"A person who sets cars on fire in broad daylight, makes noise and creates terror, scares the people, what is his punishment according to Islam?... Too many people were involved in such acts on that Monday and especially on that Tuesday afternoon. Where are they now? They have vanished into their holes all of a sudden and you recognize no-one. Do you think the Islamic Republic is so weak? Do you think we can't ferret out these people from the depth of their burrows?" Yazdi said.
The mullahs' top judge thus acknowledged the regime's vulnerability in the face of the Resistance and popular uprising, while at the same time paving the way for more extensive arrests and execution of detainees as "Islamic punishment."
Yazdi also dismissed the scenarios stage-managed on the state television by the mullahs' Intelligence Ministry through interviews with individuals whom it described as the principal elements in the courageous uprising in Tehran. He said: "They brought a man and a woman on television, while one of them is somewhat mentally retarded. Both were brought along and it was said that everything was connected with these two. Well, investigations show that this was not the case and the issue has not come to an end."
Yazdi's remarks clearly show the clerical rulers' fears of another major surge of public protests and rising Resistance. In recent days, during discussions in the Majlis and in newspaper articles, the regime's officials and propagandists have been expressing alarm over the resumption of student protests and unrest next September after the beginning of the new academic year, already calling such protests "Riots II."
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
August 14, 1999
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