Summary of the Iran Stories of Today's BroadcastsBehnam NateghiFriday, February 21, 2003
<b>Judiciary Prevents UN Human Rights Investigators' Meeting with Political Prisoners</b>
* Members of the UN human rights commission's fact finding mission to Iran did not meet with political prisoners inside or outside the Evin prison, despite the mission's mandate to investigate arbitrary arrests and the condition of political prisoners. On the seventh of their 12-day visit, the delegation, headed by French lawyer and political prisoners' advocate Louis Joinet, left Tehran to visit tourist towns Shiraz and Isfahan, but the human rights organizations, former political prisoners and their lawyers charged that the Judiciary prevented any meaningful contact between the mission's members and Iran's current or past political prisoners. Some of former political prisoners, along with relatives of those still in prisons, staged a demonstration last night in front of Tehran's Hotel Laleh to press for such a meeting. Ms. Parkan, lawyer of Abdolfatah Soltani, a jailed defense attorney, tells <b>Radio Farda</b> that his client ran into the delegation in the corridors of the Evin prison, but was told that in order to speak with him, the mission needs judiciary's permission. Ali, Son of long-time political prisoner Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, tells <b>Radio Farda</b> that the UN delegation visited Evin prison without seeing the cellblock where his father and other political prisoner were held. Atefeh, sister of jailed student activist Ali Afshari, tells <b>Radio Farda</b> that his brother and jailed lawyer Nasser Zarafshan were removed from the political prisoners' cellblock after they issued a statement denying the authorities' claim that the political prisoners had refused meeting with the UN human rights delegation. (Siavash Ardalan)
* Parvaneh Milani, whose brother was among the thousands of prisoners who were executed en-masse in Iran's prisons in the late 1980's, tells <b>Radio Farda</b> that she was met with a human wall of security guards in front of Hotel Laleh, who refused to let her see members of the UN human rights delegation. She says the guards told her that the delegation's mission did not include accepting visitors. She adds that the UNDP's office in Tehran was closed and there was no guard there to take messages. She says she wanted to submit to the delegation a copy of her executed brother's will, in which he describes the mass killings of political prisoners. (Amir-Mosaddegh Katouzian)
* Paris-based human rights activist Abdolkarim Lahiji tells <b>Radio Farda</b> that the delegation may hold a group meeting with former political prisoners on their return from Shiraz and Isfahan. He adds that after complaints about the limitations on the UN delegation's work were submitted to the UN human rights commission in Geneva, Iranian authorities promised to arrange another visit to Evin prison which may include interviews with some political prisoners. He adds that the authorities refused to allow the UN delegation to visit the jails in Kurdistan cities, were many political prisoners are held. (Amir-Mosaddegh Katouzian)
<b>IAEA Chief Visits Natanz Nuclear Facility</b>
* On the first day of his two-day visit to Iran, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Muhammad Elbaradei visited the Natanz nuclear facility. He is to meet President Mohammad Khatami and Majles Speaker Mehdi Karrubi. Before leaving for Iran Elbaradei said he would ask Iran to agree to unannounced visits by UN insepctors to all its nuclear sites. (Amir Armin)
* Iraq-based armed opposition group the People's Mojahedin Organization (MKO) charged the Islamic regime of hiding from the IAEA what it called uranium enrichment sites. (Golnaz Esfandiari)
* Akbar Etamad, chief of Iran' Atomic Energy Organization under the Shah, tells <b>Radio Farda</b> that the reactors in the Bushehr nuclear power plant are not suitable for producing nuclear weapons. They are, he explains, of the same kind that the US promised to deliver to North Korea in 1994 in exchange for North Korea's promise to end its nuclear weapons program. He adds that Iran plans to produce atomic fuel rods in two facilities in Arak and Isfahan. He says the Bushehr plant, which is due to be completed in a year and a half, was part of a four-plant atomic energy grid, two of which were near completion by the 1979 revolution. The revolutionary regime stopped the project only to revive it in the early 1990's. (Shahran Tabari, London)
* John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security would press Russia to stop nuclear cooperation with Iran during his upcoming trip to Moscow. (Maryam Ahmadi)
<b>18,000 Search for Bodies of IRGC Plane Crash Victims</b>
* More than 18,000 were mobilized to search in the snow-covered mountainous near Kerman for bodies of the 302 members of an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who died last Wednesday in the crash of their Russian-made Ilyushin cargo plane. The victims included officers of the Supreme Leader's security detail, who were returning to Tehran from a trip to Zahedan to arrange for the Supreme Leader's upcoming visit to that city. (Siavash Ardalan)
* Russia's head of civil aviation offered to send a team to Iran to investigate the cause of the Russian-made jet's crash. (Lily Sadr)
<b>Iran and Iran's Oil Production to Remain Flat</b>
* By investing billions in the development of new oil fields, Iran and Iraq can only balance the decreasing production capacity of their older fields. Despite the added capacity of the projects such as the offshore South Pars in the Persian Gulf, Iran's production capacity has remained unchanged in the past ten years, the Wall Street Journal writes. (Ardavan Niknam)
<b>US and Democracy in Iran</b>
* Reacting to the recent characterization of Iran as a democracy by the US Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage and State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher, Joseph Cirinicione, director of the non-proliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment, and a democracy scholar, tells <b>Radio Farda</b> that considering the possible US military action against Iraq, the administration seeks to Iran's cooperation or at least neutrality. He adds that the US officials may believe that the US military presence in Iraq may induce Iranians to topple the Islamic regime, and thus, they would not do anything that might result in boosting the Iranian regime. (Amir Armin)
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سفر 12 روزه بازرسان حقوق بشر سازمان ملل به ايران وارد اولين هفته خود شد. آنها امروز به شيراز رفتند ولي هنگام اقامت در تهران از زندان اوين بازديد كردند ولي به بند سياسي زندان نرفتند. خانم پراكن، وكيل مدافع ابولفتاح سلطاني، وكيل مدافع زنداني، در مصاحبه با راديوفردا مي گويد: بازرسان سازمان ملل به سطاني گفتند كه براي حرف زدن با او بايد قبلا از مقامات مسئول اجازه بگيرند. تنها زنداني سياسي كه با بازرسان صحبت كرد، عباس اميرانتظام بود. علي طبرزدي، فرزند حشمت الله طبرزدي، در مصاحبه با راديوفردا مي گويد اجتماع ديروز دهها تن از بستگان زندانيان سياسي در برابر هتل لاله تهران براي اين بود كه از بازرسان بخواهند با زندانيان سياسي ديدار كنند. عاطفه افشاري، خواهر علي افشاري مي گويد برادر او ممنوع الملاقات شده است. وي مي افزايد قبل از انتقال به بند ديگر، افشاري و ناصر زرافشان خبر امتناع زندانيان از ملاقات با بازرسان را تكذيب كرده بودند.
