GENEVA - The United Nations investigator for human rights in Iran on Thursday called on the government to probe some 50 suspicious deaths of intellectuals and dissidents in recent years.

In a report to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which meets in Geneva on to examine violations worldwide, Maurice Copithorne, a Canadian jurist, condemned punishment by stoning and amputation and said "torture in all its forms is still not an unusual event in Iran."

Copithorne said promised investigations into the disappearances and suspicious deaths of intellectuals and dissident political figures in late 1998 had stalled. There were reports attributing responsibility to past and present security officials, he added.

"The scandal has now raised such broad implications for the government as well as such public skepticism that only the most thorough public inquiry and purgative action is likely to restore the government's credibility in terms not only of law and order but of its respect for the most fundamental human rights," Copithorne said.

He accused law enforcement agencies and the judiciary of denying human rights in student demonstrations in Tehran and Tabriz in July. No disciplinary action had been taken against a uniformed group of some 400 men bussed to the site who reportedly systematically ransacked dormitories, assaulted students and took a number of them prisoner, he added.
 

Crimes against Humanity By Mullahs' Regime, Iran Zamin News Agency, March 16

In the wake of the latest report by the United Nations Human Rights Commission's Special Representative on Iran, Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said: "The report's emphasis on the continuing, grave violation of human rights in Iran… make it incumbent on the Commission on Human Rights to condemn strongly this inhuman regime.

Mr. Rajavi said: "Any leniency and flexibility toward the clerical regime and efforts to water down the resolution condemning this regime on the pretext of encouraging the ruling mullahs to continue illusory "changes" is unjustified and detrimental to the human rights situation in Iran, while being also against the highest interests of the Iranian people."
 

The Fight for Power in Iran, The Boston Globe Editorial, March 15

Recent acts of political violence in Iran illuminate a fundamental uncertainty haunting that strategically crucial country. The attempted assassination Sunday of Saeed Hajjarian… suggests that the struggle for power between hardline clerics and reformers may not be settled by peaceful, democratic means.

In the early days of the Islamic republic, he [Hajjarian] served as deputy intelligence minister, instituting a secret service that has been blamed for conducting assassinations abroad of Iranians defined as enemies of the regime…

… The fight for power in Iran may resemble a gang war, and if so Washington will have to keep its distance for a while.
 

War Situation in Iran, Sobh-E Emrooz (Pro-Khatami daily) Editorial, March 16

…The assassination of Saeed Hajjarian is an attempt to start a war situation in Iran’s politics… A war situation quickly polarizes the society… What the organizers of terror will actually succeed in materializing will be preparing grounds for the destruction of the whole system…
 

Strife over Shooting Hands Khatami His Worst Crisis, The Financial Times, March 16

Iran's… [Pro-Khatami] newspapers yesterday launched an unprecedented attack on a group of hard-line Muslim clerics, accusing them of preaching a culture of violence that led to Sunday's assassination attempt on a close aide to President Mohammad Khatami.

The public uproar over the shooting of Saeed Hajjarian and damaging disclosures by the media have handed Iran's… president his most serious crisis since being swept to power in elections nearly three years ago. Mr. Khatami, diplomats said, risked... erosion of his authority by not taking decisive action…

One newspaper went as far as to quote an unnamed minister as saying associates of Tehran's former security chief, Brigadier Gholam-Reza Naqdi, may have carried out the shooting…

The shooting sent shock waves through Tehran. Many believed Mr. Khatami had stamped out such killings… While the conservative press has appealed for unity and blamed Mr. Hajjarian's shooting on foreign enemies, some hardline publications have hit back. The weekly Yalesarat warned reformist commentators that they were "writing their wills" and told Mr. Khatami to revise his cultural policies.

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