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Friday, August 22, 2003
Iranian Officials Raped Reporter, Then Killed Her
August 22, 2003
NY Sun
Adan Daifallah
WASHINGTON — Iranian officials raped Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi before she died and put chemicals in her body to speed up its decomposition, according to a lawyer who recently visited Iran and an opposition group.
A Toronto-based lawyer, Hamid Mojtahedi, told Radio Farda, the American-funded radio station beamed into Iran, that Kazemi was raped by intelligence agents who worked with Tehran prosecutor Said Mortazavi, a man referred to as the “Butcher of the Press” by Iranian dissidents.
Mr. Mojtahedi, who traveled to Iran last month with a delegation from the Canadian chapter of the group Lawyers Without Borders, also told the radio station that a forensic autopsy of Kazemi’s body might be impossible since Iranian authorities injected it with chemicals to speed its decomposition.
The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, a dissident organization based in Dallas, made same claims in a report yesterday.
The Canadian government, Kazemi’s mother and son have demanded answers from Tehran about what really happened to the journalist, and these latest claims throw Iran’s previous explanations into further question. Requests to have her body exhumed and sent back to Canada have been refused; Canada recalled its ambassador from Tehran in protest.
Kazemi, an Iranian-born photojournalist who lived in Montreal, died in a Tehran hospital July 14 after being arrested and branded a spy by police after being caught taking pictures outside of a prison in northern Iran on June 23.
The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran’s official news outlet, originally claimed she died of a “brain stroke”; days later, a presidentially appointed investigating committee of Cabinet ministers said she was beaten and died from a fractured skull, and then Iran’s vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, said, “The murder was caused by brain hemorrhage due to a blow inflicted on her.”
France Bureau, a spokeswoman for the Canadian foreign minister, Bill Graham, told The New York Sun that the Canadian government is “looking into” the new claims. Canada had unsuccessfully requested to be a part of the investigation into Kazemi’s death.
“We asked to participate or help in the investigation but they’re doing it on their own. We’ll see what the report says when it comes out,” said Ms. Bureau, the spokeswoman.
Calls to Kazemi’s son, Stephan Hachemi, who lives in Montreal, were not returned yesterday.
The handling of the Kazemi case has angered Iranian democracy activists who say the Canadian government is being too deferential to Iran.The Islamic Republic is conducting an investigation of the journalist’s death without the involvement of Canadian or international authorities.
“Letting Iran investigate this crime is like allowing a murderer to be his own judge and jury,” said Manouchehr Ganji, a long-time opponent of the mullahs. “They’ve been doing this all these years.The whole world has been watching as a passive observer.”
Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, an Iranian dissident whose father, Iranian journalist Siamak Pourzand, is in jail in Tehran, said that it is unfortunate it took someone with dual nationality like Kazemi to die before the Western world realized the way the “axis of evil” regime treats artists and journalists.
“On top of their disregard for journalists, they do not legitimately accept dual nationality. Someone with a dual nationality has to be killed for the free world to notice,” Ms. Zand-Bonazzi said.
Meanwhile, Agence France Presse reported that Iran’s former ambassador to Argentina, Hadi Soleimanpour, was arrested in northeast England in conjunction with the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center that killed 85 people.
Mr. Soleimanpour will appear before magistrates today at a central London court, Scotland Yard said in a press statement.
link to original article
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