Iranian Targeted by Onetime Associates

          
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          Iranian Targeted by Onetime
          Associates _____
          Former Revolutionary Becomes Symbol
          By Tara Bahrampour
          Washington Post Staff Writer
          Monday, August 3, 2009
          In the early days of the Islamic Republic of Iran , Saeed
          Hajjarian advised the hostage-takers at the U.S. Embassy.
          During the Iran-j q war, he helped establish the
          much-feared Ministry of Intelligence. Then he turned in a
          democratic direction, running reformist newspapers and
          sewing as a political adviser to President Mohammad
          Khatami. In 2000 a gunman aligned with a hard-line
          government faction shot him in the face, leaving him partially
          replay
          paralyzed and dependent on medication.
          And for the past six weeks, Hajjarian, 55, has languished in prison, a key target of the apparatus he helped
          create.
          “He is a great symbol of what the Islamic republic does to its own,” said Farideh Farhi, an Iran specialist at
          the University of Hawaii who first met Hajjarian in the 1990s. “Obviously, today, some in the Intelligence
          Ministry think he was the brain behind [ opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein] Mousavi's campaign.”
          Hajjarian's arrest, she added, “suggests his continued significance as a reflection of what the hard-liners most
          fear.”
          Hajjarian was arrested three days after the disputed June 12 presidential election, along with thousands of
          other people. Family members said his medications for problems such as seizures and motor control have
          been administered erratically, which could lead to brain damage or death. After a visit last week, his wife, a
          doctor, described him as depressed and tearful, and said he has been interrogated in direct sunlight in
          temperatures of more than 100 degrees and doused with ice water, affecting his heart rate dangerously.
          On Thursday, two days after a Human Rights Watch report described his “deteriorating” condition, officials
          said Hajjarian had been moved to a “state-owned house” with “suitable” medical facilities. His wife, in an
          interview, said she had not seen the house or been told anything about it.
          Iran on Saturday put 100 political activists and others on trial for conspiring to topple the government, and
          added 10 defendants on Sunday. The opposition's Mousavi alleged that the government had used “medieval
          torture” to force confessions from the accused.
          Hajjarian, who has not yet been tried, had not been particularly active in the lead-up to the election, though
          he supported Mousavi. But recent articles in the press aligned with the government have listed him as leading
          a push for democratic reform.
          “In the viewpoint of the Iranian government, transition to democracy is a crime, and democracy is equal to
          evil, and it is a Western term,” said Mohsen Kadivar, a reformist cleric who worked with Hajjarian in Iran and
          is now a visiting professor at Duke University. “So all those figures that try to democratize their country, they
          have committed a big crime.”
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          Iranian Targeted by Onetime Associates http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyri/content/article/2009/08/02/AR...
          Hajjarian, who grew up in a poor section of Tehran, is described by friends as having a dour face but a sharp
          sense of humor. Like the revolution itself, he seemed to mature from strident youthful ideology into a
          middle-aged complexity and thoughtfulness. His transformation echoes that of many revolutionaries who
          coalesced around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s but later moved toward reform.
          The end of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war came as a shock to many who had believed in Khomeini's vows to bring
          down Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at any cost, said Ahmad Sadri, chair of Islamic world studies at Lake
          Forest College, who first met Hajjarian in 1992.
          “The mentality of the revolutionaries was that this was the dawn of a new age, that this revolution. . . is
          steadfast, it is non-compromising,” he said. When the war ended with no clear victory for either side, “a light
          went off in their minds and they realized they had been wrong all along about a lot of things, including mixing
          religion and politics, and that the world of politics is a world of compromise.”
          After Khomeini's death, when Ayatollah Mi Khamenei ascended to power as Iran's supreme leader, leftists
          such as Hajjarian and Mohammad Khatami were sidelined. That, analysts said, gave them time to lick their
          wounds and turn to studying, many moving in more secular directions.
          They formed intellectual circles. They started journals. Hajjarian, working on a PhD in political science at
          Tehran University, pursued the idea of a transition to democracy and advocated pressuring the government
          from below while striking bargains at the top.
          “He's a thinker,” said Bill Berkeley, a former New York Times editorial writer who has interviewed Hajjarian
          for an upcoming book about the hostage-takers. “He had the feeling the revolution had lost its way and gone
          off the track. He told me war was a bad way to build democratic institutions; he attributes the authoritarian
          direction that the revolution ended up taking to the Iran-Iraq war.”
          Hajjarian espoused a democratic interpretation of Islam, said Kadivar, who during Khatami's tenure was
          Islamic deputy of the Center for Strategic Studies, an Iranian think tank, while Hajjarian was its political
          deputy. “I remember he said the leader and president is like the employee of the citizen, and the citizen is like
          the owner of the land. And they rent out to the president or the supreme leader as their workers, so the
          workers should do as they tell them.”
          Such ideas, in a system where the word of the supreme leader is considered divine, can be deadly. Analysts
          say Hajjarian may have been targeted for assassination because he used his insider knowledge to accuse the
          Intelligence Ministry of a string of killings of intellectuals in the late 1 990s.
          After recovering from a coma, Hajjarian was physically disabled, but his mental capacities were unharmed.
          Analysts said the government has targeted him now not for any particular activity but because of his symbolic
          importance. They said some in the government hope to force a confession of conspiring against the state, an
          accusation also leveled against other arrested reformists.
          “I think it's kind of a terror tactic, to scare people, by showing that even a guy like Hajjarian could be forced
          to confess,” Berkeley said. “If he died [ in prison], it would be a debacle for the regime. But if he survives and
          confesses, that might be something that would be considered an asset.”
          It could also backfire.
          “They have overused this tactic,” Farhi said. “Now people will just say that he was forced to do it and further
          turn their anger against the government.”
          Special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie contributed to this report
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