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The mullahs' anti-human regime executed 18 Mojahedin supporters in the prison of Khorramabad (western Lorestan province), last week, reports from Iran say.
One those executed, Mohammad Sayyahi, aged 19, was arrested 40 days ago along with a group of youngsters in the city of Ahwaz (southwest Iran) by Intelligence Ministry agents. Most of those arrested were from the families of the Mojahedin.
Mohammad and 17 of those arrested were transferred to Khorramabad and put under torture. Mohammad's toes were broken due to the tortures.
His father, Mehdi, aged 69, had gone to Khorramabad prison to inquire about his son's fate. When he protested after being told of Mohammad's execution, the security forces in the prison detained and put him under torture. Mr. Sayyahi died in hospital on Thursday, March 11, due to the severity of his injuries suffered under torture.
Previously, Mohammad's brother, Habib, an Electronics Engineer, and his sister, Hamideh, a Pediatrician, were executed in Ahwaz during the massacre of political prisoners in 1988.
Following Khatami's appointment of
Ali Younessi as the Intelligence Minister, a new wave of political executions
and arrests has been underway across the country. Last Saturday, Ali-Asghar
Ghazanfarnejad, a Mojahedin political prisoner, was executed in Tehran's
Evin prison without any trial or access to a lawyer.
The Smiling Face of Iran, Financial Times, March 10
Mohammad Khatami, the smiling face of Iran, arrived in Italy yesterday...
This is… Mr. Khatami's first shot in a charm offensive designed to enhance his and his country's international stature - and above all to break free from continuing US attempts to isolate Iran's oil-rich but capital-starved economy…
… Mr. Khatami's campaign to present the smiling face of Iran contrasts strongly, businessmen and bankers in Tehran say, with the fearsome bureaucracy that awaits foreign investors.
Last month, for instance, the Majlis passed a budget law which highlights the country's schizophrenia about foreign investment. On the one hand the law, effective from the beginning of the 1999-2000 fiscal year starting on March 21, held out for the first time the prospect of 49 per cent foreign equity partnership in Iran's refineries. But the same budget law proposes to slap an income tax of 50-60 per cent on the salaries of all foreign residents, plus a corporate tax of 30 per cent, payable by foreign companies, on the collective salary of all their foreign employees.
The dysfunctionality of the law betrays Iran's preoccupation with security. Its ostensible purpose is to force foreign companies into three "free trade zones" on islands in the Gulf. "That way," one senior European diplomat says, "Iran's bureaucracy and security apparatus will have foreign businessmen where they can be more easily kept under surveillance."
Even if foreign businessmen find a way round the "free zone" hurdle, they are met by a bureaucratic jungle of officials who are appointed, according to Ali Rashidi, an economist, for "reasons of nepotism and political favoritism rather than on merit".
Bankers complain that simply to get the central bank to confirm buyer letters of credit, a client has to go through no fewer than 23 procedures involving three different government ministries and five separate departments of the central bank.
Even under Mr. Khatami, therefore,
Iran is not for the faint-hearted…
Soccer Fans Ransack Buses After Match, Reuters, March14
TEHRAN - Iranian soccer fans ransacked 47 Tehran buses in rare fan violence that followed a match between local teams, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
Fans coming out of the 100,000-seat
Azadi stadium in central Tehran on Friday after a match between the Pirouzi
and Pass soccer teams inflicted damage worth 15 million rials; Arya newspaper
quoted the Tehran bus company as saying.
Three Iranian Girls Charged With Dressing as Boys, Agence France Presse, March 16
TEHRAN - Three teenaged Iranian girls were brought before a Tehran court for walking the streets of the capital dressed as boys, the Iranian newspaper Khorassan reported Tuesday.
"We always dreamed of being boys," the three told the judge Monday, adding that they had defied the Islamic republic's strict female dress code in order to be "left alone."
Parastou, Elnaz and Mojghan -- ages 15, 16 and 17 respectively -- were also charged with leaving their family homes without permission.