Mullahs' infighting rises as Majlis elections loom nearer
-Rafsanjani admits to participation of all ruling factions in suppression and executions

In an interview with the government-run daily, Iran, ex-President Hashemi Rafsanjani referred to some of the officials in Khatami's faction and said: "Some of these gentlemen who are now disguised as reformers and liberals made problems for us due to their extremism in the early years of the revolution. You cannot imagine how much I suffered in trying to curb their excesses - hangings, trials, harassment, confiscation of (private) property, were all their work."

Rafsanjani added: "They did not have bad intentions. They had extremist views, and I had to temper them. This same pressure group has now resurfaced in a different guise."

In another part of the interview, Rafsanjani said: "Troublemakers must be terrified of the Intelligence Ministry... They must be afraid and the courts, the Intelligence Ministry and all security forces must work on this basis."

Ironically, it was Rafsanjani himself who was ordering the torturers, interrogators and others involved in the mullahs' machinery of murder and repression to carry out these crimes, including those who, as Rafsanjani points out, have now disguised themselves as "moderates and reformers." Rafsanjani frequently issued orders like the following in the 1980s: "Divine law defines our sentences for them (the Mojahedin), which must be implemented: 1. kill them, 2. hang them, 3. cut off their arms and legs, 4. banish them." (Ettela'at daily, Oct. 3, 1981)

Rafsanjani was issuing such orders at a time when in Tehran's Evin Prison alone, hundreds of Mojahedin and other political opponents of the mullahs were being executed every night.

As factional infighting intensifies ahead of the Majlis elections, Rafsanjani has come under a series of attacks exposing his direct role in the suppression, political murders and the murderous continuation of the unpatriotic war with Iraq which left behind millions of dead, maimed and wounded, while damages on the Iranian side alone amount to 1000 billion dollars. Now Rafsanjani is mounting a "counter-attack" in a bid to portray himself as the "moderate face" of the eighties, a period that witnessed the execution and torture of hundreds of thousands of the Mojahedin and other dissidents.

Rafsanjani's admission confirms what the Iranian Resistance has constantly stated: that when it comes to suppression, execution and massacres, there is unanimity and common interests among all factions and gangs within the ruling religious, terrorist dictatorship. All have been involved in the regime's crimes over the past two decades. In the eyes of the Iranian people, this medieval tyranny and all its factions are illegitimate and must be overthrown.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
January 28, 2000

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