Iranian Moderates Call on Hard-Liners to Solve Slayings

Iranian moderates Monday blasted conservative rivals in the state security apparatus for failing to halt a recent string of mystery killings that has unnerved the nation and forced some secular intellectuals into hiding.

In their first concerted response to the slayings or disappearance of four writers and a husband-and-wife team of political dissidents, influential backers of President Mohammad Khatami said it was time for the hard-liners who control the “power ministries” to put an immediate end to the violence.

“Enough talking, arrest the murderers,” said the daily Zan, published by Faezeh Hashemi, a leading moderate figure and a daughter of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Later Monday, a court suspended publication of Zan for two weeks and fined Hashemi, state television reported.

Two of the victims had been summoned in October to a Revolutionary Court after they tried to revive a banned writers union. And last month, nationalist opposition leader Dariush Foruhar and his wife, Parvanjeh, were killed in their home.

No one has been charged in any of the deaths. On Monday, the official IRNA news agency said Khatami had assigned a special task force to the cases.

A judiciary spokesman said several suspects had been arrested in the slayings, without giving details, state television reported.