Iran to Investigate Reporter’s Death

Iran’s president on Sunday ordered four Cabinet ministers to lead an investigation into the death of a Canadian photojournalist allegedly beaten into a coma by police for taking pictures of a Tehran prison.

Zahra Kazemi, a 54-year-old freelance journalist of Iranian origin, died late Friday in a Tehran hospital after suffering a “brain stroke,” an Iranian government official said Saturday in a statement carried by Iran’s official news agency.

She was detained June 23 for taking pictures of Evin prison, where many dissidents are jailed. Kazemi was authorized to cover last month’s violent pro-reform protests in Tehran, according to Iranian officials. According to one report, Kazemi had been on assignment for the London-based Camera Press.

Canadian officials and Kazemi’s relatives and friends say she was beaten into a coma while in custody. Friends who visited her in the hospital last week said she was unconscious and had severe cuts and bruises on her face and head.

On Sunday, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami expressed his sorrow over Kazemi’s death and ordered his ministers for culture and Islamic guidance, information, interior and justice to oversee an investigation, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

“In a legal system, if a violation takes place it must be confronted legally, but if the law was not respected during the confrontation, then the violators should be confronted even more strongly,” he said.

Family members and friends in Montreal insisted the body be returned to Canada so an autopsy could be carried out. But a spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham said Kazemi’s mother, who is in Iran, had already given permission for the body to be buried.

Khatami ensured that three state agents and 12 others were investigated and convicted in 2001 for killing dissidents, one of the few successes of his six years in office during which he has failed to implement most of the reforms he promised.

Graham’s spokesman welcomed what he said was Khatami’s prompt announcement of the probe. Canada’s ambassador to Tehran had raised the case with Iranian officials earlier on Sunday.

Club and knife-wielding hard-line vigilantes aligned with Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, battled with students and bystanders during the June 10-14 protests, predominantly in Tehran.