Back to Brief on Iran
TEHRAN - The Islamic Revolutionary Court on Tuesday night blocked the printing of the daily Zan.
The daily Arya, in an editorial headlined "Zan, the First Victim," said the ban reflected growing fear among conservatives they were losing influence.
Analysts say the factionalism that has plagued virtually every institution of Iranian social and political life was coming to a head in the long run-up to the parliamentary polls.
The closing of Zan came in the face of efforts by Khatami's ministry of culture to censure the newspaper but keep it open.
It follows strong signals that the suspended Tehran mayor, a supporter of the president and head of the Executives of Construction, would soon be jailed for graft.
Hardliners have also announced plans
to impeach the culture minister, another prominent member of the Executives,
and a trial has been set for next week of a cleric on charges of slandering
the Islamic system.
Election Board Repeats Annulment Call for Tehran Vote, Agence France Presse, April 8
TEHRAN - Iran's conservative electoral supervisory committee reiterated its intention to overturn the election of five candidates to the Tehran municipal council, newspapers said Thursday.
Committee head and hardline MP Ali Movahedi Savoji has sent a letter to the Tehran governorship stating that the election of the five should be invalidated because their candidacies were illegal, the press reported.
Savoji said last month that the committee would not officially approve the results of the February polls until April 20 and that the five had failed to meet the electoral criteria.
"The five failed to turn in their resignations from their posts before the elections," he said, adding that "any person with any number of votes can be eliminated if he is found to have been unqualified."
Among those in question is former interior minister Abdollah Nuri, a key supporter of reformist Mohammad Khatami.
The regime's conservatives have taken several strong steps to roll back the rival factions' wins, including the banning on Wednesday of a newspaper headed by MP Faezeh Hashemi.
Conservative MPs in recent weeks have
also called for the impeachment of Interior Minister Abdol-Vahed Mussavi-Lari
over his ministry's handling of the elections.
German Facing Death Sentence Ordered Released On Bail in Iran, Agence France Presse, April 8
TEHRAN - German businessman Helmut Hofer, sentenced to death in Tehran for having sexual relations with an Iranian woman, is to be released pending a final decision in his case, his lawyers said Thursday.
The head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, has said publicly that the woman confessed and was flogged but gave no details.
The German daily Die Welt reported in February that Hofer found "shameful and sad" the way he had been treated by both nations.
The politically sensitive case has strained already touchy relations between Iran and Germany, its largest European trading partner.
In February a German businessman was seized from a diplomatic car and shot dead by a lone gunman who had already killed three other people, according to official accounts.
Relations have been tense since Iranian national Kazem Darabi was sentenced to life in prison in Germany in 1997 for involvement in the murders of Kurdish political opponents in Berlin in 1992.
The German court implicated the Iranian
regime in the killings.
38 Iraqi Prisoners Die in Iranian Prison Camps, Agence France Presse, April 8
BAGHDAD - Thirty-eight Iraqi prisoners of war have died in Iranian prison camps, Iraqi weekly Al-Zaura said Thursday, quoting recently released prisoners.
The newspaper published a list of names without saying when or how they had died. The prisoners also reported that hundreds of Iraqi prisoners were being held in Iran, but that Tehran was denying their existence.