Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Arrested Student Activists Released

* Four board members of the student Islamic councils, who were organizers of the past two weeks' student protests across Iran, were released on bail only 24 hours after plainclothes policemen arrested them on the order of the Tehran revolutionary court. The four were ordered to appear in court on Monday for further interrogation. The Dafter-e Tahkim-e Vahdat (Office of Reinforcing Unity), the association of student Islamic councils, demanded a constitutional referendum on the role of unelected officials and institutions, and asked universities and the higher education ministry for help to stage a mock referendum. (Jamshid Zand)

Guards Commander Threatens to Unleash the Basij Corps

* The alternate commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Mohammad-Bagher Zolqadr told a gathering of the IRGC's volunteer paramilitary Basij corps that the student protests were a political plot. If they had continued, he added, the IRGC would have unleashed the Basij corps, as it did during the July 1999 student uprising. Zolqadr is close to the Hey'at Mo'talefeh-ye Eslami, a key hard-line conservative party close to the Supreme Leader. To commemorate the Basij Week, the revolutionary guards are organizing a half-million-man march on Friday in Tehran. Thousands of Basijis in major cities will be sent to streets tomorrow on what is now being called "the Verbal Notice Maneuver (Manovr-e Tazakor-e Lesani)," a new name for the Shiite principle of enforcing religious code. Basijis are instructed to counsel women and men in the streets on Islamic dress code and behavior. (Siavash Ardalan)

Discussion of Emergency Rule Reveals Factions' Confusion

* President Khatami's brother Mohammad-Reza, deputy speaker of the Majles and head of the reformist Participation Front (Jebheh-ye Mosharekat), warned against the conservatives' plan to declare emergency rule and suspend democratic institutions. Amir Mohebian, columnist of the conservative daily Resalat, said the reformists might be planning something that they know would force the other side to declare emergency rule. (Mehdi Khalaji)

Illegal Construction Projects of the Armed Forces

* In a meeting last Tuesday, representatives of the Tehran municipal government and the interior ministry confronted the representatives of the defense ministry and the armed forces with information and statistics on unlawful real estate development activities by the armed forces in various parts of Tehran and surrounding towns. (Siavash Ardalan)

Revival of the Public Prosecutors Office

* Judiciary spokesman Hossein Mir-Mohammad-Sadeqi said the law to restore the public prosecutor's office will go into effect in two weeks, ending the 10-year experiment with an Islamic judicial system in which the role of prosecutor was played by the judge. Tehran-based lawyer and human rights activist Ahmad Bashiri tells RFE/RL that without the public prosecutors office, the courts became inundated with fact finding and investigation on too many complaints. He says it is unclear what role the new public prosecutor office will have in the legal system. (Shireen Famili)

Civil Society and Human Rights

* Lawyer and human rights advocate Mehrangiz Kar says it is time for the judiciary to confess that a secret clique within its ranks conducts illegal arrests and torture of political activists, just as the intelligence ministry confessed in 1999 that its agents carried out serial murders of political dissidents.

RFE/RL Roundtable: Crackdown on Student Protests

* Hadi Kahalzadeh, a board member of the association of student Islamic councils, tells RFE/RL that the arrests on Tuesday of four leaders of the association, along with Aghajari's death sentence and the arrests of pollsters, signal a violent turn in the conflict between the two factions. Nationalist-religious activist Taqi Rahmani, who is visiting Paris, tells RFE/RL that the reformists within the regime, who encouraged students to stage protests against Aghajari's sentence, should now protect the students. He adds that the students are under pressure from right-wing opponents of the regime who encourage them to revolt, and the right-wing conservatives within the regime, who threaten them with violence. London-based Mehrdad Khonsari, secretary-general of the London-based Iranian Constitutionalist Organization, Premier Line (Sazeman-e Mashrooteh Khahan-e Iran, Khat-e Moqadam), tells RFE/RL that student protests are not topical and would continue because the reformists have failed to respond to the society's needs. (Amir-Mosaddegh Katouzian)

RFE/RL Roundtable: Islamic Protestantism

* Secular political activist Bijan Hekmat, Islamic modernist Ehsan Shariati, both from Paris, and Tehran-based nationalist-religious political activist Habibollah Peyman discuss Islamic Protestantism, which opposes the role of the clergy as intermediaries between God and believers. (Amir-Mossadeq Katouzian)