Iran Orders Retrial Over Killings of Dissidents

Iran’s Supreme Court has ordered a retrial of 15 former intelligence agents convicted in the 1998 killings of four dissidents, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said Saturday.

The killings were seen as part of the power struggle between hard-liners, who control the Intelligence Ministry and other government offices, and reformists allied with popular President Mohammad Khatami.

The Supreme Court rejected the guilty verdicts because of “certain faults in the investigation” and remanded the case to the military court that handed down the original verdicts Jan. 27, the news agency quoted a court official as saying.

In the initial verdict, three agents were sentenced to death, five to life imprisonment and seven to jail terms ranging from 2 1/2 to 10 years. Three defendants were acquitted.

The killings began Nov. 22, 1998, when Dariush Forouhar and his wife, who ran a small opposition party, were stabbed to death in their home. In the following weeks, writers Mohammed Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohammed Mokhtari were kidnapped and apparently strangled, their bodies dumped on the outskirts of Tehran.

Reformists say the killings were among more than 80 slayings and “disappearances” stretching over a decade as part of a wider campaign by state-sponsored death squads to silence opposition.