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TEHRAN - The Iranian authorities on Thursday announced the arrests of 12 members of a fundamentalist group for plotting to assassinate prominent leaders of the Islamic Republic, including a former president.
"Members of the group were preparing a list of people to assassinate, including a number of Iranian figures," the state news agency IRNA quoted Mohammad Niazi, a prosecutor for the Tehran military court, as saying.
Niazi, speaking Wednesday evening to a group of clerics in the holy city of Qom, said 12 members of the Shiite Moslem fundamentalist group, known as Mahdiyoun had been arrested including its leader.
The prosecutor, who has been heading the investigation into last year's series of murders of intellectuals in Tehran, did not identify the alleged assassination targets or specify when the members of the group were arrested.
But the English-language newspaper Iran News reported on Thursday that the authorities had foiled an attempt on the life of influential former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.
The assassination bid by members of
the Mahdiyoun was "discovered and neutralized," the daily reported, without
giving any date or other details about the attack.
Tehran's Former Mayor Jailed On Corruption Charges, Agence France Presse, May 6
TEHRAN -Tehran's former mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi began serving a two-year sentence for corruption on Thursday despite last-ditch efforts by his supporters to stop him going to jail.
Karbaschi had given himself up to a Tehran court following a warrant issued against him last week, more than a year after he was first arrested on charges he denounced as a purely political smear campaign by his hardline detractors.
He was taken to Evin prison in northern Tehran after the court confirmed the sentence against him, in a fresh setback to Khatami's faction.
Police broke up a rally outside the
courthouse by several hundred supporters of Karbaschi.
Residents Clash With Security Forces, Revolutionary Guards In Three Cities, Iran Zamin News Agency, May 5
An agent of the clerical regime's Intelligence Ministry was killed in an armed clash on April 28, near Hamedan-Kermanshah highway patrol in western region of Hamedan, western Iran.
Three days earlier, young people in the city of Rasht, capital of the northern Gilan province, hurled a grenade at a vehicle of the State Security Force. The vehicle sustained heavy damage and three members of the Force in the car were wounded.
In early April, a group of young people in Kermanshah, western Iran, set ablaze a center of the Revolutionary Guards Corps' para-military Bassij, as a result of which this center of repression and terror was totally demolished.
Prior to that incident, three members of the State Security Force were killed in the vicinity of Evin Prison.
According to a confidential report obtained by the Mojahedin inside Iran, in the past three months, at least 35 officers and NCOs of the State Security Forces have been killed in Tehran alone in clashes with people and especially the youth.
The continuation of popular attacks
against the regime's suppressive forces reflects the public's rising rage
and disdain toward the regime and its repressive policies, particularly
the harassment and persecution of women and young people in the streets
and public places.
UAE Paper Says Iran Gulf Alliance Call "Premature", Reuter, May 5
DUBAI "A United Arab Emirates (UAE) newspaper said on Wednesday that Iran's campaign to mend ties with its Gulf Arab neighbors was "premature."
In an editorial, The Gulf Today said Khatami's call for a regional military alliance with Saudi Arabia ignored the political complexities it brought with it.
Khatami "seems to have overlooked the fact that there is much to be done by way of confidence building measures with the Arab countries before he can hope to win their confidence," the newspaper said.