Kazemi's case will test Iranian reformers: Graham
By JEFF SALLOT and INGRID PERITZ
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Ottawa and Montreal — The Iranian government's admission that Montreal photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died of a skull fracture suffered while in custody provoked Canadian demands yesterday that those responsible be identified and prosecuted.
"If crimes have been committed, we are demanding of the Iranian government to punish those who committed the crime, and we will push that case," Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said.
"It's completely unacceptable that a journalist goes there to do professional work and be threatened that way," he told a news conference in Shawinigan, Que.
"The government of Iran is a bit complicated, I am told," he added, referring to a power struggle between reformers, led by President Mohammed Khatami, and hard-line mullahs, which could make it difficult to ascertain the facts in the Kazemi case.
Earlier in the day, a key reformer, Iranian Vice-President Mohammed Ali Abtahi, said that Ms. Kazemi, 54, had a "brain hemorrhage caused by a beating."
Mr. Abtahi linked her death to a wave of arrests of independent journalists by unelected regime hard-liners.
"We have witnessed a kind of comprehensive attack" on journalists, Mr. Abtahi said, noting that the Kazemi case is hurting Iran's international reputation.
Health Minister Massoud Pezeshkian said in Tehran that he personally examined the body. Experts will examine the remains again to produce a final forensic report by today.
Interior Minister Abdolvahed Moussavi-Lari, another of the cabinet ministers President Khatami assigned to investigate, said the case "has nothing to do with Canada" because Ms. Kazemi was in Iran as an Iranian citizen.
Mr. Khatami, who has been locked in a political struggle with powerful clerics and a hard-line Islamic judiciary, said "the way that journalists and other citizens are being treated is raising questions" at home and abroad.
IRNA, the official press agency, quoted the President as ordering his justice and interior ministers to investigate the hard-liners' crackdown on journalists.
"The law is not something to be observed only by citizens. The law must also be observed by us," he said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham told Canadian reporters the Kazemi case will be a test of whether Mr. Khatami and other reformers can prevail over the shadowy parallel power structure in Iran, which has its own secret police.
Mr. Graham said he told his Iranian counterpart in a telephone call yesterday that Canada expects "there will be no question of immunity in this case."
Mr. Graham said Kamal Kharrazi responded that "they would do their best to pursue anyone responsible" and bring them to justice.
Ms. Kazemi, a dual national, returned on assignment to her native Iran this spring, travelling on her Iranian passport. She was arrested June 23 for photographing demonstrators outside a Tehran prison.
Three days later, she was transferred to an Iranian hospital run by the hard-line Revolutionary Guard. She died last Friday of what Iranian authorities originally reported as a "brain attack" suffered while under interrogation.
In fact, Ms. Kazemi had a fractured skull, Mr. Graham said, quoting the Iranian Foreign Minister.
Mr. Kharrazi said investigators need a few more days to investigate how she was injured. The Iranian Foreign Minister suggested the injury might have been the result of a fall.
Mr. Graham said the Iranian government must get to the bottom of the case because the journalist was in their custody.
The Iranian Foreign Minister agreed and said the Canadian embassy in Iran will be kept informed of all developments, Mr. Graham said.
The Iranians have rejected Canadian offers of forensic and other technical assistance, saying they are competent to conduct their own criminal investigation.
Mr. Graham suggested the Iranian investigation should be given a bit more time, saying Canada can assess later whether there will a full airing of the facts or whether someone is hiding wrongdoing. "Let's give it a couple of days to work its way through this."
Canada will assess the way Iran deals with the Kazemi case in determining whether to move to closer economic and political relations with Iran, Mr. Graham said.
The Khatami government has been trying to cultivate better relations with Canada and Europe as a buffer between it and Washington. A hostile U.S. administration describes Iran as part of an "axis of evil."
Meanwhile, in Montreal, Ms. Kazemi's son, Stephan Hachemi, called Iran's admission "positive" but insisted his mother's body be returned to him in Canada.
He accused the Canadian government of being slow in helping resolve the question.
"She's Canadian. I'm Canadian. It's been two weeks since we heard the news" of her arrest, he told a press conference. "Nothing has moved. I didn't get any positive results, any concrete actions from the [Canadian] government."
He denied Ottawa's contention that the family is divided over where to bury the body.
Canadian diplomats say Ms. Kazemi's mother, who lives in Iran, wants her buried there.
Mr. Hachemi said he speaks regularly to his grandmother in Iran, but her phone is tapped and she is unable to speak freely.
"It has been clear between us, and all the members of the family, that [Ms. Kazemi] won't be buried in the land of the people who murdered her," he said. "She belongs with me, her only child."
Ms. Kazemi's father is also in Iran, in the family's native city, Shiraz. Frail and unable to walk, he has only recently been told of his daughter's death.
Amnesty International said Iran's admission of her beating was only a first step.
"What we need to see is a thorough judicial investigation into the full circumstances of her death, with a view of bringing those responsible to justice," Keith Rimstad said on behalf of Amnesty.
Iran still has to show the political will to probe her death, he said.
"There is a danger that if the political will isn't there, and the investigation doesn't meet international standards, at the end of the day we won't necessarily get to the truth of what happened."
There are conflicting reports about whether Ms. Kazemi's body has been buried. The journalist freedom group Reporters Without Borders says Iran's ambassador to France, Seyed Sadegh Kharazi, told a delegation yesterday that Ms. Kazemi had been buried in Iran on July 13 or 14. Canadian and Iranian officials insist that has not yet occurred.
Yesterday, the Quebec National Assembly called on the Iranian government to make public all information regarding Ms. Kazemi's death and to respect her son's demand to return his mother's body to Canada.
"There are still questions that are left unanswered. That is why the Quebec government joins its voice to that of Ms. Kazemi's son and the numerous people and groups who want to get to the bottom of this affair," said Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, Minister of International Affairs.
An exhibition of the photojournalist's work may be placed on display in the Quebec National Assembly as early as next fall.
With reports from Rhéal Séguin and AFP
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030717.ukazemi0717/BNStory/National/IRAN ADMITS ZAHRA KAZEMI DIED ON "BLOWS" TO HER HEAD
PARIS 16 July (IPS) Admission by a high-ranking Iranian official that Ms. Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-born Canadian photojournalist has died of brain injury "due to a blow" open the way for international investigations and the trial of the culprits, including officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran at international courts, according to lawyers and jurists.
Vice President for legal affairs, Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Ali Abtahi had told journalists on Wednesday that the results of an autopsy, ordered by the government, concluding that Ms. Kazemi had died "of a brain haemorrhage as a result of a blow".
A freelance photographer covering for Canadian publications and the London-based "Camera Press" agency, Ms. Kazemi, 54, was arrested on 23 June while taking pictures of demonstrations by the families of political prisoners near the notorious Evin prison in the outskirts of Tehran.
She died on 11 July in a Tehran hospital belonging to the Revolutionary Guards, after suffering brain injuries caused by violent blows during interrogation at the Information (Intelligence) Ministry.
The death, the first of a journalist during interrogation caused an international outcry by human rights and press watchdogs, calling on the Iranian authorities to identify the murderers and explain the exact circumstances of the arrest and the death of the photographer.
"Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham held telephone talks with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi on Wednesday over the death of an Iranian photojournalist, who worked for Canada's Camera Press magazine", the official Iranian news agency reported.
But in an overt twist of the facts, IRNA did not explain what the case had to do with Canada if the slain journalist is an Iranian citizen, as the Iranian authorities claims with insistence, never mentioning that she had also Canadian citizenship, and also that Camera Press is not a Canadian, but a British photo agency.
"Kharrazi", IRNA added, stressed to Graham that the Islamic Republic of Iran is sensitive and committed to the fate of its nationals and assured that officials will act very seriously and firmly in establishing the cause of the death as soon as possible.
But again, the agency did not say why Kharrazi must provide his Canadian counterpart with details on the death of Ms. Kazemi if she is Iranian?
Earlier in the day, Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh rejected Canada's request to transfer the journalist's body to that country, saying, "Mrs. Kazemi is an Iranian citizen and in this case we will act according to the will of her family".
Sources in Tehran and Canada said there was controversy in the family over the fate of the body, as according to the Iranian authorities, Ms. Kazemi’s mother wanted her daughter to be buried in Iran, while her son, Stephen Hachemi inists that the body be transferred to Canada for determining the cause of the death.
"In our view, no foreign government has the right to make any special comment in this regard, given the Iranian nationality of Mrs. Kazemi", he told reporters.
According to Mr Mohammad Hoseyn Khoshvaqt, the General Director of the Foreign Press at the Islamic Guidance Ministry, on her arrest by Prison guards, Ms. Kazemi provided Iranian identity documents.
"We face a case that death was caused by blows, meaning under torture, a case that if the Iranian authorities fails to identify those who arrested Ms. Kazemi, those who caused her death and those who ordered, then the International Criminal Court, of which Canada is a signatory and Iran has adhered without joining in officially, has the right to take it up", said Dr. Karim Lahiji, a vice-president of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues.
"The committee, which has been formed on the order of the President
is following up the matter to see how and where this happened", Mr. Abtahi further told reporters after a cabinet session, referring to a ad hoc committee formed by ministers of Justice, Intelligence, Interior and Islamic Guidance.
"This is a homicide that calls for a detailed and thorough investigation. It has all the landmarks of the chain murders case, much more important than an ordinary assassination", observed Ms. Shirin Ebadi, a lawyer and human rights activist who represented some of the families of veteran and popular Iranian politicians and intellectuals murdered at the hands of high-ranking officials of the Intelligence Ministry on November 1998.
But though it was thanks to the investigation committee ordered by Mr. Khatami that the Intelligence Ministry ended up to acknowledge its senior officials had savagely assassinated Mr. Dariush Foroohar, his wife, Parvaneh and three leading intellectuals and human rights activists, but at the end of the day, the murderers got away and the real culprits, meaning the ayatollahs who had issued religious orders to kill were never identified, despite all the efforts by the families of the victims.
Praising the lamed President for the formation of the investigation committee, Ms. Ebadi hoped that the authorities would not allow this case joining that of the chain murders. "In case there is any interference in the instruction, any obstruction to the follow up, then international organisations have the right to intervene", she observed.
But most Iranian observers doubted the real culprits would be ever identified. "At best, some minor employee, maybe an ordinary prisoner, would be presented as the one who slapped her and at worst, she might be accused of espionage", one journalist who has been in jail several times and is familiar with the methods of Iranian Judiciary speculated.
IRNA quoted an "informed source" that the investigation committee had rejected a request from Zahra Kazemi's mother to transfer the body from the coroner's office to her birthplace in Shiraz for interring.
"The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said that the committee has categorically rejected the burial as long as the cause of the journalist's death is not established", the agency added.
The announcement came as some news agencies and websites alleged that Kazemi had been buried in Shiraz after the coroner's office had issued a death certificate.
As the London-based Amnesty International added its voice to the calls made by Iran's Islamic Human Rights Commission, Iranian Association for Defence of Press Freedom (IADPF) and other international human rights organisations in calling for an independent and thorough investigation into the death in custody of the photojournalist, unconfirmed reports in Tehran said the interrogations of Ms. Kazemi were carried by Judge Sa’id Mortazavi, better know as the "Butcher of the press".
"Sa’id Mortazavi, who was named recently by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i as the Prosecutor of Tehran and Head of the Islamic Revolutionary courts, not only was present but also carried the interrogations that led to the death of the photographer", said some Iranian internet websites.
In another development, the IADPF, in a letter published on Wednesday demanded that Judge Mortazavi to be prosecuted for the "offences and misconducts" he committed against the press during his tenure as the judge and president of the press tribunal.
"What we want is justice and that law be applied on Mr. Mortazavi for the numbers of irregularities and abuse of power and misconducts he committed when he was in charge of the press tribunal", the Association said.
http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2003/Jul-2003/journalist_dies_16703.htm