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Court Charges Network Of Khatami Allies Working Against Revolution
TEHRAN, Feb 8 (News Agencies) - The head of Iran's clerical court has accused backers of a leading dissident of financing an illicit network working to undermine the nation's Islamic system, a conservative paper reported Thursday.
The accusation targets several close allies of embattled reformist President Mohammad Khatami, including some who are in prison for attacking conservatives who have stymied Khatami's program of liberalizing reforms.
Gholamhossein Mohsen-Ejei, who heads Iran's hardline Special Court for Clergy (SCC), said supporters of dissident Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri were funding "counter-revolutionary" elements in the society.
"Unfortunately, Montazeri's supporters have funded various groups and people who have acted and spoken as counter-revolutionaries," he was quoted as saying by the Kayhan afternoon paper.
Those convicted of acting against Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, which overthrew the pro-Western shah and put the Muslim clerical regime in power, are normally punished by death.
Mohsen-Ejei specifically named leading reformists including jailed journalist Akbar Ganji, who has accused the SCC chief of involvement in the shock 1998 murders of four dissident intellectuals.
He also fingered Hassan-Yussefi Eshkevari, a cleric, who like Ganji, has been tried for attending a political conference in Germany last year.
Eshkevari, who used a speech at the conference to question whether Iranian women should be bound by the Islamic dress code, was tried by the SCC for apostasy.
Conviction for apostasy also carries the death penalty. The verdict against Eshkevari has not yet been made public.
Mohsen-Ejei also named student leader Ali Afshari and dissident nationalist Ezzatollah Sahabi, both of whom were jailed following fiery speeches in late November challenging various aspects of the clerical regime.
Among other people denounced by the SCC chief was Ataollah Mohajerani, Khatami's popular pro-reform culture minister who resigned amid conservative pressure over his moves to give the Iranian press greater freedoms.
Mohsen-Ejei said the network was discovered during a search of the house of Montazeri's son Said, who himself was reportedly arrested over a pamphlet charging members of the regime were involved in the 1998 dissident murders.
Ayatollah Montazeri was once in line to succeed Islamic Iran's founder, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but was passed over in favor of the nation's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Montazeri has been under long-time house arrest in the holy city of Qom.
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