Word: komitehs
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Dates: during 1979-1979
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Last week Islamic Revolutionary Courts, controlled by the Komiteh, tightened their grip on Iran's legal system, for the first time executing persons charged with nonpolitical offenses. In public trials that are expected to replace the widely protested late-night secret tribunals, the courts punished rapists, thieves and adulterers, as well as more of the SAVAK agents, police and army officers who have been their chief targets. In Tehran, four men convicted of raping an 18-year-old male university student were executed; unaccountably, the victim was given 13 lashes. In Jamshid Abad, near the Caspian coast, a married...
...Komiteh has no intention of relaxing its grip on Iran. In an interview with TIME Tehran Bureau Chief Bruce van Voorst, Mohammed Reza Mahdavi Kani, a Khomeini aide who calls himself "the Ayatullah's man for Komiteh activities," outlined a plan that would make the group and some of its 1.500 or so replicas across the country permanent features of Iran's government. In Tabriz, Abadan, and other places, local komitehs have already begun rendering decisions on everything from whether brothels can reopen (answer: no) to the prices grocery shops can charge. Kani, who operates...
...Komiteh's militia, the so-called Islamic Guard, will be melded into a secular national guard commanded by a council headed by Deputy Prime Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, Khomeini's most ardent backer in the Bazargan government...
...Komiteh's main concerns, as Kani sees it, will remain "security and the arrest of holdovers from the former regime." Such seizures have been authorized by a Khomeini-appointed revolutionary prosecutor. The ultimate power, however, lies with the shadowy Islamic Revolutionary Council, whose membership has never been divulged; Kani refers to it as "the acting parliament in the absence of a parliament...
Though Kani maintains that the Komiteh will eventually turn over most of its authority to an elected government and assume an "oversight" role, he made clear that any new regime would have to kowtow to the Komiteh's commands. If not, he said, "we will do what we did before." Did that mean that the Komiteh would go on ruling Iran in the Council's name? Kani's reply: "Of course...