TEHRAN, 25 April 2005 — An Iranian prosecutor said yesterday the authorities were rounding up ringleaders of ethnic unrest in the oil-rich southwest and that the number of people detained over the violence would soon exceed 205.
Officials say demonstrations on April 15 were sparked by the circulation of a forged letter, supposedly from a senior official, suggesting that Iran’s Arab minority be relocated to dilute its influence in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan.
Iran says five people died in the violence; opposition and rights groups have suggested that dozens may have been killed. Prosecutor Iraj Amirkhani last week said 200 out of an original 344 protesters arrested had been set free. But he told the ISNA students news agency that the prisons were now filling up again as demonstrators confessed to their roles in the protests.
“Based on confessions of those arrested, the identification and arrest of leaders of the unrest and others involved started this morning,” he was quoted as saying. “At the moment, 205 people remain in detention for taking part in the Ahvaz unrest and this number is increasing.”
Amirkhani said some of those detained had admitted to taking money to smash up banks and other public buildings. About 3 percent of Iran’s 67 million people are Arabs.
Meanwhile, Iran said it will one day resume its uranium enrichment program regardless of the result of negotiations with the European Union on its nuclear activities. “As long as the negotiations are continuing, the suspension will continue,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi.
“We have put enrichment on the agenda and it must start in a while. If the negotiations work out or fail, we will resume,” he added, also warning that Iran “will not accept the negotiations carrying on longer than a reasonable amount of time.”
“It is obvious that the suspension cannot last too long,” he said. “If Iran feels the EU is tending to kill time to prolong the negotiations, Iran will obviously not wish to continue the negotiations.”
In another development, Iran’s judiciary has rejected calls for an imprisoned journalist to be released on health grounds, IRNA reported. Paris-based rights group Reporters Without Borders said last week that Akbar Ganji, who has been in Tehran’s Evin prison for five years, was seriously ill and should be released immediately and unconditionally.
The journalist, who rattled Iran’s establishment with exposes about a series of unsolved murders of dissident intellectuals and writers, was said to be suffering from chronic asthma and back pain.
But Judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad denied that Ganji, who has one more year left to run on his sentence, was unwell. “Ganji’s general condition is good and he has no acute physical problems in prison,” Karimirad told IRNA late on Saturday.
