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Iran appoints murderer of Christian bishops to key position |
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Tuesday, 22 November 2005 |
 Iran Focus– A former senior official in Iran’s dreaded secret
police, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), who
personally oversaw the gruesome murders of two Christian bishops and a
priest in Iran in the 1990s, has been appointed as the new Director
General of the country’s Interior Ministry, Iran Focus has learnt.
Mahmoud
Saeedi, who formerly headed the MOIS department in Isfahan Province,
was removed from his position in 1999 under mounting pressure on the
Iranian government after it became clear that his agents had carried
out the brutal murder of three Anglican Church figures in Iran.
Tehran
initially blamed the 1994 murders on the opposition Mojahedin-e Khalq
(MeK) and brought several former members of the group on television to
testify that they were responsible for the killings.
But in the
aftermath of the 1997 “serial murders” of dissidents and intellectuals
in Iran, which for the first time lifted the lid on numerous killings
by the Intelligence Ministry, journalist Akbar Ganji shed light on the
murders, revealing that it had been an “inside-job” sanctioned on the
orders of Deputy Intelligence Minister Saeed Emami and carried out by a
team under the command of Mahmoud Saeedi.
Ganji, who was a
senior officer of the Revolutionary Guards before turning into an
investigative journalist and dissident, is currently serving a six-year
prison sentence for his whistle-blowing articles.
Officials in
the Khatami administration later acknowledged that the murders of
Bishop Haik Hovsepian Mehr, Bishop Tateos Michaelian, and Reverend
Mehdi Dibaj were politically-motivated killings by the MOIS to tarnish
the image of the Iranian opposition group.
Like many other
senior officials of the MOIS, Saeedi left the secret police to work in
the Special Security Office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei. His boss in Khamenei’s office was Hojjatoleslam Mostafa
Pour-Mohammadi, a Shiite cleric who was himself the Deputy Minister of
Intelligence and Security for some 13 years during the late 80s and
throughout the 90s.
Pour-Mohammadi has become the Interior
Minister in the hard-line cabinet of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Critics charge that Pour-Mohammadi is replacing Interior Ministry
officials with former colleagues from the secret police, thus creating
another security apparatus.
Pour-Mohammadi has also appointed
the former deputy director of MOIS in Isfahan, Goodarzi, as Director of
Security in the Interior Ministry. Goodarzi’s pseudonym in the secret
service was Shahab. |
