4 January Reuters
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A leading member of Iran's parliament warned on
Friday that rightwing terror squads were making a comeback in the Islamic
republic as part of a hardline campaign to suppress political dissent.
Mohsen Mirdamadi, a reformer who heads parliament's committee on foreign affairs
and national security, spoke of an increase in kidnappings or arrests of
suspected dissidents by shadowy judicial or security bodies.
He told
Iran's ISNA student news agency that captives were being held in secret
locations and subjected to psychological torture to force ''false confessions.''
Mirdamadi said the roundup was similar to murders of dissidents and
intellectuals in the late 1990s linked to ''rogue'' members of the secret
police.
A number of secret agents, including several top intelligence
ministry officials, were arrested in connection with the killings in 1999.
''Unfortunately, there are signs such squads are rebuilding themselves and
re-emerging in society,'' the MP said. ''There are dangerous events taking place
and no one is taking any responsibility.''
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES
Mirdamadi referred to Siamak
Pourzand, 70, an intellectual who mysteriously disappeared more than a month
ago. Pourzand's 17-year-old daughter recently appealed to President Mohammad
Khatami to help locate her father.
The MP said another man had been
kidnapped for a week by unidentified assailants in Qom, a religious hardline
stronghold in central Iran.''The man was forced into a car, put to
sleep with some drug and then transferred to an unknown location. He was
interrogated for a week and then released in Tehran in an abnormal condition,''
he said, without identifying the victim.
Mirdamadi said he and other
MPs received ''numerous reports'' of mistreatment of prisoners held in secret
detention centres.Dozens of liberal Islamists fighting for greater
freedom and democracy in Iran have been held in solitary confinement at secret
locations run by the revolutionary security bodies.
Khatami
and his allies in parliament have accused the hardline judiciary
and security organisations of failing to respect citizens' constitutional rights.
The hardliners, in turn, accuse reformers of plotting to undermine the Islamic
system in Iran.
Even members of parliament have fallen victim to the
hardline backlash. Four MPs have been sentenced to jail, one of them already in
prison. Student and other activists are also routinely jailed and reformist
newspapers closed.
Reformers fear that hardliners are preparing a
major onslaught to crush democratic challenges to their power.''The
anti-reform front has its guns out and is trying to strike as many blows at the
pro-reform camp as it can. But we will use everything in our resources to stop
their plots,'' Reformist leader Mohammad Salamati told ISNA.