Rights body hits Iran over exile murders

Reuters, Apr. 24 - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights on Wednesday deplored assassinations of Iranian exiles and called on Tehran to refrain from activities aimed at opposition figures outside the country.

The strictures were issued in a resolution, which also expressed concern at what it said was the continuation of human rights violations in Iran, approved by 24 votes to seven with 20 abstentions in the 53-member body.

The resolution, which like all decisions by the Commission now wrapping up its annual six-week session has no binding effect, said the body "deplores the continuing violence against Iranians outside the Islamic Republic of Iran...."

It also called on Tehran "to refrain from activities against members of the Iranian opposition living abroad and to cooperate wholeheartedly with the authorities of other countries" in investigating such incidents.

Iranian exiles say Tehran agents have killed many of its opponents abroad over the past few years, including in the latest incident shooting a woman member of the opposition "National Council of Resistance" in Turkey in February.

The resolution, hailed immediately as a major success by representatives in Geneva of the Council of Resistance, expressed concern at executions, torture, discrimination against religious minorities and violations of the rights of women.

In a statement issued after the vote, Council of Resistance President Massoud Rajavi said the resolution "demonstrates that suppression and terrorism are indispensable to this illegitimate theocracy which is incapable of reform".

Rajavi called on European countries "to stop making concession to the medieval tyranny on the pretext of critical dialogue" and to cut off economic relations with Tehran.

Dissident deported despite UN fears

Reuters, Apr. 26 - Turkey on Friday deported an Iranian dissident to his home country despite fears by the United Nations refugee body that he may be in danger at the hands of the Tehran government, security officials said.

Police in the eastern Turkish town of Agri said Mehrdad Kavoussi, a supporter of the Mujahedeen Khalq Iranian guerrilla group, was expelled at the Dogubeyazit border post. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ankara said Kavoussi had registered with it and was in the process of being recognized as a refugee.

"The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees believes that he is a refugee and fears that he may be in great danger in Iran because of his political opposition to the government there," a UNHCR official told Reuters.

The UNHCR said Kavoussi had spent 10 years in the Evin jail in Tehran for non-violent opposition to the Iranian Islamic republic and had been frequently tortured. Iraq-based Mujahideen Khalq on Thursday called on Turkey to release Kavoussi, saying he would "face definite execution by the mullah's regime."

Iran Resistance welcomes the cease-fire

NCR Statement, Apr. 26 - The National Council of Resistance of Iran welcomes the cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel and the end to attacks against civilians. The NCR congratulates the governments and people of Lebanon and Israel and considers the cease-fire as an effective step toward securing comprehensive peace and recognizing the rights of all countries in the region. Only the religious, terrorist dictatorship ruling Iran opposes peace and tranquillity and benefits from the continuation of violence and hostility in the region.

Iran trained hit squads in Bosnia

International Herald Tribune, Apr. 26 - Agents from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, which Western intelligence agencies say has carried out assassinations of Iranian dissidents in the Middle East and Europe, form the commando teams in Bosnia.

Iranian specialists recruited the small groups from among the 1,400 or so people employed in the Bosnian Agency for Investigation and Documentation... Officials said the Iranians had sent several dozen of the team members to Iran for Instruction.

DOMESTIC

Economic perils continue

Salaam, Apr. 23 - A reader: Quoting an Iranian citizen: "Oh, you who live in palaces, drive Mercedes Benz and spend millions of dollars for propaganda posters, how can you speak of a Islamic government. Do you know that an orphan passed out in front of the blackboard in the school because she was hungry for three days?"

People can't make ends meet

Financial Times, Apr. 26 - An average monthly public sector salary in 1979 was worth about $500, and a Paykan, a locally assembled car, could be bought for the equivalent of less than $4,000. These days, the average public sector salary amounts to about $100, and the car costs 13,000. "Annual public-sector wage increases are pegged at 20 percent," says an Iranian businessman. "But the actual inflation is between 65 and 100 percent. People can't make ends meet."

10,000 protest in southern Iran

Iran Zamin, Apr. 29 - On Saturday, April 20, large groups of residents in Sarvestan, in Fars province and 1,000 km south of Tehran, held a rally in the city's Sahab az-Zamaan mosque to protest widespread rigging in the second round of the elections for the regime's Majlis. The city governor, accompanied by a large number of the Pasdaran (the Guards Corps), went to the scene to disperse the crowd. Protesters, however, poured out onto the streets and began to march toward the governor office. Thousands of people quickly joined them. The crowd, swelling to 10,000 people, began chanting slogans against Khamenei and Rafsanjani and attacked the home of the city's Friday Prayer leader and the governor's office. Both sustained heavy damage.

To prevent the spread of the protest, the regime dispatched Fars province's State Security Forces and the Guards' special anti-riot units to confront the angry throng. The Guards opened fire, wounding a number of protesters.

Guards attack birthday party

Iran Zamin, Apr. 29 - The regime's guards attacked a birthday party in Tehran's Babak street on April 19, arresting 28 young girls and boys. They extorted three billion rials from the home owner and confiscated all the video equipment and television sets.

Terrorists elected as Majlis deputies

Al Sharq Al-Owsat, Apr. 25 - Sources within Iranian Interior Ministry confirmed yesterday that Kouroush Fouladi, who was sentenced on charges of terrorism in England, has been elected to Iranian parliament from the city of Khorramabad, the provincial capital of Lorestan province, 420 kilometers southwest of Tehran.

He was arrested in 1981 for complicity in a car bomb which killed two individuals. The target of the car bomb was a video shop that had sold videos insulting Khomeini. In 1982 a British court established Fouladi's complicity in the bombing in Kensington District in West London and sentenced him to 10 years in jail. He was released after a swap of prisoners with Iran.

Fouladi is a trade partner of Mehdi Hashemi, the eldest son of Iran's President and owns several institutions in and out of Iran.

He is not the only deputy charged with terrorism. The new Majlis (parliament) includes at least nine of those who held Americans hostage in Tehran in 1979. The parliament also includes three others who have been sentenced for terrorism in France and Switzerland. Yet, unlike Fouladi, the three have not been put on trial. The third individual is suspected to have been involved in the assassination of Kazem Rajavi who was Iran's former ambassador in the United Nations office in Geneva.

Red Crescent as cover for terrorism

Iran Zamin, Apr. 29 - The Polit-bureau of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran reported on April 25 that the Iranian regime is using the Red Crescent as a cover for terrorist activities in northern Iraqi Kurdistan.

It added a number of the regime's armed agents attacked a refugee camp in the Payanjan region, a suburb of Soleymania. One of the captured assailants said the regime uses Red Crescent ambulances to transfer its agents to northern Iraq to conduct terrorist operations.

FEATURE

"Iran Again," The Wall Street Journal, Editorial, April 25, 1996 Iran has been creeping back onto world's worry lists. As Israel fights Katyusha rocket attacks from Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and youthful Hamas human bombs from the Palestinian territories, Europe's leaders find themselves in an awkward spot. For several years now, Europe has argued that isolating Iran's mullahs is tantamount to, in French President Jacques Chirac's words, cornering a cat. Far better with the Iranians to mix tough talk and trade, the Europeans insisted. Iran seems to have its own formulation: far better to mix terror with trade.

Iran still plays sugar-daddy to Hezbollah guerrillas (and assorted others], still opposes the Middle East peace process and thinks that Israel should be wiped off the map. State-controlled Iranian news services hailed the Hamas suicide-bombings in Israel as "divine retribution."

Even after that affront, European leaders wiped the egg off their faces and tried again. A troika of foreign ministry officials from Italy, Ireland and Spain was dispatched to Tehran earlier this month to extract a statement condemning terrorism. The Iranians sent them home empty-handed. To explain away getting stiffed, European spokesmen allowed that the Iranians were said to have provided "useful clarifications" of their position. The talks were "open and fruitful." One diplomat said that Iran has "kept a firm position"-calling terrorists freedom fighters, for example-but "they are willing to explain it."

The public gets fed this stuff, but their leaders know the real score. German intelligence officials have amassed a dossier detailing how the Iranian Embassy in Bonn has helped mastermind terrorist attacks throughout Europe. German authorities at first attempted to suppress the news, as well as a secret report establishing Germany's solid proof that the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security-headed by Ali Fallahian-has set up terrorist operations in Europe. The report was obtained by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance in Iran and leaked to the press.

Bonn has since been on a damage-control mission. A German court recently approved an arrest warrant for Mr. Fallahian, who is charged with the murder of four Iranian Kurdish dissidents in Berlin in l992. Germany's action would have sent a much stronger message had the arrest warrant been Issued when Mr.. Fallahian was still running his operations in Germany, rather than when he is out of reach in Iran. While Mr.. Fallahian was suspected of orchestrating the murders of other dissidents in Europe, his immunity as a state guest in Germany meant that Police couldn't touch him.

The Fallahian case illustrates the extent to which the EU's policy of "critical dialogue" was a farce, one that later, turned into a flop. Meanwhile, Germany and France have replaced the U.S. as Iran's chief trading partners; each has netted over S2 billion in trade deals with Iran. Cheap loans and export credits supplied to debt-strapped Iran helped neutralize U.S. attempts to isolate Iran. And Russia of course is helping Iran build a nuclear reactor; needless to say, we're told it's only for peaceful purposes.

Europe's "constructive diplomacy" umbrella, it maintained, will allow Iran's militant mullahs to continue to flout established standards of international behavior, without being held to account. Non-accountability, in politics as in business, has a way eventually of blowing up in one's face.

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