Executions in Iran go on

Press, 14 April 1979, Page 8

Executions in Iran go on

NZPA-Reuter Teheran Seven former officials of the Shah’s Administration were executed yesterday, including the head of Air Force counter-espionage and the governor of Teheran’s Qasr Prison, the site of the present secret trials and executions.

The official “Voice of the Islamic Republic” radio said the executions by firing squad had been carried out in Teheran and three provincial towns early yesterday after sentence t during the night. Major Bijane Yahya’i was shot in the courtyard of the prison he ran until the uprising in February that toppled the Shah’s Government. He had been charged with torturing prisoners. Shot along with the major was General Hashem Berenjian, former chief of Air Force counter-espionage. The radio said the revolutionary tribunals had imposed jail sentences on five former Qasr Prison officials, and had acquitted a soldier. The deaths brought to 108 the number of former officials of the Shah executed

on charges of committing crimes during his rule. General Berenjian was the 26th general to have been executed since the new revolutionary Administration came to power.

About 1300 political prisoners are awaiting trial in Qasr Prison. The former prison governor and two of his assistants had been charged with torturing political prisoners.

Victims or their relatives were- invited to attend the secret trial, and they gave graphic accounts, often reducing the audience to tears, according to newspaper reports of the proceedings.

In the south-western oil town of Ahwaz, the former police chief, Colonel Hossein Torbatian, was executed. In Khoramshahr, on the Iraqi border, three members of the Shah’s security forces were also executed. They were named as a policeman, Loftallah Hademi, Sergeant Hossein Keremi, and Lieutenant Mehdi Sa’Atpur.

In the southern town of Kerman, a private in the para-military gendarmerie, Hossein Mo’lndodini, was executed.