TEHRAN - Iran’s courts have sentenced four people to death in connection with the bloody violence that rocked Iranian cities in July, the head of Tehran’s revolutionary tribunal revealed in an interview Sunday.

The four main instigators of the protests have been sentenced to death and two have already had their sentences confirmed by Iran’s supreme court, Tehran revolutionary tribunal president Gholamhossein Rahbarpur announced in an exclusive interview with Jomhuri Eslami.

Rahbarpur did not say when or how the four had been tried or on what charges, nor did he indicate when the verdicts and sentences had been passed down.

He said only that the four, whom he did not name, "had organized links with certain political groupings, which is why the verdict concerning them was not announced."

The revolutionary court chief said Sunday that 1,500 people in all had been arrested in connection with the disturbances.

Of these 200 were awaiting their verdicts, 800 were still on trial and 500 had been released on bail, Rahbarpur said.
 
 

Rajavi Warns of Executions on the Eve of New Academic Year, Iran Zamin News Agency, September 12

Four persons arrested during the July uprisings received death sentences and their verdicts were approved by the "Supreme Court of Justice," the state owned daily Jomhouri Islami reported today quoting mullah Gholam Hossein Rahbarpour, head of the "Islamic Revolutionary Court."

By executing a large number of those arrested in the mid-July uprising and by terrorizing the university and high school students, the clerical regime seeks to avoid another surge of public protests on the eve of the new school year.

In the past weeks, officials and state owned media have repeatedly expressed concern about a recurrence of unrest, what they call "Riots II".

Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance, urged the UN Secretary General and Human Rights Commission as well as the international human rights organizations and advocates to immediately intervene and condemn the clerical regime's mistreatment and execution of the said prisoners.

Mr. Rajavi also urged the UN Security Council to adopt binding sanctions against Iran's ruling mullahs and do not allow this medieval regime to exploit the world community's inaction in order to continue its crimes against the people of Iran, particularly the political prisoners.
 
 

State-Controlled Paper Calls For Fatwa against Writer, Agence France Presse, September 11

TEHRAN - A Tehran daily called Saturday for the authorities here to issue a fatwa, or death sentence, against an émigré Iranian writer and for a bounty to be placed on his head like that placed on British novelist Salman Rushdie.

In a front-page headline the Jebheh newspaper called for the bounty against Hossein Baqerzadeh to be set at 100 million rials (30,000 dollars).

"If religious dignitaries approve the fatwa against Baqerzadeh, the paper will propose the sum of 100 million rials for the revolutionary execution of this apostate," the daily said.

Baqerzadeh infuriated conservatives within the regime last week when the daily Neshat published one of his articles calling for an end to the death penalty and Iran’s strict "eye-for-an-eye" Islamic law of retribution.

[Mullahs’] supreme leader Ali Khamenei decreed that journalists like Baqerzadeh who opposed the vengeance law were "apostates" who themselves were liable to be put to death.
 
 

Israel Accuses Clerical Regime of Mid-East Peace Process Sabotage, Agence France Presse, September 7

JERUSALEM - Israel’s head of military intelligence on Tuesday accused Iran of manipulating Palestinian and Lebanese Islamists who want to sabotage the peace process.

"Iran is centralizing the ideological struggle of terrorist organizations which carry out (anti-Israeli) attacks to sabotage the peace process," said General Amos Malka during a meeting of the parliamentary foreign affairs and defense committee.

"The efforts made by Iran to this end are carried out, above all, through Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Hezbollah which are trying to exploit every opportunity to disrupt the peace process," he said.

The explosions occurred less than 24 hours after Israel signed a landmark agreement with the Palestinians in Egypt, clearing the way for talks on a permanent settlement after decades of strife.
 

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