The clerical regime and its criminal gangs are behind these cold-blooded murders. According to the state-run dailies, the number of the victims since last August has reached 12, all of whom have been murdered in an identical and professional manner.
The tragic and painful plight of these women offers a glimpse of oppression and discrimination practiced by the mullahs' corrupt and misogynous regime. Between 20 and 45 years of age, all of the victims were homeless, jobless widows, spending most of their time on the streets.
The clerical regime has not taken any serious steps to identify and arrest the killers in the past nine months. This is while it mobilizes its suppressive organs, including the Intelligence Ministry, the State Security Forces and the Revolutionary Guards Corps and arrests hundreds of young people in order to suppress public protests.
So evident is the role of the mullahs' regime and its suppressive organs in these murders that the state-run daily Iran wrote in a report on the killings on April 17 that individuals "who could produce ID cards from revolutionary institutions or could pose as officers may have accosted these women and on the pretext of making arrests taken them to the desired location to murder them."
The state-run dailies had also reported that officially distributed statements in the city of Mashad had emphasized that "symbols of moral corruption should be dealt with in such a fashion." The call to murder women on the pretext of fighting moral vice comes as the most senior officials of the regime are involved in sexual abuse of women and young girls.
The painful killing of helpless women in Mashad is not the only crime perpetrated by this regime against women in Iran. It was revealed some time ago, that mullah Kazem Montazer Moqaddam, head of the Revolutionary Court in Karaj (West of Tehran) and a number of officials in government departments and institutions in the city had sexually abused dozens of runaway girls on the pretext of protecting them (Hamshahri, February 4, 2001).
It was also revealed during the trial of a Revolutionary Guards commander, Esmail Eftekhari Nasr, the commander of the local urban Guards center in Tehran's 12th district, that he and his subordinates had kidnapped a number of young girls and after raping them had murdered them dumped their bodies in different parts of Tehran. Eftekhari had also arrested ordinary citizens on the bogus charge of gambling and then sought sexual favors from their wives (Iran daily, April 16, 2001). The clerical regime arrested Eftekhari to put a lid on this scandal. In a show trial, however, he was sentenced to only five years in jail despite committing multiple murders, rape and extortion. The mullahs' regime quickly hangs offenders who have committed only a fraction of Eftekhari's crimes, but Eftekhari's ties with senior figures in the regime saved him.
The NCR's Women's Committee draws the attention of international human and women's rights organizations to discrimination against, and suppression of, women in Iran by the clerical regime. Contrary to the propaganda by some Western circles, such brutal conduct has worsened during Khatami's presidency. The Women's Committee also calls on them to take a stance and condemn the mullahs' misogynous regime.
Women's Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 22, 2001
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