people would give in to passions."

Under Iranian law, satellite television receivers are banned and hoisting a satellite dish is an offense punished by a fine and the confiscation of the equipment.

Several Internet service providers and an Internet cafe are currently active in the Islamic republic, but users -- mostly government organizations and professionals such as journalists -- have to get an official permit and sign a statement promising they would not connect to "immoral" sites or those "against national security."

Prices of Internet services, including E-mail, are high for the average Iranian and therefore the users are mostly government bodies and commercial firms.
 
 

Commentary
 
Intelligence Ministry Implicated in Murder of Dissidents
 

Six weeks after the ghastly murders of Iranian writers and dissidents first came to surface, the clerical regime’s notorious secret police, the Ministry of Intelligence and State Security, issued an ambiguous statement declaring that the killers’ network had been discovered and that the perpetrators of the serial murders were detained. Among them were an unspecified number of "irresponsible, self-serving colleagues in the Intelligence Ministry acting arbitrarily," the statement said.

What compelled the clerics to make such a sudden acknowledgment was tremendous public pressure within Iran and invariable statements of outrage and condemnations of the killings abroad.

What is the true picture? Members of a supreme committee consisting of Khamenei, Khatami, Rafsanjani, Dorri Najafabadi and his predecessor Ali Fallahian, Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander in Chief Rahim Safavi, GC Deputy Commander in Chief Mohammad-Baqer Zolqadr and ex-Deputy Intelligence Minister Mohammad Hejazi were either informed of the murders in advance or actually oversaw the killings. A number of senior Intelligence Ministry officials and dozens of GC officers were directly involved.

Terrified of a crack in the wall of repression and a slack in the suppression by the Ministry’s henchmen after the exposure of their role, however, Khatami wasted no time to reassure the Ministry's personnel. In a message, he heaped praise on the interrogators, torturers, terrorists and informers who make up the Intelligence Ministry and described them as "selfless, dignified and honorable," calling them "the most honest and loyal forces" and "the source of great services and creators of epics."

The Committee assigned by Khatami to the task of investigating the recent serial killings, announced on January 17: "Extensive investigation indicate that none of the [regime's] political groupings and factions were in any way involved in these murders." Such a brazen statement demonstrates palpably that Khatami is doing his utmost to whitewash the role of the regime's leaders in these murders. The mullahs' is neither a sign of the clerics', or for that matter, Khatami's, intention to unveil the truth, nor an indication of progress of the so-called reformist trend.

Now that the clerical regime's leaders have admitted to these killings, the files on other such murders in the years past out of Iran must be reexamined immediately by relevant international organs and organs in countries where they occurred. As for the murders inside Iran, international delegations accompanied by representatives of the Iranian Resistance must intervene. It is time for the United Nations Security Council to adopt serious and practical measures to punish this religious, terrorist dictatorship.
 
 

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