Word: tehran
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sometime on the night of Sept. 4, a contingent of heavily armed Islamic guards arrived at Evin Prison in northwest Tehran in a caravan of largely empty Jeeps and minibuses. As sleepy-and astonished-prison guards watched, the intruders rounded up some 150 prisoners, many of whom had recently been incarcerated for political crimes by the fundamentalist courts of the beleaguered Khomeini regime. Corralled into groups of eight to ten, the prisoners were led outside to the waiting vehicles. When some guards objected to the mysterious procedure, they were crisply told to mind their own business...
TIME has learned through sources within the Khomeini regime that the prisoners, including a number of teenagers, were taken from Evin to unknown locations and murdered. Relatives of other executed dissidents stumbled upon "mounds of untended bodies" at Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery, south of Tehran, and were able to identify some as the missing prisoners. SAVAK agents under the Shah once used the same cemetery as a dumping ground for their murdered victims, burying the bodies in unmarked graves. For the first time since Iran's clerical government took over in February 1979, the mass execution was not announced...
...growing power of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (People's Crusaders), who have assassinated some 200 officials and clerical leaders since June, Khomeini has responded with a campaign to round up and execute political enemies. The toll thus far: over 1,000 killed and 10,000 imprisoned. Observers in Tehran believe adverse reactions both within Iran and abroad to the spate of killing have driven Khomeini's forces to adopt the late Shah's clandestine methods...
Meanwhile, the Mujahedin and other anti-Khomeini forces attacked Islamic guards in Tehran and elsewhere. The guerrillas reportedly dragged five Islamic guards out of a Tehran shop and executed them on a street corner; they were also said to have killed 26 personal envoys of Khomeini in revolutionary courts around the country. In Tabriz, a man exploded a hand grenade strapped to his waist, killing himself, Khomeini Aide Ayatullah Assadollah Madani and at least six others as they participated in noon prayers. At week's end, for the first time since the ouster of President Abolhassan Banisadr, anti-Khomeini...
...Mujahedin flinch. On the day of the Raja'i and Bahonar funerals, Mujahedin gunmen assassinated two more ranking Khomeini supporters. One was Hojjatoleslam Seyed Nasser Banijamal, director of internal affairs at Tehran's Court for Combatting Sin. Three days later, Khomeini's Revolutionary Guards fought an eight-hour gun battle with Mujahedin in Tehran's streets. According to the government's own reports, more than 100 similar shootouts with Mujahedin and other leftist guerrillas have erupted in cities as far flung as Bandar Abbas on the gulf and Astara on the Soviet border...