International Khomeiny's firing squads execute Kurdish party nine

Press, 22 August 1979, Page 8

International Khomeiny's firing squads execute Kurdish party nine

NZPA-Reuter Teheran Nine members of the banned Kurdish Democratic Party were executed by firing squad yesterday in the western border town of Paveh, the scene of bloody clashes recently between Government troops and Kurdish guerrillas, according to the State radio.

The Teheran newspaper, “Islamic Republic,” mouthpiece of the ruling Muslim clergy, said another five men accused of taking part in the Paveh fighting had been executed in the city of Kermanshah. This brought to 25 the number executed since Govment forces retook the town on Sunday. All those executed had been found guilty of the Koranic charges of “being corrupt of the Earth and waging war on God and his representatives.” The K.D.P. was banned by Iran’s religious leaders last Saturday after it was accused of separatism and counter-revolutionary activities.

The sentences in Paveh were handed down by Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, the man who has vowed to execute the Shah, and who was made responsible -by Iran’s unofficial Head of State, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny, for investigating the cases of those involved in the Kurdish fighting. The Prime Minister (Dr Mehdi Bazargan) said columns of tanks were moving towards Kurdistan, after he had talks with Ayatollah Khomeiny on the Kurdish crisis. The Armed Forces Chief-of-Staff (General Hossein Shaker), who diverted troops to Kurdistan on Ayatollah Khomeiny’s orders, also attended the meeting in the holy city of Qom, 150 km south of the capital, together with the Deputy Defence

Minister (Mr Seyyed Ali Khamanei). Dr Bazargan did not give any details of the Government’s military plans in the Kurdish area, according to “Islamic Republic,” but the State radio said a military base in the Kurdish stronghold of Mahabad would be reactivated. Mahabad, capital of the short-lived Kurdish Republic after World War 11, is where the Kurdish leaders proscribed by Ayatollah Khorneiny have set up their headquarters, guarded by loyal forces. The town’s military base was taken over by Kurds in the February revolution. Kurdish sources in Mahabad said the Kurds were planning a mass rally there in support of their Sunni Muslim spiritual leader, Sheikh Ezzeddin Hosseini, and to protest against Ayatollah Khomeiny’s charge that he was a corrupt element.

The sources said delegations from many Kurdish towns had come to Mahabad to reaffirm their loyalty to Sheikh Ezzeddin.

In the Kurdistan provincial capital of Sanandaj, independent sources said tanks and lorryloads of troops were parked on the road to Mahabad. The offices of the banned Kurdish Democratic Party and Leftist organisations in the town had all been sealed since the entry of Government forces, the sources said. "Islamic Republic” said three people had been ar-

rested by Revolutionary Guards when they took over the offices of the Marxist People’s Fedayeen guerrilla group in Sanandaj. The ruling clergy yesterday shut down 22 opposition newspapers and ordered political organisations that opposed the rule of Islam to hand over their guns. Among the newspapers silenced on the orders of the Teheran Revolutionary Prosecutor (Ayatollah Ahmad Azari Qomi) were the official organs of the Tudeh (Communist) Party, the Marxist People’s Fedayeen Guerrilla group, and the Centrist National Democratic Front. A Turkish-language paper, alleged to have insulted Ayatollah Khomeiny in a cartoon, was also shut down. In a separate order, Ayatollah Qomi ordered all political parties and groups, “especially those whose policies go against the wishes of the Iranian nation,” to surrender arms taken from military arsenals during the revolution. The reference to the Iranian nation was a familiar clerical phrase used to describe the overwhelming majority of the electorate who voted for an Islamic Republic in the March referendum, and the order was apparently directed principally at opposition party militias.

The order did not affect the Revolutionary Guards and local armed Islamic committees who control law and order in the name of Ayatollah Khomeiny.