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NICOSIA - The armed Iranian opposition Monday claimed a Tehran mortar attack which they said targeted the command headquarters of the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Major General Rahim Safavi.
"The People's Mujahedeen command inside Iran announced that the command headquarters of Major General Rahim Safavi, the commander in chief of the Iran's Revolutionary Guards north of Vanak Square was hit with mortars by Mujahedeen units in Tehran," a spokesman told AFP.
He denied accusations by Tehran that civilians had been wounded in the attack.
The Mujahedeen said all the mortars fired by its fighters had "hit designated targets and buildings in the (Guards) compound."
"No mortars have hit the Noor housing complex," a statement said adding that the complex was in any case "used by the Revolutionary Guardsmen," and not widows from the Iran-Iraq war as Tehran insisted.
The opposition group further charged that a line of 18 damaged vehicles shown on Iranian state television had been "transferred next to the Noor residential complex from inside the military complex" after the attack.
"The Revolutionary Guards command headquarters moved to this new place after an attack on the former headquarters in June 1998," the spokesman said.
The group also said it had attacked three military bases in the southwest province of Khuzistan, in one attack, killing the commander of an intelligence unit attached to the 92nd Armored Division.
And in an ambush in the northwest city
of Orumieh, they said they had killed Colonel Zeinal Zadeh, a top Revolutionary
Guards intelligence officer.
United States Keeps Iran Sanctions in Place, Agence France Presse, March 13
WASHINGTON - The White House said Monday that the United States would maintain economic sanctions against Iran, citing among other things Iran's continued support for "international terrorism."
In a letter addressed to the House
of Representatives and the Senate, President Bill Clinton said, "The actions
and policies of the government of Iran, including support for international
terrorism, its efforts to undermine the Middle East process, and its acquisition
of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, continue
to threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United
States."
Smuggled Film Exposes Barbaric Justice, Sunday Times of London, March 12
HORRIFIC film emerged yesterday of barbaric punishments meted out in Iranian jails.
The film prompted questions about the ethics of Britain's rapprochement with Tehran in the run-up to a visit by Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, in May.
The 50-minute tape, filmed by official cameramen for government archives, was smuggled out of Iran by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, (NCRI), the main Iranian opposition group. A spokeswoman said the film had been secretly passed on by a member of the regime who was alarmed that the Iranian leadership still sanctioned such brutality.
The tape begins by showing a thin, pale man strapped to a bed in a cell, apparently in Tehran's Qasr prison… The "operation" continues for 15 relentless minutes until the doctor finally removes the eye and the camera focuses on the empty socket. The prisoner is conscious and screaming or moaning throughout. Then the doctor moves to start on the other eye. The observers watch expressionless.
The film is believed to be the first seen in the West of such a punishment being carried out. The footage of the gouging is reported to have been shot in 1985. But the regime makes no attempt to hide the fact that the same punishment is being imposed in Iran today.
On October 17 last year, the Tehran-based Qods newspaper said a court in the capital had ordered that the state gouge out the eyes of Majid Mehrparvar, 30, the leader of a gang that had killed three truck drivers. He was then sentenced to be hanged.
The rest of the tape shows equally gruesome punishments. Four men sentenced to death for "moral crimes" ranging from rape to adultery are shown being stoned to death in a sequence dated 1991. A mullah in clerical robes throws the first stone. A crowd joins in the stoning without hesitation.…
The regime acknowledges that the punishment of stoning to death has been imposed recently. Since President Mohammed Khatami came to power two years ago, 600 executions have been reported in Iran, 11 of them by stoning.
Other footage on the tape shows young men at Tehran's central penitentiary for youth having their fingers amputated for theft by a small, green-painted guillotine machine.
The Iranian opposition said it had released the film to show that human rights abuses were continuing in Iran despite the rise of reformist politicians in elections last month.
"This is the same system with a different
mask that has been put on mainly for foreign consumption," said Dowlat
Nowrouzi, the British representative of the NCRI…