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Thursday, October 16, 2003
President's Brother Wants the Leader's Powers Curbed
October 16, 2003
The Associated Press
Dow Jones Newswires
TEHRAN -- The leader of Iran's largest reformist political party called Thursday for curbing the powers of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying he and unelected bodies he runs undermine democracy.
"Hard-liners interpret the authority of the supreme leader as being above the law and not responsive to any legal elected bodies," Mohammad Reza Khatami, leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, told the annual meeting of his party.
"We believe the leader can't be above the law."
Mohammad Reza Khatami, who is also the Iranian parliament's vice speaker and a younger brother of President Mohammad Khatami, said the view by hard-liners that Khamenei is above the law and answerable only to God was tantamount to dictatorship.
For years, Iran has been embroiled in a power struggle between elected reformers supporting president Khatami's program of peaceful democratic reforms and hard-liners resisting them through powerful but unelected bodies they control, including the Guardian Council and judiciary.
"Where the ruler uses force to impose what he considers being good against the wishes and vote of the people, then he has lost the legitimacy to rule and continuation of such a rule would not be Islamic," Reza Khatami said, drawing wild applause from the audience.
Criticizing the supreme leader is considered a taboo in Iran and critics are subject to punishment. But in recent months, reformers have become bolder and directly criticized Khamenei, along with the unelected bodies he controls.
Reza Khatami said unelected hard-liners account for 15% of the population but are stubbornly resisting the program of democratic reforms voted for in several free elections since 1997.
Iranian journalists and newspapers have been under assault from the judiciary, which is run by Islamic hard-liners opposed to democratic reforms launched by Khatami since his 1997 election. Dozens of journalists and political activists have been jailed without trial, while others have faced closed trials without juries.
About 100 pro-democracy publications have been closed since April 2000.
The younger Khatami also said the murder of an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, who was beaten to death while in custody, should be blamed on hard-line clerics who oppose legislation banning torture.
Zahra Kazemi, 54, died on July 10 some three weeks after being detained for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during student-led protests. After 77 hours of interrogation, she was rushed to a hospital intensive care unit where she died 14 days later.
Reza Khatami said that the real responsibility did not lie with the person who beat her to death, but "with members of the Guardian Council who have opposed legislation banning torture."
Intelligence agent Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi pleaded innocent to murdering Kazemi during the first session of his trial earlier this month. Iran's Intelligence Ministry has, instead, blamed the murder on a hard-line official.
link to original article
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