Chizari, a Revolutionary Guards officer, was transferred to Sarollah Garrison two years ago. His elder brother is a senior Revolutionary Guards commander and is among the commanders of the bodyguards of mullahs' Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The regime's officials and newspapers initially claimed that Chizari was a "gardener" in a residential compound near Sarollah Garrison! In a statement a day after the attack, the Mojahedin divulged Chizari's true identity and said that he was undergoing treatment in Baghiatollah Hospital, the Revolutionary Guards' special hospital in Tehran.
In a separate development, Hashem Aghajari, a close aide to Khatami, wrote in a Tehran daily: "The use of mortars, unlike handguns, needs a security umbrella and a great deal of protection. The Mojahedin Organization mounted this mortar attack by taking advantage of the weakness of our intelligence services. It is also possible that the Mojahedin have infiltrated some of our internal agencies." (Ham-Mihan daily, March 18)
Asr-e Ma, a weekly belonging to one of the groupings in Khatami's faction, wrote: "Mortar attack in the city of Tehran, the epicenter of the country, are no simple matters and cannot be dismissed as militarily trivial, particularly if they have hit important and sensitive targets such as the central apparatus of the state including the Presidential office, the State Exigency Council, the Ministry of Intelligence, and the headquarters of Sarollah Garrison. How can one overlook such acts? How is it that after two years, not even a trace of the perpetrators of the mortar attacks has been found? Are we facing a sort of penetration of our security and police apparatus by the Mojahedin?" (Asr-e Ma, March 16)
People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran
March 20, 2000
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