Split at top in Iran forces yawns wider

Press, 18 July 1979, Page 8

Split at top in Iran forces yawns wider

NZPA-Reuter Teheran The Iranian Defence Minister (Brigadier-General Taqi Riahi) has tendered his resignation as his chief critic in the army, the military police commander (General Siaf Amir Rahimi) accused the Government of not taking a strong enough stand against violence in Iran’s troubled ethnic regions. Brigadier-General Riahi confirmed his resignation in a telephone interview with NZPA-Reuter, but he declined to make a statement until the Government issued a formal announcement.

Shortly before a Cabinet meeting which the Defence Minister did not attend, a Government spokesman denied that Brigadier-General Riahi had resigned.

The Defence Minister’s move came after his failure last week to unseat General Rahimi as head of the country’s military police force, based in Teheran. General Rahimi had accused unnamed plotters in senior ranks of the army of conspiring against him in an attempt to weaken the revolution. His dismissal order, signed by Brigadier-General Riahi, was over-ruled by the unofficial. Head of State, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny. General Rahimi, a 55-year-old hard-line career officer, told a press conference that he had called on the Revolutionary Council of ruling clergymen and on the Cabi-

net to appoint him commander of forces on the country’s troubled western frontiers. They have seen an upsurge of violence in recent days involving Iranian Arabs and Kurds. Violence broke out at the Gulf port of Khorramshahr on Sunday when a grenade was thrown into a crowded Moque, killing seven people and wounding 60. Five men, alleged to belong to the Black Wednesday Arab guerrilla group, have been arrested, tried, and executed for their part in the mosque attack. Revolutionary Guards stormed the home of the Arab spiritual leader, Sheih Taher Shobeir Khaghani. Teheran newspapers reported that the guards had found arms in the house.

In the Khuzestan city of Dezful three men were executed for killing anti-Shah demonstrators, and the local court sent a teacher to the firing squad on charges of raping girl students. Two men were also executed in Sezful for adultery and sodomy. A man found guilty of killing anti-Shah demonstrators was also executed in the north-western town of Orumiyeh. The fourth woman to go before a firing squad in post-revolutionary Iran was a prostitute executed for setting up brothels in the western city of Kermanshah. A heroin trafficker was executed in Isfahan.