BRUSSELS - An Iranian opposition group has shown a videotape here of prisoners in Iranian jails having eyes gouged out and fingers chopped off at a time when a Belgian of Iranian origin claims to have been tortured there.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, which showed the gory 1984 footage Wednesday, said the practice continues in Iran today.

The screening of the video came as a Belgian prosecutor opened an investigation of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani into the Belgian citizen's complaint of having been detained and tortured in Iran from 1983 to 1989.

"We fully support this initiative," said Majid Taleghani, a member of the foreign affairs committee of the Council, which is composed mainly of the People's Mujahedeen, the main armed Iranian opposition group.

He said the videotape would be turned over to Belgian investigators. "The accusation concerns all of the (Iranian) regime," he said, by way of explanation why Mohammed Khatami and the spiritual guide of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, had reacted so bitterly to the Belgian investigation, threatening to break off bilateral relations.

The video images were shown to the press here "to prove the involvement of Rafsanjani, the number two in the regime, and of other officials, in crimes against humanity," said a Council statement.

Iran's most senior official is the supreme guide, not the president.

Taleghani said the images, filmed by the regime and smuggled out of the country recently by the Mujahedeen, were being shown publicly for the first time outside Iran.

They show the gouging of eyes, and the amputation of five fingers on the left hand of a visibly lucid prisoner, by a machine apparently built expressly for the purpose, in the Teheran's Qasr prison in 1984.

Gouging eyes and cutting off fingers are inhumane punishments routinely inflicted by the Iranian regime and have continued under the Khatami presidency since May 1997, said the Council statement.

Hussein Abedini, another member of the foreign affairs committee, said Iranian clerics had carried out some 120,000 executions since 1978, secretly or publicly, and that 700 people had been executed since the beginning of last year.
 

New Oil Money Trickles Down Slowly in Iran, The Wall Street Journal, March 6

TEHRAN, Iran -- To look around here, you wouldn't know that the Persian Gulf is enjoying an oil windfall… Iran is suffering the usual 20% unemployment and 30% inflation. Its currency, the rial, is only slightly stronger than last year. Merchants were hoping for a robust No Ruz, the coming Iranian New Year, but so far, business has been about the same as last year…

Iran… has much more work to do to build a free-market economy… Changing the structure in Iran would cause real pain to the large working class. Just last week, workers staged a rare protest in front of Parliament over a bill that would make it easier for small businesses to fire employees.

"To me, social unrest for the next 10 or 12 years is inevitable in Iran," worries Saeed Laylaz, an economist who manages an auto-parts factory here…
 

News Bites

BBC World Service, March 9 - Dolphins trained to kill for the Soviet navy have been sold to Iran - but what they will do in the Persian Gulf is a mystery.

The animals were trained to attack enemy frogmen with harpoons attached to their backs, or to drag them to the surface to be taken into captivity.

Agence France Presse, March 9 - Thirteen Iranian Jews accused of spying for Israel are to have their lawyers appointed for them by the revolutionary tribunal after failing to notify the court of their own choice by the legal deadline, officials said Thursday.

An official of the Iranian Jewish Association told another Tehran newspaper Aftab e-Emruz on Wednesday that at least 10 of the 13 Iranian had selected lawyers.

Associated Press, March 9 - The government has replaced the judge and investigators looking into the 1998 murders of five political dissidents, an Iranian newspaper reported Thursday.

No reason was given for the decision, the Hamshahri daily said, quoting an official Islamic Republic News Agency report that said the investigation has taken more than a year because of its complexity and "sabotage."

Reuters, March 9 - A top Iranian police official, on trial for a bloody raid on student dormitories last year, on Thursday blamed the incident on unnamed plainclothes vigilantes.

But former Tehran police chief Brigadier-General Farhad Nazari resisted attempts by the students' lawyer to force him to name those behind the July assault, in which one person was killed and more than 200 hurt.

Agence France Presse, March 6 - The editor of the daily Arya, which the courts forced off the newsstands for two weeks last January, confirmed Monday that the newspaper had suspended publication until further notice.

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