Risky Judgment

By Azadeh Moaveni
If there is one story that fully embodies the excess and horror of post-revolutionary Iran, it may well be the saga, known here simply as the "serial killings," of four intellectual dissidents in late 1998.
Opposition activists Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar were stabbed to death in their homes, while writers Mohamed Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohamed Mokhtari were strangled and their bodies discarded on the outskirts of Tehran.
President Mohamed Khatami became a hero in early 1999 when he ordered a full investigation, and admitted that agents from the Ministry of Intelligence had been involved. The murders not only gripped the entertainment-starved nation with a running tragedy, but rocked the political foundations of the Islamic Republic.
This week, for the victims' families, the story came to an unhappy, official close. A military court sentenced to death three men who carried out the killings, ordered life sentences for five others who helped plan them, and jailed seven for up to 10 years. Three were acquitted; all had been former agents in the Ministry of Intelligence.
In a statement that echoed the families' rejection of the verdict, Iran's main reformist party declared it would seek the "naked truth" behind the murders, and that the "sun of truth will further light up the country." What the families want, as the reformists expressed in oblique terms, is the truth behind who organised and directed the death squads, not simply revenge against henchmen.
But the fact that a thorough investigation could reach into the top echelons of the political establishment, reformists believe, forced Khatami to accept a low-level trial that meted out justice without bringing down ministers and top ayatollahs. The right-wing in Iran has awaited the end of this trial anxiously; its outcome will inform the right's relationship with the president as the next election nears. While Khatami agreed not to press for what the system could not tolerate, his bold and impassioned insistence on justice sealed his own reputation as a just leader, just as the vile killings irrevocably tarnished the hard-line clergy, even among its conservative followers.
Judge Mohamed-Reza Aghighi, notably a non-cleric, insisted he "in parts, did not follow the opinion of [head of the judiciary Ayatollah] Shahroudi, and applied my own conclusions."
Among the 18 accused, Mostafa Kazami held the highest rank of department director, and on television Aghighi disclosed that in his final defense Kazami had accused former minister, Ghorban-Ali Dorri-Najafabadi (cleared in earlier investigations), of ordering the killings. Najafabadi was dismissed shortly after Khatami's initial announcement that the ministry was active with death squads. Mehrdad Alikhani, sentenced to life in prison, also said during a pre-trial investigation that he acted on instructions from Najafabadi.
The families have long doubted that the trial would be transparent or reveal the behind-the-scenes masterminds of the case. Mysteries surrounding the investigation have not helped. Authorities claimed the main suspect, Saeed Emami, committed suicide while in prison by swallowing depilatory cream; but apart from the medically acknowledged non-lethal nature of domestically-made depilatory cream, reformists questioned how a lead suspect in a national scandal could be allowed to die, leading to suspicion that he was killed to protect senior hard-line politicians involved.
Will there be a sequel to this tragedy? Hardliners still fret that Akbar Ganji may reveal more evidence from his prison cell, and an Iranian journalist in London claims he has the audio tape which recorded the Forouhars' killing.
But as long as the system has closed the file, the families, their lawyers, and evidence-holders alike may never witness the final climax they had hoped for.
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