Suspect in Iran Slayings Kills Self, Official Says

A key suspect in a series of slayings of Iranian intellectuals and dissidents has committed suicide in jail, complicating a top-secret case involving intelligence officers, a senior judicial official said Sunday.

The suspect, identified as Saeed Emami, killed himself Saturday by swallowing a hair-removal substance while taking a bath in prison, Mohammed Niyazi, the head of Iran’s military tribunals, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Efforts to revive Emami failed, he said.

“Given the existing evidence and his explicit confessions, he had no way out, and if he had gone to court, he would have definitely been sentenced to hang,” Niyazi said.

The reported suicide further complicates a top-secret case in which a number of “rogue” Intelligence Ministry officers have been arrested for involvement in the deaths late last year of at least five political dissidents and liberal writers.

The investigation, ordered by top leaders including President Mohammad Khatami, led to the resignation of Intelligence Minister Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi in February.

Niyazi identified three other main suspects in the case as Mostafa Kazemi, Mehrdad Alikhani and Khosrow Barati. He said three other people had recently been arrested, but he did not identify them.

Revelations that secret agents had a part in the killings shocked the nation and led to a bitter factional dispute. Reformers backing Khatami linked the killings to right-wing squads supported by his conservative political rivals, while hard-liners blamed some of the president’s allies at the Intelligence Ministry, as well as foreign espionage networks.