Khomeiny attacks Iran’s leaders

Press, 22 July 1980, Page 1

Khomeiny attacks Iran’s leaders

NZPA Teheran The rumblings of new power struggles and a stronger Islamic line appeared in Iran as the religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny, made sweeping attacks on Iranian Ministers, Army chiefs, and embassy staff.

“In our embassies there is nothing but pleasure and prostitution,” the Ayatollah told the Supreme Council of Judges. He blamed the Army for not putting down secessionist movements in Kurdistan and Sistan, while dismissing Ministers as “good for nothing. None of the current Ministers is a revolutionary.” The new government should be “100 per cent Islamic,” ■ the Aytollah said.

Observers noted that a new government and . a Prime Minister are to be named by Thursday. The official Iranian radio broadcast a communique from the little known Islamic guards, virulently attacking the Foreign Minister (Mr Sadeq Qotbzadeh) for denying the .Iranian Government’s involvement in the assassination attempt last Friday in Paris against the former Prime Minister, Mr Shapur Baktiar. The. series of attacks came as Ayatollah Hachem Rafshanjani, one of the

heads of the majority Islamic Republican Party, was overwhelmingly elected president of the Iranian Parliament for one year. The election was seen as clinching the fundamentalist Islamic party’s grip on the Parliament. Earlier, five military officers accused of participating in a plot to overthrow the revolutionary regime were executed in Teheran only a few hours after Ayatollah Khomeiny demanded that all “the plotters” be executed. “Nobody has the right to pardon any of them,” he said. The number of accused in the . secret trial is not known. General Ayatollah Mohaghegi, one of the two main conspirators, was among those executed. He was found guilty of “attempting to bring Baktiar back to power” and “collaborating to form an American social-democratic government.” In Paris, the French public prosecutor, Mr Bernard Hatoux, declined to confirm or deny reports that the head of the commando attack against Mr Baktiar admitted acting on orders from Teheran. Mr Qotbzadeh reiterated denials of any links between Iranian officials and the Baktiar attack. Mr Baktiar, one of the

most vociferous opponents of Iran’s revolutionary regime, escaped unharmed but a policeman and ■ a neighbour were killed. In Paris, the five men captured after the attempt to kill Mr Baktiar, have been charged with murder and attempted murder. The former presidential candidate of the hard-line Islamic Republican Party, Mr Jalaleddin Farsi, said yesterday he knew some of the members of the assassination group and had approved their action. But they had no contact with Iranian Government organisations, he told his party’s newspaper, “Islamic Republic.” Mr Farsi, who dropped out of the presidential race earlier this year when it was disclosed that he had an Afghan father, was asked whether he had had any association with the squad which' attacked Mr Baktiar’s home in a suburb of Paris, killing a policeman and a neighbour. “They asked me. I approved their action. I know some of them and know the commander of the group,” he said. Quoting a passage from the Koran, he said, “I told them, ‘Kill them wherever you find them,’ whether in France, Germany or the United States.”