A parliamentary panel on Wednesday implicated a senior official and ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the deaths of at least three detainees arrested in June during anti-government demonstrations, the Alef Web site reported.
The Web site, which is overseen by a prominent conservative member of the parliament, Ahmad Tavakoli, said that the report was submitted on Sunday and is expected to be read on the floor next week.
The man singled out in the report, Saeed Mortazavi, was responsible as Tehran’s city prosecutor for the arrests of over 100 journalists, activists and former government officials after the election. He has been loathed by reformers since the late 1990s, when he shut scores of reformist newspapers and arrested dozens of journalists.
The allegations against Mr. Mortazavi represent a victory for the more moderate wing within the ruling establishment, which favors compromise to end the anti-government protests, over the more ruthless faction led by President Ahmadinejad, Iran experts said.
“They want to sacrifice Mortazavi, thinking that people would back down,” said Mohsen Sazegara, an opposition figure and political analyst in Washington. “This conservative faction is willing to even sacrifice Ahmadinejad to end the protests.”
Iran’s state radio reported that the panel had concluded its investigation and listed some culprits, but refrained from mentioning Mr. Mortazavi by name.
The panel named Mr. Mortazavi as “the main culprit,” the person who “was in charge of Kahrizak detention center as the former Tehran prosecutor,” the Web site reported. “He personally gave the order for the transfer of detainees to Kahrizak.”
It concluded that three young men, Mohsen Ruholamini, Amir Javadifar and Mohammad Kamrani, were killed at Kahrizak because of “unhealthy environment and beatings by prison authorities.” Mr. Ruholamini was the son of a senior member of the Revolutionary Guards and a close aide to Mohsen Rezai, who was a candidate in the disputed presidential election in June.
Mr. Mortazavi served as the Tehran prosecutor until August, when he was promoted to deputy state prosecutor overseeing efforts to combat smuggling.
The opposition leaders have accused authorities of torturing detainees to death and raping some of the female and male detainees. The outrage over treatment of prisoners forced the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to order the closure of Kahrizak.
The report made no mention of the rape allegations, which the government has denied. Nor did it provide any information on the suspicious death of a Ramin Pourandarjani, a 26-year-old doctor who was one of the few civilians allowed inside the prison at the time of the protests. He was found dead some time after confirming in testimony before the parliamentary panel the allegations that jailers had tortured and raped prisoners.
The report today was a surprise, in that the panel had announced in September that it would no longer pursue the case and was instead forwarding it to a military court. The military court issued a statement last month saying that 12 officials at Kahrizak had been charged with murder and other crimes, but it did not name the individuals.
Norwegian state television said on Wednesday that an Iranian diplomat, Mohammad Reza Heydari, had resigned his post in protest over the harsh crackdown in Tehran. A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry denied the report.
Perviz Khazai, a former Iranian ambassador to the Nordic countries who now heads the local branch of the dissident National Council of Resistance of Iran, said he believed Mr. Heydari, 43, had worked at the embassy in Oslo for three years and was one of its top diplomatic officials. He said Mr. Heydari’s resignation was reminiscent of his own highly public defection to Norway in 1982. He said he did not know Mr. Heydari personally but could empathize with him.
“He did a brave thing and he has every reason to be scared of this brutal regime now, but I hope will stand up very openly, as I did,” said Mr. Khazai, recalling the 1982 news conference in Oslo at which he denounced the government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
He said that Kazem Rajavi and Hussein Naghdi, two other Iranian diplomats in Europe who defected from their posts shortly before he did, have since been murdered. After his own defection Mr. Khazai, now 63, spent a year in hiding with his wife and six-year-old son, protected by the Norwegian security service.
“I think this is a symptom of the crack that is forming from top to bottom in this regime,” he said. “It reminds me of my own experience. Officials who love their country and have a feeling of humanity cannot tolerate being part of it any more. It is a shameful thing.”
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