Eleven more die as Iran’s revolutionary courts speed ’justice’

Press, 12 April 1979, Page 6

Eleven more die as Iran’s revolutionary courts speed ’justice’

NZPA-Rcutcr Teheran Iranian radio said yesterday that rexolutionary courts had sentenced to death and executed 11 more generals, Ministers, police chiefs, and members of Parliament of the old regime, as well as a former Mayor of Teheran, in one of the busiest nights of court activity since the February revolution.

Those executed on charges) including corruption and! treason included three for-' mer Ministers, two heads of the Savak secret police, and' a Speaker of Parliament for) 15 years. Some of the property of those executed had been redistributed to the people of Iran, the State radio said. The executions were' carried out in the early morning. Thex brought the. number of people reported . killed by the nation's revolutionary courts to 101, and; the number of police and armv generals to 22. ii Thirteen of the 101 exe-i' cuted have been sex offen-!; ders, not linked to other: charges. h Those sentenced to death! included: General Hassan 11 Pakravan. aged 65, whop served as a head of then Savak secret police as well asp Minister of Information and': Ambassador to Pakistan andjs France under the alreadyexecuted former Prime Min- < ister. Amir Abbas Hoveyda; t another former Savak chief, < General Nasser Moqaddam; : Brigadier Hossein Ali Bayat, < aged 59. a Parliamentarian t

deputy, senior gendarmerie I official, and Governor of the i city of Zanian: Alameh Vahidi. a senator; Mansur Roi hani. a former Minister of jEleciricitv. Water, and Agriculture; Gholam-Reza Nikpay aged 50. a British-edu caied specialist in economic and petroleum affairs whe became Mayor of Teheran in 1969. He was accused b> some Iranians of cruelty toward the citv's poorer residents The revolutionary Govern|ment said yesterday that it faced unrest from separatist elements and unemployed workers in sensitive border ■areas, and conceded that . some people were calling for a return to monarchy. ' At a regular press briefing I the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Amir Entezam) spoke of continuing unrest among minority Kurds in west Iran and the Baluchis in the south-east. He accused foreign agents of aggravating the unrest by taking advantage of widespread unemployment and separatist tendencies in border areas. More than three million, or about nine per

e cent of the population, arej ic'now without work. 1-: Some foreigners had been, t-'arrested in the Baluchi area. >f near the Afghan and Pakis-1 i-.tani borders, Mr Entezam i t- said. 1-: The official Government c!spokesman, Mr Entezam said o'that during a recent march niby hundreds of unemployed iy|in the western Kurdish area, i-jsome pro-Shah elements had i-ishouted for the return of the monarchy. i- The Government has faced: it uprisings by minorities seekitjing more rights in bath the! d'Kurdish region and the Tur-| rikoman area of the north-! itjeast, near the Soviet border,| rland to a lesser extent in; Baluchistan. gi But Mr Entezam indicated r for the first time that unem-j f'ployment had become al i-tmain cause of discontent in n I Iran since the February rev- , ejolution forced the Shah into 'exile. si Teheran newspapers rex' i ported that 13.500 unem-!-:loyed from various indjdustries had begun a sit-in •-|in a workers’ building in the ■ elsouthern oil town of Abar'dan, demanding jobs.