TEHRAN, 29 August 2005 — Iranian judges are to carry handguns from today after a judge was seriously wounded yesterday in the fourth attack on a judiciary official in the last four weeks, officials said.
Tehran’s criminal prosecutor Fakhroldin Jaffarzadeh said the latest shooting meant judges would have to be armed.
“All judges from prosecutors’ offices will carry firearms from tomorrow and, in case they feel in danger, they are licensed to shoot,” he told the ISNA students news agency.
Judge Mohammad Reza Aghazadeh was fighting for his life after he was shot in the eye outside his Tehran home yesterday morning, Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad said. “I hope God helps us keep him alive,” he said.
The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear, but the IRNA official news agency said Aghazadeh had been presiding over a major land transaction near the industrial city of Karaj, just west of Tehran.
It was also not clear whether the shooting was linked in any way to attacks on three other judges.
Judiciary officials said one judge was stabbed to death in the south of the country earlier this month, while another was disfigured by acid thrown into his face.
Hassan Moghaddas, a judge who jailed several reformist dissidents, was shot dead in his car on Aug. 2.
A website said an armed opposition group opposed to Iran’s clerical rulers claimed responsibility for Moghaddas’ killing. Jaffarzadeh said the judiciary had not determined who killed Moghaddas, so it was impossible to know whether that murder was related to the attack on Aghazadeh.
Meanwhile, an unmanned “drone” aircraft crashed into mountains in the central Iranian province of Lorestan, an Interior Ministry official said yesterday, but it was unclear where it came from.
“We have not yet identified it,” a ministry spokesman said. Drones have been the subject of feverish media speculation in Iran, with commentators asking if the United States would use them to spy on Iran after US forces employed them in Afghanistan.
Most of the key sites of Iran’s disputed nuclear program lie in the center of the country. Washington accuses Iran of seeking nuclear arms, a charge Tehran denies.
