Shah’s Minister shot

Press, 9 May 1980, Page 6

Shah’s Minister shot

NZPA-Reuter Teheran The Shah’s former Education Minister, Mrs Farokhrou Parsa, was executed by firing squad at Teheran’s Evin Jail yesterday after being c_.:victed on a series of charges involving corruption, the expulsion of activist teachers and promoting imperialist culture.

She was the first woman to be executed for political offences since the revolution.

Mrs Parsa. aged 62, was the first woman to sit in the Iranian Majlis (lower house) and the first woman to be appointed a Minister. She held the Education portfolio from 1968 to 1974.

Among other charges against her were spreading

prostitution, plundering public funds and co-operation with the Shah’s Savak secret police. She remained in Iran after the revolution and was arrested in Teheran on February 16. A second woman, Fatemeh Sadeqi, was also executed yesterday on charges of deceiving innocent girls and selling them into prostitution. A man. Ali Shojaie, was executed for heroin dealing. Meanwhile the Swiss Embassy, representing United States interests in Iran, has formally asked the Iranian Foreign Ministry for information about an American woman arrested on suspicion of spying, the ambassador (Mr Erik Lang) said yesterday.

The manager of the Teheran Hilton Hotel said that Revolutionary Guards arrested Mrs Cynthia B. Dwyer, of Buffalo, New York, on Monday evening and took her from the hotel.

Guards said on Wednesday they were holding her on suspicion of spying for the United States Central Inte’ligence Agency, but the same guards said yesterday they had never arrested anyone and did not know of Mrs Dwyer’s whereabouts.

The arrest came as Iranian leaders said they we-re intensifying the hunt for American agents who might have been involved in the abortive American commando raid on Iran on April 25.