Amid growing alarm over extreme views voiced by Iran’s new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a major U.S.-based international human rights group called Wednesday for the immediate dismissal of two of his top cabinet ministers for their involvement in past repression and atrocities.
In a report titled "Ministers of Murder: Iran’s New Security Cabinet," Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged that Ahmadinejad’s interior minister, Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi, played a major role in the summary executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 and is also implicated in the 1998 "serial murders" of five prominent dissidents when he served in the Information Ministry.
And it said that the new minister of information, Gholamhussein Mohseni Ezhei, led a campaign in the late 1990s that resulted in the closure of more than 100 newspapers when he served as prosecutor general of the Special Court for the Clergy. He is also alleged by credible sources to have ordered the killing of an influential political activist, Pirouz Davani, in 1998.
"It is completely unacceptable that men with such records would be serving in Iran’s government," said Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East director. "They should be removed from their posts and investigated for these terrible crimes."
The 16-page report, which is based on a compilation of published accounts and interviews with Iranian reporters, intellectuals, and former government officials, comes amid growing international and domestic concern about the direction of Ahmadinejad’s government, which is dominated by former security and intelligence officials.
While Ahmadinejad campaigned on a populist, anti-corruption platform, some of his appointments and recent public statements have drawn angry rebukes from foreign governments, political rivals (most notably former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani), and even other right-wing figures in the parliament, or Majlis.
In a televised speech Wednesday, for example, Ahmadinejad referred to the Nazi Holocaust against European Jews as a "myth" and reiterated a call he first made last week for Israel to be moved to Europe to vindicate the rights of Palestinians to their land..
In October, Ahmadinejad said Israel should be "wiped off the map," a statement that not only resulted in international outrage and the cancellation of a scheduled visit to Iran by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, but also reportedly earned him a private rebuke by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Such remarks, as well as a more aggressive stance against Western efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear program, have fed into a campaign by Israel and the Bush administration to depict Tehran as a "rogue regime" and a serious threat to regional stability.
The latest HRW report may well add to that impression and even have repercussions in the Majlis, whose mainly conservative membership has itself been made uneasy by the president’s radical rhetoric and appointments, according to the report’s main author, Hadi Ghaemi.
Several nominations by Ahmadinejad to cabinet posts have been rejected by the Majlis. And in what was taken as a sign of growing concern about his direction, nearly 100 deputies have called for the impeachment of his defense minister in response to the fatal crash last weekend of a military transport plane.
"There are people who are very concerned about these appointments," Ghaemi told IPS, "and we want to highlight the imminent danger that people in Iran now face when people like Pour-Mohammadi and Ezhei are in such powerful positions." He said he was hopeful that deputies would indeed call for an investigation of the two men in the probable event that Ahmadinejad takes no action.
Of the two ministers, Pour-Mohammadi’s record is the most ominous. In 1988, according to the report, he played a key role in a program that resulted in the execution of thousands of political prisoners, most of whom had already been sentenced to prison terms.
The program was launched toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war after an unsuccessful effort by the Iraq-based Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK) to topple the government in Tehran. The incursion was used as a pretext for eliminating political prisoners, most of whom were in no position at the time to aid the MeK.
According to the memoirs of Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, who was then the designated successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, "Death Committees" were set up under an order by Khomeini’s office to interview political prisoners and order the execution of those deemed "unrepentant."
As the representative of the Information Ministry, Pour-Mohammadi presided over the Death Committee at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, according to Montazeri, who protested the lack of due process in a letter to Pour-Mohammadi and his Committee colleagues at the time.
Montazeri wrote that between 2,800 and 3,800 prisoners were executed, but independent Iranian activists have published the names of nearly 5,000 executed prisoners. According to HRW, the systematic and deliberate manner in which these executions took place may constitute a crime against humanity under international law.
Ten years later, Pour-Mohammadi was serving as a deputy information minister when agents of that ministry abducted and killed five prominent intellectuals over a three-week period in what came to be known as the "serial murders."
Although no full investigation was ever concluded, a source with "firsthand knowledge" of the main parliamentary inquiry told HRW that a warrant for Pour-Mohammadi’s arrest in the case was due to be issued when he abruptly resigned his post, and the matter was dropped. A second "authoritative source" confirmed that account, according to the report.
Pour-Mohammadi also served as director of foreign intelligence in the information ministry between 1990 and 1999, when dozens of opposition figures, including a former prime minister, were assassinated abroad, according to the report.
As prosecutor general of the Special Court for the Clergy, Ezhei, the new minister of information, spearheaded the prosecution of prominent reformist clerics, including former Interior Minister Abdullah Nuri and Mohsen Kadivar, during the late 1990s, and played a key role in closing newspapers since 2000.
Several prominent journalists and political activists, including Nuri and Akbar Ganji, have publicly charged that Ezhei ordered the abduction and murder of Pirouz Davani, a dissident and political activist, in 1998.
One HRW source, who asked not to be identified, claimed to have seen a death warrant for Davani signed by Ezhei. In May 2004, Ezhei is reported to have physically attacked and bit a reformist journalist during a meeting of the Committee to Oversee the Press of which he was a member.
The report noted that since taking power, the new government has repeatedly reaffirmed its intent to continue a crackdown against dissidents. During the past two months, the information ministry has summoned and interrogated at least 10 journalists and newspaper editors, as well as a prominent human rights defender, Abdolfattah Soltani, who has been held without charge since July.
At the same time, Pour-Mohammadi has appointed a large number of security and intelligence officials – particularly former commanders of the Revolutionary Guards – to powerful posts throughout the country.
Such moves parallel Ahmadinejad’s radical rhetoric and more confrontational foreign policy, according to Ghaemi, who said they appear designed to create "an environment of crisis" that, in his supporters’ view, would help restore Iran’s "revolutionary ideal" and justify tougher tactics against perceived enemies, particularly dissidents and reformers.
(Inter Press Service)
