Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Four Student Leaders Arrested

* Plainclothesmen arrested four student Islamic councils leaders who organized and spoke at student rallies. All four appeared several times on RFE/RL during the past two weeks. Hadi Kahalzadeh, a member of the general council of the Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat (Office for Consolidating Unity), the association of student Islamic councils, tells RFE/RL that the Daftar's secretary-general Abdollah Momeni, and three other Islamic student activists, Mehdi Aminizadeh, Amir-Hossein Balali and Said Razavi-Faqih, were taken by agents of branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, which confirmed their detention. RFE/RL airs segments of last Friday's interview with Momeni in which he predicted his arrest and said student protests would go on. (Jamshid Zand)

* Ahvaz MP Jaber Shahidzadeh tells RFE/RL that the arrests were predictable. He says the conservatives are repeating the mistakes they made three ago and advises the students not to give them an excuse to declare emergency rule. (Jamshid Zand)

* The reformists within the regime called for an end to student protests on the grounds that continuing unrest would give the conservatives an excuse to suspend democratic institutions. But some oppositionists urge the students to turn their protest into a national anti-regime movement, against which no amount of crackdown can be effective. (Siavash Ardalan)

Prosecutor General Pressures Aghajari to Appeal

* Prosecutor General Abdolnabi Namazi said if professor Hashem Aghajari does not appeal within the 20-day period allowed by the law, the Hamedan court's death sentence against him would stand and he will be executed. Aghajari, a board member of the leftist Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization, received a jail sentence two weeks ago for a speech last June at a Hamedan mosque on "Islamic Protestantism," in which he criticized clerical rule and the Shiite principle of emulation. Faced with rising protests against Aghajari's sentence, the Supreme Leader last week ordered the judiciary to review the verdict. Aghajari has refused to appeal. (Mehdi Khalaji)

* Lawyer and human rights advocate Mehrangiz Kar says Aghajari's life remains in danger, even after possible revision of his death sentence by the order of the Supreme Leader, because, based on Islamic law, there is no punishment for religious killing. Even before the Hamedan court sentenced Aghajari to death, several prominent religious leaders declared him an apostate and called for his murder.

Barbie in Tehran

* London's al-Hayat writes that American goods are popular and widely available in Iran, despite lack of formal trade relations between Iran and the US. Children have shunned the government's Islamic version of Barbie and Ken dolls in favor of the originals. US sanctions make US goods, including spare parts for fighter jets, more expensive for Iran. (Farideh Rahbar, Cairo)

Education: Increasing Dropouts

* RFE/RL's Paris-based education commentator Said Peyvandi discusses the latest elementary and high school dropout figures released by the education ministry.

Uncollected Tax

* Alireza Falah-Mirzai, Tehran tax prosecutor, said businesses, including state-owned enterprises, owe more than 20,000 billion rials ($2.5 billion) in taxes, some dating back eight years. The budget deficit in the current fiscal year ending March 22, 2002 could go beyond 28,000 billion rials ($3.5 billion). (Fereydoun Khavand, Paris)