On the evening of Friday, December 31, agents of the State Security Forces opened fire on a car on the outskirts of the town of Sardasht in western Iran, killing an impoverished Kurdish merchant who had six children.

When the victim's body was brought to Sardasht, local residents, infuriated by the cold-blooded murder, staged a protest demonstration. Their numbers quickly grew to more than 3,000.

The angry demonstrators began marching through the town, chanting "Down with Khamenei, down with Rafsanjani, down with Khatami." They threw stones at several government buildings, breaking their windows, and then attacked a Revolutionary Guards center, where the Guards and State Security Forces agents opened fire on them.
 

Protests Erupt in working Class Suburb of Tehran, Reuters, January 3

TEHRAN - A crowd of Iranians angry over a new administrative plan for their district closed a road in a suburb of the capital on Monday and attacked public facilities, the official Iranian news agency (IRNA) reported.

It said "a number of hooligans" closed for four hours a main road from Islamshahr, a poor working-class suburb on the southern outskirts of Tehran, to the central city of Saveh.

The protesters also smashed windows of a public clinic and attacked an Islamshahr municipal kiosk.

The agency said the crowd, from the suburb of Chahar-Dangeh, was protesting a decision by the authorities to detach their district from Tehran and annex it to nearby Islamshahr. Chahar-Dangeh, 10 km (6 miles) from Islamshahr, has a population of 200,000 mainly migrant workers from remote regions of the country.

Islamshahr was the scene of clashes in 1995 between security forces and residents protesting against economic hardships. At least one person was killed in that unrest.
 

Khatami's Foreign Ministry Warns against "Cancerous" Israel, Reuters, December 30

TEHRAN - Iran has denounced Israel as a "cancerous tumor" that should never be recognized, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

In a statement issued ahead of nationwide anti-Israeli marches, the Iranian Foreign Ministry warned world Moslems against "the plots of the regime that occupies Jerusalem, which more than ever show the dangers of this cancerous tumor," IRNA said late on Wednesday.

"Reclaiming the occupied Lebanese and Syrian territories does not necessitate legitimizing Israel and forgetting the remaining Palestinian lands," said the statement.
 

Court Orders Arrest of the Director of Daily, Agence France Presse, January 3

TEHRAN - Iran's judiciary on Monday issued an arrest order for the embattled director of a paper and close ally of Khatami, judicial sources said.

Police will arrest Said Hajarian, a former deputy intelligence minister who heads the Sobh-e-Emruz daily, "if he does not present himself to the courts in the next few days," they said.

Hajarian had been due to appear in court Monday to respond to at least eight complaints filed against Sobh-e-Emruz, most put forward by the Iranian secret services and the military judiciary.

Hajarian was accused by the Executives of Construction Party in late December of bugging its offices after publishing remarks by the daughter of former president Rafsanjani that sparked a political row.

He was alleged to have planted microphones in the party's headquarters to have picked up "highly confidential" remarks by Rafsanjani's daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, a member of parliament.

Sobh-e-Emruz quoted Hashemi as criticizing "radicals of the 1980s who were now passing themselves off as progressives and reformists" and reportedly accused jailed former interior minister Abdollah Nuri of demagogy.
 

Arrests Hang Over Iranian Jews, Associated Press, January 3

SHIRAZ - At a synagogue in the heart of this ancient city's Jewish quarter, worshippers end their Sabbath service with a solemn prayer for 13 loved ones jailed by Iranian authorities on accusations of espionage.

Family members get one 5-minute visit every Tuesday. They used to deliver kosher food on each visit, but prison authorities banned that several months ago, saying the food was rotting because prisoners had no refrigerators, relatives said. The inmates now eat prison food.
 

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