Word: beene
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There is no longer any dispute that SAVAK practiced systematic torture. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a member of Khomeini's Revolutionary Council, described to TIME'S Raji Samghabadi how SAVAK agents in 1964 lashed the soles of his feet with electric cable: "The flesh was torn apart, and...
Did the Shah know? He told TIME in 1976 that "we don't need to torture people any more," implying that torture had in fact been practiced earlier. In any case, as an absolute monarch he obviously was responsible for the actions of his own security forces.
There is some more direct evidence of the Shah's complicity in executions too. Early this year, SAVAK agents testified before" Khomeini's Islamic revolutionary courts that the Shah, under international pressure to liberalize his regime and therefore eager to hide evidence of repression, gave the secret police...
The new revolutionary courts are hardly more objective than the Shah's tribunals. Naderipour and Tavangari had no hope of winning leniency from the revolutionary courts by fabricating stories. Both were executed, as they knew they would be, and as some 600 of the Shah's officials have...
Even in this grim area, rational distinctions must be made. Is there justification for calling the Shah a criminal and treating him as one? If so, the same would have to apply to scores of other rulers, rightist or leftist. Moreover, Iran, like many developing countries, has never known any...